“Do you ever worry, when you tell someone you’re in a punk band, that they assume it’s like this?” My show-going companion posed this question to me during the third of four support acts for pop-punk legends The Queers at Backstage Bar & Billiards in Las Vegas last Friday night. I told him no, but that’s only because I’d only ever self-describe as “punk rock” for two different types of people: those who clearly understand which type of punk I meant, and those I hoped to scare off from asking any more questions. I would describe my relationship with the punk on display at this gig, nestled on the edge of the painfully-American Fremont Street Experience in Old Las Vegas, as similar to that of a tragic uncle. I feel bound by blood to this stuff, connected for life, but also deeply embarrassed by its stubborn lack of development (or even creativity), content to cycle through the same boob and fart jokes well into old age. Let’s head on in for the first band of the evening: Stagnetti’s Cock. Surprise! You’re allowed to smoke in here. It’s Vegas.

The first of four local openers, Stagnetti’s Cock was easily the worst by far. A peer-review of any dozen punks would surely conclude that this trio sucks hard, even if the band themselves were a part of the voting panel. Theirs was a cheap and unfriendly version of bad-joke punk, with their inexplicable on-stage existence the apparent punchline of the joke. The trio relied on language crude enough to guarantee an eighth grade detention and the singer/guitarist’s yacht captain hat to carry them through. Their sole strength is as a context-free sticker in the bathroom of a dive bar – a single quiet chuckle at best – and I witnessed one later that weekend, which would have been more than a sufficient understanding of their existence. As musicians, they were terrible, but that’s hardly a dealbreaker for me, as many of my favorite bands actively avoid virtuosity; it was their total lack of inspiration or follow-through that defined their sheer pointlessness as live entertainment. The Al Bundy-esque misogyny, just as often delivered by their female bassist as their male guitarist, had me feeling like I was trapped, Hellraiser puzzle-box style, inside a pair of novelty fuzzy dice. A sixteen-dollar Jack and Coke during their set had the opposite of its intended effect, sobering me up as I double-checked with security that re-entry was not allowed.

Up next were Gob Patrol, not to be confused with Fat Wreck Chords recording artists Goober Patrol. (The presence of Fat loomed large over this show, not only from the close proximity of The Punk Rock Museum and the sounds of the bands on stage but from the various t-shirts, pins and hats spotted in the crowd. 88 Fingers Louie, you remain alive and well in the hearts of your fans.) This group appeared to be the (comparatively) youngest and punkest on the show, brandishing half-and-half dye jobs, fishnets, spikes, smelly combat boots and a cabbie hat worn the way Tim Armstrong did in his Op Ivy days – all in all, the kind of punks Robocop is quick to exterminate. Gob Patrol were clear fan-favorites, rousing up a sputtering circle-pit for most of their set to songs in the key of spiky ’90s pop-punk-adjacent punk. I was picking up notes of Defiance, The Casualties, Moral Crux and even a little Filth, with shout-along choruses such as “I’m fucked up / I don’t give a fuck”, which I typed in my iPhone notes to remember later. The group hyped up their new CD at the merch desk, talked about maybe playing shows in Arizona and Texas someday, and laughed about how they have yet to “make it” as a band, all while two of their scantily-clad goth-cheerleader friends dutifully gyrated on stage. My favorite part was the singer’s constant drinking / regurgitating / spitting his Truly hard seltzer, like Darby Crash had he lived long enough to suffer through the corporate-ambivalent Liquid Death Era of punk. Not even God’s Hate could make those cans look anything less than dainty on stage!

