Have Heart live in Brooklyn

Seeing my teenage heroes for the first time as a middle aged man

PHOTO BY ROB MENZER

I don’t usually write live music reviews. I go to tons of shows, but I never think to chronicle them in written form. The reason for that is simple— I find show reviews to be boring as hell. Why would I read your live review when I could just go to a show and watch a band play? What am I, a fuckin nerd? (No offence to my homies who write live reviews btw, I read yours, I promise).

I wrote my last live review over a year ago, recapping Tied Down 2023. That fest was special because about seven or eight of my bucket-list bands played, so I felt a need to convey its importance. Have Heart and friends at the Brooklyn Monarch on July 19th, 2024 held a similar personal significance.

I feel like that night’s lineup is the type of show we’ll look back on in 15 years and say “holy shit, these bands played together?” Have Heart is a top 10 hardcore band of all time. Speed from Australia are one of the biggest bands playing actual hardcore shows at this point. Magnitude and Restraining Order are two of the most underrated and entertaining live acts going. Then there’s Move and Anklebiter, two local-ish Boston area bands who people love.

It was such a big deal that I trekked all the way from Toronto to Brooklyn, NY for a fucking show. I’m not the type to travel for gigs. I mean, I’ll drive anywhere in Southern Ontario to see a good band, but I’m not one of these fest kids who goes to Sound and Fury every year. I planned to hit Tied Down again in 2024, but my dumbass best friend decided to get married that weekend, so I couldn’t go (thanks Mike). When Have Heart announced they were reuniting for the fest in Detroit, they also announced a handful of other shows. I instantly grabbed a ticket for the NYC date. I missed the band’s legendary first reunion in 2019. I couldn’t pass on the chance to see them again.

Fast forward five or six months to a hot night in July. I got to the venue right at 5:30 for doors. Brooklyn Monarch is in East Williamsburg, home of Vice News, moustache finger tattoos and the fixed gear bicycle. I didn’t see any classic hipsters walking around, unfortunately. My Uber dropped me off right at the venue, which is basically in an alley surrounded by factories. When I got out of my ride, the unmistakeable smell of pickle manufacturing filled the air.

Well, unmistakeable to me. I worked at a pickle factory for two college summers, starting in 2010. Ironically, that was around the time I first discovered Have Heart, and sure enough, when I filed into the show, the line started right in front of a pickle packing plant.

Once inside the venue, I quickly discovered a big, comfortable couch to sit on. Brooklyn Monarch has a ton of chairs and couches in the back for people to chill like civilized human beings between bands. Honestly, I wish more venues would follow their lead. I’m getting to a point in life where if I have to stand for five plus hours, I expect to be paid. I’m watching a concert, not working in a mill, for fucks sake.

ANKLEBITER COURTESY OF ROB MENZER

Anyways, the first band of the night was Anklebiter from New England. The group features members from about a trillion other bands, including Pummel, Broken Vow, Attrition Rate and every other good young Boston area hardcore act. Everyone says they sound like Lockin’ Out worship, but they’ve always come across to me as meaner and more pissed off than that stuff. Seeing them live definitely reinforced my assertion. The singer seemed like she genuinely didn’t want to be there and kept complaining about the heat onstage. It was an excellent bit, considering the band probably had the time of their young lives opening a legendary show. They jumped and flailed around, something sorely missing from most live performances these days.

I wish someone would invent a Shazam-like app for hardcore covers you know you’ve heard before but can’t put your finger on. Anklebiter played a cover and I knew it but didn’t know it, ya know? The singer introduced it by saying “this one is for my old heads”, but those kids are like 22 years old, so it could have been anything from 2015 or earlier. I think it might have been Coke Bust or Think I Care, but who knows?

Move, formerly known as “Move BHC” played next. This band would be better if they played about 20 per cent faster, but as it is, they’re kinda boring. Their message was great (they were the only group to explicitly mention Palestine all night) but they’ve never struck me on record and seeing them live didn’t win me over. There also weren’t a ton of people in the building at that point. Maybe more crowd participation would have sold me on it.

Restraining Order, on the other hand, almost brought the place down. You know a band is good when they have the balls to open with their best song. RO kicked it off with “Something For the Youth” and proceeded to play a banging set full of high energy hits, including a cover of “Invasion” by Righteous Jams. By this point, the real moshers were in the building, going side to side like a pack of deranged animals for one of the best bands in modern hardcore. The band matched the crowd’s energy. They weren’t flailing around like the kids in Anklebiter, but they were locked in and rockin’ hard.

MAGNITUDE COURTESY OF ROB MENZER

Restraining Order mostly played tracks from their smash 2019 album This World is Too Much. I wish Magnitude followed their lead and stuck to the first album. Don’t get me wrong, I like both bands’ sophomore efforts. Still, time has proven the debuts to be superior, and Magnitude left a few stone cold stunners out of their setlist to make room for newer songs. The audience didn’t seem to mind. Crowd engagement was strong throughout the set, crescendoing into three straight minutes of pile-ons for “Whatever Fateful End”, as always. Magnitude also opened with arguably their best song (“Defy”), a big baller move no doubt.

