But on some instinct I can't really explain—maybe it was desperation—I drifted in a 'constructed aimlessness' manner towards the merch desk of a band named 'Findaway'. I knew absolutely fuck all about them at the time, but the merch looked good. I thought upgrading my fashion would at least help me avoid sticking out like a sore thumb, so I bought a shirt and a CD—my 'ticket' for this free gig.

The radiant eyes of the guy working the desk seemed to go from one side to the next at amphetamine speed. He was clutching in his hands a booklet saying 'The Brisbane Music Spew'.

I recognised that name. I had seen posts by that zine before and toyed with the idea of starting my own—considering how easy it looked and how I enjoyed writing. Well, I asked him what made him so interested. That was enough to crack open a conversation. He told me the creator—Natasha, was somewhere in the crowd, and that I should go talk to her as she does 'good work'.

Nastasha turned out to be quite terrifyingly down to earth. I expected some fancy schmancy 'music journalist' who would give off vibes of 'in crowd'. I owe everything to what she did as she inspired me and god knows how many others to start doing raw, authentic gonzo journalism. She taught me that doing cool things isn't that hard at all. That experience alone had given me a faint whiff of what the scene actually was, instead of having judge based on the cigarette smoke and rotting smell of sweat.

Findaway seemingly teleported to the merch desk to sign CDs. I bought a raffle ticket and then pushed toward the stage. My heart was running on battery acid. Soon, a guy walked up to announce that two bands had dropped out due to 'medical problems'.

Murmurs started to go back and forth from both sides of me. The consensus I formed from the disjointed words being passed around was that one of the members of a band had broken a bone. Ironically, that's also the name of this zine, so maybe the universe works in mysterious ways?

Well, we stood there. We were a restless congregation awaiting the mystery replacement pastor to preach us the message of high voltage rock and roll.

With no permission or introduction needed, Klowde materialised onto the 'stage area' (there's no stage at hardcore gigs as the audience is as much part of the performance as the artists). Punk-pub galore. The kind that fills your ears up with what it was starving for but didn't realise like a pub feed fills your belly up.

Let's cut the buzzwords and state what the performance was actually like. Klowde's performance was like a nervous breakdown being continuously beaten with a baseball bat by The Ramones, and shoved up Eamon Sandwith of The Chats' nose. It felt like it was going to fall apart at any moment, but it didn't, and that was the generator of the energy. This combination was sure to seize your nervous system's 'executive function' switch before it could file a complaint.

The set was ran through at reckless speed on speed. Me and the photographers—who had been maintaining the cowardly fiction of 'staying back', were sucked into the pit without our consent by the united forces of Klowde and his crowd.

At one point, the sheer raw power consumed me. Logic had left the building. I had my first moshpit experience. I stopped being an observer and became one with the scene. Now, a moshpit cant be described in words because it's a transcendent experience. Go experience one for yourself and you'll know what I'm talking about.

Arran McKenzie came out from the shadows of the night like fucking Batman for a surprise vocal performance of 'Territorial Pissings' by Nirvana. I had known him from my years spent monitoring the scene without going to a gig due to authoritarian parents. I felt this was insane. Someone I admired seemingly appearing out of nowhere to perform a song that epitomised that stimulating, hypomanic energy of punk rock. The lyrics "got to find a better, a better way, when I'm here" foreshadowed Findaway's later performance that night.

The man's voice hit the speakers so hard you could hear the equipment failing on itself and making everything sound like a heavy metal guitar.

The crowd lost its collective mind. Circle pits and push pits galore. People running around at superhuman speeds. It looked like someone grabbed a bunch of people from Metallica's 1989 Seattle show and brought them through time and space to Paddington Skatepark.

Klowde's finale was a raucous homage to The Chats called 'I Like My Ciggies' about the decadence of one's chemical romance/affliction with nicotine. He used his guitar as a cigarette holder like those old rock and rollers would do. It was an image so perfectly unhinged it burned itself into the film stock of my memory. A fitting end for an act nobody expected. He played like he didn't need permission to be there. He played like he was just there to do his thing, and if you don't like it, fuck you.