Unlike the updated beverage choices, I was impressed by the fact that this generally older, mostly male, highly white crowd stuck with good old-fashioned cigarettes for their smoke of choice. I didn’t see a single vape, but every fifth guy clutched a Marlboro or a Newport between his crusty fingers, ensuring that I couldn’t wear my shirt again on this little trip without reeking of Backstage Bar & Billiards. It was through this grody haze that Battering Ham took the stage. I guess it’s a pun of sorts, but why? Why would a ham be used for battering? It’s likely I will never know, but this trio delivered a dad-rock form of EpiFat melodic punk, far tighter and better-rehearsed than the preceding acts. They leaned hard into NOFX’s antiquatedly-edgy brand of sarcasm, as well as NOFX’s speed-metal pop-punk riffing, blazing through a set that included a song about George Takei and a mash-up cover of Journey and .38 Special (imagine a Girl Talk remix of The Ataris’s perennial “Boys Of Summer”, if you will), and ended on “Hot For Preacher”, a Van Halen parody about the hilarious topic of child abuse at the hands of Catholic priests. Not to be outdone by Gob Patrol’s on-stage dancers and Stagnetti’s Cock’s horniness, Battering Ham brought out a fairly sophisticated Muppet-style female robot costume for their song “Sex Working Robot”. Assuming you’d like to take some Battering Ham home with you, I have some bad news – their sole Discogs entry is a track on the 2018 CD-r compilation Give Us A Future! entitled “Anarchopharm”. They confirmed that a new CD EP, however, is in the works.

Still with me? One thing that stuck out through all of these bands was how little it seemed to matter to the crowd what was actually happening on stage. The crowd was more arthritic than rambunctious, and seemed just as semi-satisfied by the wasted time of Stagnetti’s Cock as the rowdy pogo-punk of Gob Patrol. It appears they mostly just wanted to stand around in a room, holding a beer and smoking a cigarette indoors in proximity to “punk”, with the actual quality of the performers taking a secondary role. It’s hard not to feel like in 2025, civilization is kind of already over and we’re all just milling around until a metaphorical security crew chases us out of the venue (Earth) entirely, but this pungent sense of defeat permeated Backstage Bar & Billiards, like a prehistoric era where no one ever bothered to invent fire or the wheel and homo sapiens didn’t last long enough to leave a mark in the fossil record.

I was more than ready for The Queers, but show promoters “Big Daddy Carlos & Ava” decided a fourth opener was necessary. That’s where At Odds came in (pictured above), easily the least embarrassing group of the evening (for whatever that’s worth – Sockeye might be the most embarrassing punk band of all time and I’d sell a kidney to see them perform). This trio, as local as the other three, offered no bad jokes, robots or dancers. Rather, they blazed through the serious side of Fat Wreck Chords, something akin to the earnestness of Strung Out, Rise Against and Strike Anywhere. They announced that they loved Bad Religion right before covering a Bad Religion song, and later covered Face To Face’s biggest hit, “Disconnected”, to unanimous approval from the still-hanging-in-there crowd. They thanked their audience for being “great” multiple times – At Odds were the good-guy heroes of the night – and they seemed to mean it, too, thrilled to be playing on a real stage with a real touring band, and with each other. Let the other guys clown around.

And speaking of clowns, it was finally time for The Queers to take the stage. While I hold the music of The Queers near and dear to my heart, from the unparalleled idiot-genius of their first two self-released seven-inch EPs (does anyone have $8,000 I can borrow?) through their Beach Boys-inflected mid-’90s output, I am no fool – I know that bandleader Joe Queer is haplessly misguided as a person at best, and dismally bigoted at worst. I have run out of benefits of the doubt to give to what a friend called “all them idiot goth/punk ‘legends'”, and while I don’t think Joe Queer intentionally inflicts harm on the marginalized and oppressed, I sure as hell wouldn’t want him running for city council. I pondered his strained, sad legacy as I watched a young guy with an incredible ass-length ponytail line-check The Queers’ gear alongside a beefy, straight-faced drum-tech. Luckily for my lower back, I didn’t have to stand around waiting much longer, as Joe Queer appeared on stage and the two techs assumed the positions of bassist and drummer – they were his bandmates! I should’ve known that there would be no Tulu, no Hugh, no B-Face, but rather a couple of random stand-ins ready and willing to tolerate their lower castes so that they might add “The Queers” to their musical resumes. Cant blame them! And lucky for me, these two youngsters nailed it, running through the exact same songs I would’ve wanted to hear from a live Queers set in 1996, delivered in a rapid-fire medley style seamlessly chaining the songs together, the rhythm section’s energy propping up yet another frail-looking, disappointing American named Joe. I was afraid they might lean on more recent material (ie. from this current millennium), but Joe and Co. gave us the good stuff, “I Spent The Rent” into “I Hate Everything” into “You’re Tripping” with the benefit of a youthful rhythm section looking to prove itself worthy of the band’s heritage. I cannot confirm that they didn’t eventually slip into more modern material, however – I left after fifteen minutes or so, as I had plans to meet with the rest of my crew who had gone to see Pitbull instead (which, by all accounts, was a far more soul-sucking affair). Not since the George W. Bush administration had I attended a punk show with an estimated zero number of queer people in the crowd, for a band still calling themselves The Queers no less.