There were considerably more people in the room when I turned around at the end of Magnitude’s set. It was like 300 extra bodies appeared out of thin air. Not to get too personal, but at this point, I’d been backed up for a couple days. Things changed, thanks to all the greasy New York City food staples I’d shovelled down my throat before the show. I dropped an absolute nuke in the Monarch bathroom, and much to my chagrin, the toilet paper was so thin I could see my hand through it.

Every bathroom I used in NYC had one ply — even the one in my hotel room. You’d think a legendary food city would do better for its people, but I guess not. New York is a strange combination of the pleasure garden Xanadu and the seventh circle of hell. Nowhere else on earth can you engage in pleasant, small town-esque banter with a friendly stranger on the street corner and then half a block later see a homeless guy jacking off through his shorts in broad daylight. It’s a wild maze of wonderful contradictions, where every gas station sells fresh, hot food and every bathroom has see-through toilet paper. I can’t wait to go back.

SPEED COURTESY OF ROB MENZER

I washed my hands and walked out just as Speed took the stage. I don’t quite understand the Aussie band’s appeal, but I tried my best to watch with an open mind. 15 years from now, the hardcore scene won’t remember the basement fart-punk I fawn over on this blog. They’ll remember Speed’s legendary 2022 Sound and Fury set, along with singer Jem Siow’s onstage flute solos.

Speed were the only “tough guy” band playing that night, and the large contingent of 35+ year olds wearing entry-level band tees in the crowd clamoured for them. I must say, Siow’s command of the stage is Vogel-esque, and the musicians play tight as hell. I caught myself singing along with set closer “Not That Nice”, which is a song I’ve maybe heard five times ever. That’s how you know it’s a hit. Speed still isn’t my thing, but I get why it might be someone else’s.

I finally started getting butterflies between Speed and Have Heart. Not to get too gushy, but the latter is a foundational band for me. Their brand of heart-on-sleeve sincerity struck me hard during that late teens malaise when my emotions were overflowing with self-importance yet still entirely confusing. Pat Flynn’s lyrics sent me on a roller coaster ride every time I heard them. Every high was breathtaking and every low soul-crushing. Each moment offered deep meaning, from watching loved ones fight addiction to sitting bored in a van on tour. Have Heart connected me to hardcore on a spiritual level. “Armed With a Mind” was the first hardcore song I learned on guitar. Songs to Scream at the Sun was the first hardcore record I ever bought.

At some point in their set, I wondered how this might connect with me if I heard it for the first time as a 33 year-old. I also wondered if a band could carry a similar disposition today and get taken seriously. I don’t think Have Heart is a time and place phenomenon. The success of their reunions proves they transcend eras and sub-scenes. Still, I wonder how much of it comes down to lightning in a bottle between the five guys in the band and the scene they come from. I’ll reluctantly admit that Speed is proving there could be another Trapped Under Ice. Could there ever be another Have Heart? I don’t think so.

HAVE HEART COURTESY OF ROB MENZER

The set was good. I got emotional during “Bostons”, thinking of my dad, who accompanied me on the trip in place of my ex-girlfriend. During “Something More Than Ink” I thought about the increasing importance of sobriety on my values and identity. When the marching toms of “Armed With a Mind” started, I shot to the front, looking desperately for some space to go side to side. There was none. The room was a swirling sea of tightly packed bodies, cresting at the stage, pushing divers up and over the crowd until they fell and re-joined the churning mass. I’ve never seen anything like it at a hardcore show.

When the band played “Watch Me Rise”, bodies overflowed onto the stage. The song is about overcoming depression, rising up from the odds and taking power over one’s life. Oddly enough, I felt kind of alienated during the massive pile-on at the end. That feeling fed into my curiosity about whether Have Heart would resonate for me if they were a new band.

Depression, from my vantage point, isn’t something you stand up and overcome by triumph of will. It’s a nagging depletion of life force that makes every day just a bit shittier than it could be. Some moments are better than others, but I don’t think I’ll ever get to a point where my depression is conquered.

I hoped that day might come in my late teens, when Have Heart spoke to me as if I wrote their words myself. 15 years later, I can’t afford to put that much stock in every mood swing. I’m going through a breakup right now. Maybe one day the hope that life actually does get better will return. But on Friday, when the song ended and the band left stage, I felt like finding Pat Flynn in the crowd, grabbing him by the shoulders and saying “look man, I know I’m supposed to ‘sing a sweet redeeming song about living this life free and long’ but I just don’t have it in me right now.”

Instead, I shuffled out of the Monarch quickly as possible, then ushered myself up the street as venue security told everyone “you can’t stand in front of the building.” I saw Tom from Axe to Grind, but he was talking with some people so I didn’t bother him. I grabbed some dinner from a bodega and hopped in an Uber, feeling good (but maybe not transcendently so) about finally seeing the legendary Have Heart.