The Great Unwashed @ Public Assembly (Northside, Day 2)

Having spent Thursday night on Staten Island checking out what all the hype is about on Cymbals Eat Guitars my Northside Fest experience started with my own showcase at Public Assembly. 12-bands, two stages, one manically stressed blogger, but amazingly everything went as smooth as humanly possible!

First up were Staten Island's The Great Unwashed.We've talked about them before and every time I do I get comments telling the band to change their name, that there's another Great Unwashed in some country on the other side of the world, that that band is really amazing and has been around for forever, but I have to tell you the Staten Island version of that band is a really rocking three piece themselves. On Thursday night they played on Staten Island and impressed, but Friday night they really poured it all out on the stage ripping through a 30-minute set and barreling into the early crowd forming at Public Assembly. It was loud, aggressive, energetic, basically the best possibly way to start the evening off.

The band has grown a lot recently, tweaking certain sounds in their stage show most notably pushing the vocals further up in the mix then they had been. This is still guitar heavy, but being able to hear what lead singer Sean Kuhl is singing about holds your attention much better then just listening to him shred - which he most certainly does.

I know someone is still probably going to chime in and say it's wrong for them to be named The Great Unwashed, but seriously until you see them live and hear their music it doesn't matter all that much.