Somehow, through the dense gloom of grief, Arthur Rizk – guitarist, producer and underground metal’s unsung hero of the century – managed to put together a tribute show for his bandmate Brad Raub, whose untimely death earlier this year crushed anyone who had the pleasure of knowing him. Rizk kept it within the family for this gig, stacking the bill with four bands of which he is an active member. It would be a marathon performance for him, no doubt, but Rizk is nothing if not inexhaustibly dedicated to his loved ones, as well as electric guitars blaring out of double Marshall stacks. I’ve known him since he was sixteen (and Brad since he was thirteen!), and while the finality of it all smacked me with a fresh wave of sorrow I naively didn’t see coming, the countless friends, kinfolk and fans that packed the grimy cement-basement walls of Underground Arts over capacity supplied a bittersweet warmth.

Sumerlands were first to take the stage, Brad’s ashes in a black canvas Manowar tote overseeing the event from atop a speaker stack. Sumerlands are probably Rizk’s least popular group, but that wouldn’t be the case if I was in charge of doling out popularity, as their dark, sensual take on late ’80s major-label thrash-metal is truly inspired. With two Relapse albums to their name, vocalist Phil Swanson opened the set with material from the group’s self-titled debut (on which he sang). With the packed crowd starting to warm up, Swanson respectfully passed the mic to current Sumerlands vocalist Brendan Radigan, whose theatrical howl and skulking stage-moves added a glorious jolt of energy to the proceedings. Swanson’s stoic delivery could verge on 2D, whereas Radigan was animated and dynamic, embodying his role of an ominous, mischievous metal cleric. Radigan sang on the group’s sophomore effort, Dreamkiller, and he belted out my personal fave “Twilight Points The Way” with impeccable range, proving that his pipes required no studio trickery (which reminds me – did Chris Jericho ever refute Sebastian Bach’s claims of lip-synching?). If Radigan was humorless, he could be the Steve Perry of modern metal, but his banter about Brad “gooning from Valhalla” was the most entertaining tribute of the evening. Along with Eternal Champion, Brad played bass in this group, his lines replaced by a backing track on stage as Rizk and John “Newjohn” Powers locked into dazzling dual-lead guitar solos for the first of many times that night.

Up next were War Hungry, Rizk’s group of which I had the least familiarity. I’ll be honest, I checked out War Hungry’s 2011 self-titled full-length when it came out and didn’t care for it at all, and it had been just as long since I had given them a second thought. It would seem I have some catching up to do, then, as it took half a brain cell for me to appreciate their meaty mix of Pantera riff-logic and NYHC beatdown breaks. If these are the same songs I heard on that full-length thirteen years ago, I have no idea where I went wrong or how my perception (or the band’s delivery) has changed. Whereas the crowd was respectfully stagnant for Sumerlands, bodies were soaring and flailing in typical revved-up hardcore fashion from the moment War Hungry set it off. It came to an abrupt halt after maybe five songs, however, as one stage-diver was unlucky enough to find a body-less space, landing head-first on the cement. Knocked out cold, the band had to pull the plug mid-song, and while I was not about to push my way through the crowd just to rubberneck someone’s terrible luck, an unexpected half-hour delay took place as an ambulance was called and the diver was stretchered out. With modern capital-H hardcore’s preference for these speedy headfirst dives at obtuse diagonal angles off the sides of the stage, I’m surprised this sort of gnarly situation isn’t more common. I figured that was it for War Hungry’s set, as the spirit of the room sagged considerably while everyone wondered if this guy would regain the ability to move his hands and feet (I heard that he did), but War Hungry picked up where they left off for a few more songs (and almost immediately, the dives resumed).

