Glassjaw in Austin

Glassjaw’s popularity peaked during my high school years. It is the soundtrack to my adolescence. Oh yes, I clearly remember hanging my arms out a friend’s car window as we drove around, loosing our voices to their last full-length album, Worship and Tribute. The album that also reminds me of frantically trying to hide my septum piercing from my mom every time I came home from school or being heartbroken over a boy with tattooed sleeves and large gages.

It’s been six years since a combination of front man Daryl Palumbo’s Crohn’s disease and the birth his side project Head Automatica took the band on hiatus. The post hardcore band fronted by vocalist Palumbo and guitarist Justin Beck is back on tour after playing several scattered festivals around the U.S. They played to a sold out show Thursday night, on Emo’s outside stage, straight from a show they had in Perth, Australia or as Palumbo referred to it, “Austria or Australia, one of those.”

Palumbo’s distinctive aggressive vocal style was just as I remembered it but there was a notable difference in his stage presence. He was older, not less tattooed, but thinner and more homeless looking than the thick-framed glasses wearing homie I remember.

A sweating mob surrounding the stage swaying and moshing together like a wave out at sea during a hurricane. It was a scream-a-long event that included tunes off their only releases, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Silence, Worship and Tribute and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

It was hard to stay put as I tried very hard to concentrate on staying grounded and balanced while my camera pierced my chest. I spent the most of show suspended in air with both my hands up as people around me got to second base with me and traded sweat. It didn’t keep me from yelling along as confessions of love sprouted randomly through out the crowd. I closed my eyes and thought, ‘I feel you crowd, I love him too. You’re right, he is beautiful.’