Trapped Under Ice’s Baltimore Show Is Pure Cinema
A few weeks back, a special guest showed up to see Trapped Under Ice play a triumphant hometown gig at Baltimore’s Ottobar. John Waters, one of the city’s great living icons, was up in the tiny balcony next to the stage, safe from the chaos roiling below him. People noticed. Over the next few days, news of Waters’ presence went around the internet. First, it was people wondering if that really was Waters up in the balcony, as if there’s a single other person on earth who looks like that. Then, it was the band offering confirmation.
About halfway through the gig, Justice Tripp, TUI’s wildly charismatic and ridiculously yoked frontman, paused the riff-storm for a moment to acknowledge all the important people in the building — friends, family, the other bands on the bill, “a bunch of Essex white trash motherfuckers,” the venue itself (“a building that I’ve spent more of my life in than any home I’ve ever lived in my entire life”). Then he acknowledged the man in the balcony: “John Waters here. He said he’s gonna whup our ass if we don’t pay him out for the Cry-Baby samples. So everybody be really nice. Maybe he’ll let us slide.”
I emailed Justice Tripp to ask about John Waters’ presence at the show, and as I suspected, there’s not that much of a story there: “Historically he kind of just pops up at the hardcore and punk shows from time to time. His presence is sick and always exciting, but I’m not exactly surprised when you see him going to where the freaks are. I hope he enjoyed it.” If you’re from Baltimore, you’re probably used to seeing Waters. He’s really outside. I haven’t lived in Baltimore in a long time, but I can remember plenty of moments being out with my friends at a bar and turning around like, “Oh shit, John Waters is here.” People are always happy to see him, and people don’t usually bother him too much. Waters also plays a special role in TUI history. Those between-songs movie samples are crucial to a track like “Believe.” They helped this band announce where it came from.
It’s been nearly eight years since TUI released Heatwave, their most recent record, but you’d still have a tough time naming any band that’s been more foundational to hardcore in its current form. For one thing, Turnstile, the band responsible for the recent explosion in hardcore interest over the past few years, basically started out as a TUI side project, and Turnstile frontman Brendan Yates was back behind the drums for TUI’s Baltimore show.
More importantly, though, TUI are widely known as the band who brought Tims, camo shorts, and general no-tomorrow recklessness back to hardcore in the late ’00s. All these years later, it’s still very much a Tims-and-camo-shorts world. Present-day scene-rulers like Speed or Pain Of Truth simply could not exist without their influence. TUI didn’t invent the art of metallic kamikaze bounce, but they refined and perfected it.
Trapped Under Ice have never broken up, but they tend to go inactive for long stretches. Justice Tripp now leads Angel Du$t and has a few other projects going, and the other guys in the band have their own lives. But whenever TUI rumbles back to life, it feels like a momentous occasion. In 2023, they headlined Baltimore’s Disturbin’ The Peace fest, playing their first gig in years, and the videos from that set were crazy. TUI went on to headline pretty much every important hardcore fest over the next two years, and those sets all looked crazy, too. Even without new music, they still feel like the most vital band in the hardcore world.
I wasn’t at the Baltimore show. I should’ve been, but there were about a million life circumstances that made it impossible. I haven’t been to any hardcore shows in the past couple months, and that’s a problem. Watching the TUI video, I really wish I’d been there. I haven’t spent my entire life at the Ottobar, but I had plenty of big moments there. I met my wife in that room 22 years ago. I’ve seen dozens of shows there, though I don’t think I’ve ever seen it get quite as crunk as it apparently did for Trapped Under Ice.
My old friend Tracy Conway was at the Ottobar show. I hadn’t talked to Tracy in years before I mentioned his old band the Clancy 6 in this column a few months ago, and he’s the guy who shot and edited the full-set video of TUI at the Ottobar. Tracy and Justice still haven’t met, but Justice tells me that he was “a very young fan of Clancy 6.” Tracy’s band went through a few different names before they settled on the Clancy 6, and one of them was Radio Virus. Justice tells me that he and a few friends started another band called Radio Virus when he was 11. He figured that the name was up for grabs. Tracy had no idea about any of this, and he was blown away when I told him. Baltimore is a small town. You might fuck around and influence a little local kid, and that little local kid could grow up to become a legend.
