Since By Man’s last show

It was like being inside a washing machine, Bay View Post, on Saturday night. People in the crowded all-ages show were swirling around the moshpit, rubbing against each other, surfing above the crowd, pogoing up and down the audience, music pounding down on the crowd in waves — first from Seven Days from Samsara, then Call Me Lightning, then Since By Man. (I missed Decibully and Kill the Slavemaster, the first two bands on the lineup.) It was hot, it was sweaty, it was loud (hey, it was a hardcore show, what do you expect), but it was a good time, overall.

You wouldn’t think that nostalgia and hardcore go well together, but the bands of the night’s lineup were all musicians, from the time that Since By Man played their first show in 1999. And they all talked about how Milwaukee’s scene wasn’t about which band was passing through — but whose friends were playing at basements that weekend, and how playing for people who cared made their music relevant.

The energy the audience had — expressed by the way the moshpit was a whirling mass of men and women, jerking arms, bodies stretching out onto hands that willingly carried them above crowd, or people hurling themselves into the crowd — made for an awesome farewell to Since By Man.

Lather, rinse, repeat.