I get the impression that Rizk is a hired-gun for War Hungry and Cold World, but he’s one of the primary songwriters for the two non-hardcore metal groups that performed, Sumerlands and Eternal Champion. One of the few contemporary metal groups for whom having an “official fan club” makes sense, Eternal Champion ushered forth their fantasy power-metal with full commitment, vocalist Jason Tarpey emerging in a fearsome chain-mail coif (that I believe, as a literal blacksmith, he forged himself). Their galloping, epic metal thrilled the more Dungeons & Dragons-leaning members of the audience, ready to throw up their signs-of-the-hammer in glorious adulation. Seeing as Manowar played their only US show last month in what must’ve been years and most of us missed it, an Eternal Champion show is as close as we’re gonna get to this level of fully-committed, triumphant metal heroism, Rizk’s riffs shifting through motifs redolent of ’90s Metallica, ’80s Judas Priest and all eras of Manowar with the blink of a dragon’s eye. I take my thirteen year-old son to a comic shop specifically for the excellent recommendations given by the young-ish long-haired guy who works there (he finished Urasawa’s Monster series, what should he read next?), and lo and behold, that friendly cashier was right up front for Eternal Champion’s entire set, arms raised in invisible-oranges pose and head thrashing about in pure ecstasy. Next time we stop by, I’m going to casually sprinkle some Helloween song titles into our conversation and see if he bites.

Before Cold World took the stage, I did what any self-respecting Cold World fan would do and hit their merch table! Thirty dollars and one Operation Ivy-parody T-shirt later, I bumped into personal mosh icon Jay Scheller, who I first spotted in front of the stage for War Hungry’s set. He told me he’s been listening to a lot of Roc Marciano and Elucid and urged me to do the same, and we bemoaned the loss of Double Decker Records (the place I first met Brad), having just past the first anniversary of its closing. Even on a regular night, Cold World brings out a crowd filled with old friends, but alongside those who primarily came to honor the memory of Brad Raub in attendance, you couldn’t do a windmill without clocking a friendly acquaintance in the nose. The guy who runs a well-curated bookstore in Fishtown was there (I didn’t know he liked this kind of hardcore – the gold chain he wears should’ve been a clue); a bandmate of mine talked to his pal in Pissgrave who confirmed their third LP is nearing completion; another friend revealed to me that noise impresario DJ Dog Dick and fashion designer Lauren Manoogian (who needs to release a men’s line already!) were high-school best friends. This goofy cross section of benevolent gossip echoed the spirit of Brad, a guy who would always somehow already be friends with the least likely people in the room. The world is a dimmer place without his cheerful, unguarded extroversion, though I felt it in practice that night.

Which brings us to Cold World. An argument can be made that they are the last innovative hardcore band, and while I’d be happy to have that discussion with you offline, there is no squabbling about the dynamic power of the group onstage. After a lengthy delay (c’mon Arthur, three other sets and you can’t find a working guitar cable??) featuring a lot of Supertramp over the PA and the anxious on-stage guitar noodling of WarZone and Underdog classics, Cold World dove in and didn’t look back. Three guitars strong and riding high after an unassailable 27-13 Eagles victory earlier in the evening, the crowd was fully committed to shouting Dan Mills’s words back at him, louder than any microphone could be. As bodies continued to fly, little guys in fitted caps and giant guys with diamond earrings all materialized in a pit that was equal parts frenzied, communal and dangerous – a decent shorthand definition for hardcore itself. Finishing his sweatiest set of the night (even with a fresh shirt for each band – the Sepultura hockey jersey was my favorite), I hope Rizk felt at least some fraction of the love that he has given to all these excellent bands, and his dearly missed friend, back from all of us.