Superbowl, Iron Duke, Alexandria, 26th February, 2000

VENUE: Iron Duke Hotel, Alexandria

DATE: Saturday, 26th February, 2000

TIME: 3pm

OTHER: 5th Annual Hardcore Superbowl. Organised by No Deal.

BANDS:

• Shank (UK)
• Rocks
• FMD
• Frontside
• AVO
• The Blurters
• Murder
• The Kill
• Damage Control
• One Step Ahead

ORAL HISTORY:

NEIL: This was my first trip to Sydney as an adult. There was also a Friday evening show at Hornsby with a few of the Violent Hornsby Straight Edge bands and a couple of out-of-towners, and a Sunday boat cruise in Sydney. We didn't get to the boat cruise but it looked awesome. My impressions of the weekend, as a highly interested outsider who bought all the records and read the impressive volume of zines that were coming out of the scene in the late '90s, was that NSW hardcore had recently fractured. For example, there were almost no crusties at these Shank shows, possibly due to being made to feel unwelcome by the swatches of Blood For Blood T-shirts and the overpowering musk of Brut 33 in the air, which I thought to be a shame given how much the crusties I knew (from NSW) would've been blown away by Shank. Also - the absence of a very stylistically-complementary-to-Shank band, Arm's Reach, and the lack of Newcastle representation altogether, seemed notable. Given that Arm's Reach had recently broken up, and based on the fairly well-documented schism at the time, Arm's Reach probably wouldn't have been asked to play. Overall, it felt like less people travelled for the gigs, but Sydney hardcore was pumping locally, albeit with a totally different mood to the 'NSW Network of Friends' vibe that the scene projected only a year beforehand. Despite feeling like I'd missed an important time to witness NSW hardcore, it was still a ripper weekend for a wide-eyed 19 year-old from the then-starved-for-hardcore QLD. Shank were incredible, AVO were abrupt and intense, The Kill and Three Found Dead were two sides of a menacing coin retrieved from the gutter, and it was great to witness One Step Ahead, the earlier incarnation of the soon-to-be-life-altering Deadstare.

Neil Bramley, punter, 2024