Tracy comes from Essex, too. If you know anything about Baltimore, then you know what that means. One of the two shows that my high-school punk band ever played was in the Essex backyard of one of the Clancy 6 guys, and whenever the wind shifted, the smell of the sewage-treatment plant across the river was enough to make your eyes water. Essex breeds people who do not give a fuck.
I saw an early clip of Tracy’s video, and it looked crazy. Then the full 36-minute clip hit the internet, and it looks even crazier than what happened in the first couple minutes. There are just no dips in energy. It’s a near-perfect example of a band and a crowd totally locked in with each other. Every moment, bodies are flying. People jump onstage and then dive, headwalk, or moonsault their way off. Everyone knows every word, and the biggest singalong moments are just electrifying. The band sounds utterly spectacular, precise and fearsome in equal measure, and they open up by playing their 2007 demo straight through. Turnstile’s Franz Lyons does his guest bit on “Street Lights,” and he looks elated.
Justice Tripp is wearing what appears to be a Gold’s Gym tank top, and he looks like the Incredible Hulk. Toward the end, Tripp says, “This a Baltimore City hardcore show! Take ya shirts off! Take ya shirts off! You in Baltimore City, at a hardcore show! I wanna see big, fat bellies flappin’ in the moshpit! Rock ‘n’ roll!” Immediately, every shirt disappears. I bet John Waters approved.
I’ve still never seen Trapped Under Ice, but I’ll get my chance. That Ottobar show was not a goodbye. TUI played New Jersey the next night. In Marcy, they’ll do a weekend in Texas. In April, they’ll headline Richmond’s returning United Blood fest. Tickets sold out before I had a chance to grab one, but I’ll finesse my way in somehow. A live video is no substitute for being there in person, but the live video that my friend Tracy made is something special. I watch that slightly-fuzzy black-and-white footage, and I feel alive. Imagine how it would’ve felt to be in the room.
Closer – “Slow Hell”
“Memory! Is a wonderful thing! If you don’t! Have! To answer the past!” What a way to say goodbye. Last month, the great New York screamo band Closer played their final show. Just before the gig, they released their two final songs, both of which had been in the can for a while, awaiting release while the band figured out what their future was. I’m pretty sure “Slow Hell” is a song about bitterly estranged family — that’s my read, anyway — but it takes on deeper resonance as part of Closer’s final statement. For most bands, a release like this could be a lame-duck throwaway, but this one has the same burning passion as everything else that Closer did, and it feels just as feverishly urgent now that the band is no more. [From Paris in the spring two-song single, out now on Lauren Records.]
Crush Your Soul – “Crush”
This is what it’s all about! There are so many things that you can do with hardcore, but the simplest and most primal of them might be getting a bunch of dudes to chant the word “crush” repeatedly like they’re Axe and Smash inviting a third guy to join Demolition. This is basically an intro track from one of many Mindforce side projects floating around these days — one of two intro tracks from the fucking awesome new Crush Your Soul EP — but hardcore intro tracks are some of the best hardcore tracks. Jay Peta brings a ton of swagger and style to his delivery here, just as he does in Mindforce, and the song doesn’t need a breakdown because it’s basically all breakdown. When they play this live, I bet it looks like Target when the doors open on Black Friday. [From Gracious Living EP, out now on Streets Of Hate.]
Futuro – “Lucro Mórbido”
Brazilian punks Futuro have been a big favorite for me since I saw them play a random-ass Charlottesville house show many years ago, and whenever they pop up again, it’s good news. A song like this has all the reckless speed-crunch of early-’80s hardcore, but it’s also got freaky distorted psychedelic rockabilly riffage that I don’t see anyone else attempting. If you ever see me triumphantly riding a shark like it’s a surfboard, possibly while wearing sunglasses and a lei, it’s because I heard this song at the wrong moment. [From Dois Mundos EP, self-released, out now.]
