The howls of metal driven men shook the Studio at Webster Hall, as the bands Counterparts and The Acacia Strain set the place afire with guttural screams and heavy guitar breakdowns.

Leading the “Tune Low, Die Slow Tour” this season, The Acacia Strain did not disappoint, energizing the crowd to new heights of moshing and hardcore leaps as they performed for fellow east coasters. They dedicated their performance to The Ghost Inside, a metalcore quartet with a history of playing Webster Hall. The Ghost Inside band and crew experienced a terrible car accident just a few weeks ago while touring, which left several of the band members hospitalized with serious injuries.

Performing crowd favorites like, ‘Skynet’ and ‘Cauterizer’, this band kept us on our toes by wildly switching back and forth between fast noise driven riffs and terribly slow grinding doom rhythms that dragged on into outer space. At times it felt like they controlled time itself, slowing it down on a whim.

The Canadian band Counterparts has a post-hardcore reputation for shifting through multiple rhythms during a song, and also kept the crowd’s energy high and active. Another local favorite that’s been touring since 2007, kids leapt on stage to sing along with every song. Running through the crowd surfing they shouted to all of Manhattan, “Our bodies blind the world with a sense of selflessness that only a trained eye can see.”

The evening was rounded out by performances from Fit For An Autopsy, Kublai Khan and Hollow Is Thy Heart.

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