I was trying to catch my breath when I spotted a kid nearby who looked traumatised by what he had just witnessed. We'll call him Daniel. He was an acquaintance of someone in the next band, Verminate, who had been tentatively invited. This was his first gig.

He had an opposite reaction to what had just happened. It wasn't like how it was for me, where it felt like this was where I was always supposed to be but I just not known it. No, no. To him, what happened looked like the rituals of some violent satanic cult. He had that thousand-yard stare with black-hole pupils like that of Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd doesn't lie.

I would soon discover another initiate we'll call Richard, who'd been dragged here by Verminate's aggressive promotional campaign at their school. Apparently, these maniacs were recruiting at the source.

Verminate introduced themselves as girlfriend and boyfriend duo Mikey and Perry. Their thing—a 'two-man slam'—was a weaponised cocktail—a genre called slam, described as a combination of gut-shredding post-hardcore emo screams, beatdown hardcore breakdowns, and hilarious samples of random clips and psychotic rants that seemed to be recorded from kidnapped insane asylum patients. Looks like they upstaged Mayhem in terms of insane antics.

The song titles were enough to give you a taste of how maniacal they were. 'Recreational Tax Fraud' hit like what you would hear if a gig was held in a serial killer's basement. If Klowde warmed up the crowd, Verminate threw it into an industrial furnace and roasted it until it was black and crisp. They actually made the St. Anger sound good, by the way, which goes as a testament to how this was definitely a 'Big Takeover' of the established world order.

This guy named Otto To threw a stuffed rabbit plushie around. Its fluffy body was bouncing in an absurd manner over the sea of sweaty guys and girls.

When Verminate truly locked in after having gauged what the call and response dynamic with the crowd was like, all hell truly cracked open and the demons came pouring out.

The pit became a melting pot, with every person's particular brand of insanity feeding the collective anarchic industrial complex. Their set was a weird hybrid of slam, punk, emo, and pure experimentation, akin to the unholy spirit of Attack! Attack! in their prime. But it was really the absurdist humour that made them something else entirely. It was a good way to tell people "hey, this is our time and space to not take life so seriously".

If I had to bottle the atmosphere and hand it to you, I'd point you at Enter Shikari's "Sorry, You're Not A Winner" music video. It was that exact frequency of goofy, gritty, yet actually good, in-your-face madness. It's the kind that gets better with age as you look back on it as a memory. Verminate brung about a prompt and utter obliteration of every expectation I walked in with, and by the time the last note died, I knew with absolute certainty I was a fan.

Me and the other newbies made our way toward where Verminate was decompressing after their set, and there, like sentinels, stood Arran and Johnnie from Piss Off. What follows is an interview I had with the people at the gig. This was THE moment I became a rock and roller and not just some guy listening to emo music to express his emotional angst.

It's very raw because this was my first 'interview' I ever did, but it also was one of the most important conversations I've had in my life.

Breakbone: I've heard of your band. I really dig your stuff, especially that first album where you just scream "I HATE THIS FUCKING SHIT." (Referring to Geography Class from their album Gormless)

Arran: It's all about rock and roll. Rock and roll bro.

Breakbone: I'm thinking about starting a band. I really like emo music. What guitar should I get?

Mikey: Get a Pacifica. I think Perry uses one of those.

Breakbone: Oh yeah, I've been eyeing those. Who knows, maybe I'll start Brisbane's emo scene.

Mikey: Yeah, who knows!

Arran: That's a gap in the market you can fill. But it all leads back to rock and roll though. Rock and roll and capitalism.

Breakbone: Fuck capitalism.

Arran: But without capitalism, how do you pay for gigs? How do you pay for the equipment? How do you make a living? You gotta do it for the money [in a jokey, sarcastic tone]. You gotta listen to this band called Radio Birdman. It all leads back to rock and roll—punk, emo, metal—all of it came from rock and roll. Say it with me. What are the two important things you need to know?