Gridiron – “Talk Real”
This type of chug-and-grunt rapcore is fundamentally silly, and everyone involved probably knows it. When you bust 1989 rhymes over ignorant riffage, you almost inevitably sound at least a little bit like Fred Durst. If you’re not willing to embrace that, you should stay away. But the magic of Gridiron is that they never seem even a tiny bit self-aware. Instead, they’re banging on their collective chest like they mean it, which makes the whole spectacle so much more fun. If you can lock in with music like this while you’re on your headphones at the gym, you might find yourself going so hard that you break the machine. [Stand-alone single, out now on Blue Grape Music.]
Hard Target – “Hollow Man”
Here, we’ve got a band named after a John Woo film, with a banger named after a Paul Verhoeven film. The magic of the movies, baby! An elbow to the eye socket feels good in a place like this! Massachusetts’ Hard Target make straightforward gorilla-monster straight-edge stomps as well as anyone. There’s nothing new about a song like this, but these people know how to push the right buttons to cause maximum damage. It works as a classic example of how something can seem weirdly slick and catchy without bringing even the tiniest shred of melody to the party. [From Watch It Burn EP, self-released, out now.]
Lifeless Dark – “Medusa”
When Boston crust band Lifeless Dark’s full-length debut made the rounds late last year, it became one of those great little word-of-mouth sensations in certain internet circles. It was like: Where did this come from? Lifeless Dark have apparently been around for a while, and they put out a demo way back in 2018, but I’m pretty sure I never heard of them. Suddenly, here they come with the heaviest piece of metal-punk I’ve heard in years. When this absolute fucking epic is on, I’m in a different place. I’m riding my armored war-tiger into battle against a demonic horde of rock-monster invaders. It’s that type of record, and I should’ve put it on my year-end list. [From Forces Of Nature’s Transformation, out now on Side Two Records.]
New World Man – “Peeling Through The Skin (I Will Return)”
This is the second of this month’s two Mindforce side projects, and I’m so glad that I don’t have to pick one of them because this shit is crazy. Mindforce guitarist Mike Shaw has some absolutely bonkers metal tendencies that he truly indulges in some of his other bands, but he’s never gone in as hard on them as he does on this endless, ever-changing freakout. It keeps shifting from fast to heavy, seemingly at random, and the cumulative effect is enough to leave your head spinning. It’s like someone noticed that hardcore-show crowds go crazy at every tempo change, so they decided to give us a song that’s nothing but tempo changes, as a social experiment. Somebody’s losing an eye to this one. [From Peeling Through The Skin two-song single, out now on Streets Of Hate.]
Speed Plans – “Shut The Fuck Up”
The new EP from Pittsburgh fast-hardcore miscreants Speed Plans has a song called “Shut Up” and a song called “Shut The Fuck Up,” and they’re right next to each other on the tracklist. That’s fucking awesome. It’s so beautiful and perfect that I have to shed a single tear whenever I think about it. This is what hardcore is supposed to be — people telling you to shut up multiple times, in minute-long song after minute-long song. It’s almost enough to make me feel bad that the Ravens just beat the Steelers. Except not really. Fuck the Steelers. Shut the fuck up, Steelers. [From DUI EP, out now on Convulse Records.]
You Should Be With Us – “Be Here Now”
It’s not an Oasis reference. You’d think it would be, right? Hardcore bands love Oasis, almost as a rule. If anyone wanted to put string sections and helicopter sound-effects on a hardcore song, they could always frame it as a tribute to Oasis’ monument to coked-up excess. But this is the opposite of coked-up excess. It’s a Cleveland band with an excessive name going the ultra-sincere stripped-down Turning Point route, and it sounds more like falling out of a helicopter. [From In Plain Sight EP, out now on Delayed Gratification Records.]
Zero Chill – “Intro / Survival”
The echoed-out Jamaican-accent intro sounds like the Specials’ “Gangsters,” but then the riff sounds like an avalanche of boulders landing on your head. The riff keeps going for a minute or so, and then it gets fast and some guy is yelling about “This is for the criminals doin’ time! The ones with dark shit cloudin’ their minds!” Then there’s pinch-harmonic guitar squeals and that guy telling you that death’s the last resort, motherfucker. It’s so perfect and so ugly. Of course it comes from Florida. [From Rat Trap EP, out now on High & Tight Records/Criminalized.]
