I associate this late-90s hardcore-bordering-on-screamo band with Frodus, Reversal of Man, and Pg. 99, all of whom I'm reasonably certain I saw them with. They did a split with Orchid, and one with Kwisatz Haderach. They came from up around Lancaster, PA, a town which (oddly) got a ton more "big" punk shows throughout the 90s than Baltimore. So hearing a band like
Encyclopedia of American Traitors come out of a town where I saw Citizen Fish and Rancid...it was jarring at the time. It wouldn't be until years later that I learned they were ex-Spirit Assembly, and at least one member would move to Florida and play in Fiya.
Does every generation of punks, when they have enough distance between them and the moment, think that they had the world by the balls? Or were we part of something truly special, unrepeatable? I tell some story about seeing some random band with ten other kids in a dank basement, repurposed into a showspace, and suddenly, to the listener, it's a Velvet Underground moment. It's not that this world was poorly documented; it's that it's one of the last times the world would be mysterious, up for interpretation, grainy like a VHS tape.
Discogs