Breakbone: Rock and roll and capitalism.

Arran: Are you staying for Findaway?

Breakbone: Shit, I gotta leave at 8.

Arran: Well, if you're lucky you might be able to catch their set. I'll see you later.

The night marched onward. Findaway was next. I posted up with Daniel and Richard by the skate bowl. We were three strangers trading war stories about how we'd each ended up at this concrete temple without even knowing it—as if it was fate. Before any of us could finish a sentence, Findaway kicked off early, and we were pulled toward the stage like moths who'd spotted the sun.

What Findaway unleashed surpassed even Verminate—and I did not think that was possible. The crowd became a single organism: touching, violent, tender, savage. People held hands and launched into the air in unison. A sea of phone flashlights swayed overhead. And a circle pit consisting of the entire crowd materialised. A real industrial-size circle pit. Something I had only ever witnessed in punk and emo music videos, now happening three feet in front of me. It all happened so quick its hard to describe every single moment, but I'll try.

They sounded like Metallica with the speed edge of Minor Threat or Judas Priest mixed with the whiny, nasally vocals of New Found Glory or Blink-182. They dressed in skate fashion and has lyrics laced with social commentary that felt like the culmination of everything that had built up that night.

The climax was a cult chant. 'Vote for them, pay for them, live for them, die for them'—from their then-new track, 'Out Of Luck.' It had an '80s speed-metal edge, complete with a face-melting guitar solo. I had it plastered on the back of the shirt I had bought and immediately put on to replace the mainstream poser shirt I had on before. It felt like the gap between who I was and who I wanted to be had closed up during this moment—a holy communion. I found myself screaming those lyrics directly into the face of a total stranger, nose to nose, and it was the cathartic release I needed after a catastrophically shitty week, actually, multiple years spent at school.

One of their best songs was 'North Star'—for which the crowd held their phone lights up for. It's a song about the singer and guitarist Guy Di Mattina's experience presumably having lost a friend due to mental health struggles. His lyrics about connection and being there for one another seemed to be addressed to the crowd. His wailing vocals echoed that of Kurt Cobain singing 'Where Did You Sleep Last Night' on MTV Unplugged. Unbelievable. You had to be there for it.

Another good song—there's too many to count—was 'In Between', about the usual teenage struggles—broken homes, substance use, relationships, friendship issues—and about how music is a sanctuary for disillusioned youth. Really powerful song and honestly very underrated. It really felt like a national anthem ceremony for the scene looking back on it retroactively.

Their song 'Moment' was all about the moment where you are in the crowd and just feel transcendent and feel one with the music—ego death. And honestly, I felt exactly that. There was no 'I' making decisions. The music seemed to run my brain as soon as it started.

Their song 'Anarchy' lived up to the name. It spawned a festival-level moshpit that had the photographers dropping their cameras and running to join in, and even Guy himself ran into the pit at one point. When even the band members can't resist, you know you're witnessing something beyond the 'normal' standard at local gigs.

I reveled in the consensual violence of it. It was didn't have to perform for anyone, and didn't have to feel suffocated under the sorrow of everyday life. I had found my meaning at its source. Everyone who couldn't understand what was happening right here was simply missing out, or secretly jealous.

As Findaway's set wound toward its end, exhaustion hit me like a freight train. My legs were screaming. I cracked open a Pepsi and poured it down my throat. Best Pepsi I've ever had in my life.

As the newfound glory began its slow fade, I drifted behind the basketball courts and joined the post-set congregation. Goodbyes flew. Compliments were exchanged. Social media handles were traded like contraband. I even managed to meet PIMP—the band who organised all this shit, and scored a signed setlist before they had even played a single note.

I caught the opening number of PIMP's set and I hurled myself into the pit one final time for a victory lap. I had to leave at eight due to shitty parental policies, but I walked to the bus spot in a Findaway shirt instead of a Paramore one.