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FYA Fest Goes Back To Brutality

10:04 AM EST on January 18, 2024

An underrated thing about hardcore: You can sometimes identify a venue just by YouTube thumbnail -- not even the video itself, but just the still image of a screengrab. I can't think of any other genre of music where that's the case. Most genres happen in the same clubs or arenas or festivals. Hardcore bands sometimes play in those spaces, but hardcore itself tends to happen in buildings that have character -- DIY spaces that serve as refuges because for-profit entertainment venue's can't or won't support everything that comes along with hardcore. Philadelphia's First Unitarian Church is one of those spaces. So is LA's 1720 Warehouse. And you can always recognize Tampa's Bryan Glazer FCC at a glance, even if it hosts only one weekend of hardcore bands per year. If your social-media feed is suddenly full of images of huge crowds acting reckless in a cavernous and unforgivingly lit community center, that means FYA Fest is happening.