Guardian Angels:
11APPARITION5’s first show at the Undercroft
words by Jack Gross,
photographs by Audrey Wilson,
interviews by Nykera Blount,
edited by Jack Gross
8 August 2026
The outpour of support towards 11APPARITION5 has been so, so heartwarming. You guys make Baltimore a beautiful place. This event raised ~$800 for the Immigration Outreach Service Center. This article isn't gonna have a typical interview with the organizer, because this is my first go-round booking a show! I'm so incredibly grateful to every band who lended their talents to raising money for such a beautiful cause. Immigration rights and ensuring the preservation of immigrants' humanity regardless of documentation is a cause near and dear to my heart. In all this, I want everyone to know that you have strength in numbers, and you can make an impact in your community. Organizing extends not just to music, but political efforts, and in raising funds to support the causes you care about. To me, this show wasn't just about the music, but making an imprint on a world that feels further and further out of the control of the people. With that said, I wanna give special thanks to Audrey, who took the photos for this installment, Nykera, who took the time to write questions to interview a few of the bands, and to Kai. He was easily the biggest help in not just organizing, but knowing that what I had to say and wanted to do with my community was not just important, but necessary. Thank you all so much. With the addition of the wonderful, wonderful Brooke to our staff, 11APPARITION5 is gonna be breaking into organizing a lot more shows, and getting out much better flyers (her flyers are crazy).
Right now, we've got the following upcoming:
August 6, 2026: Sextool, Chanp, 9AMYGDALAE, Red Sunflower Band, and Ed Sheeraaam @ the Moose House (2720 Sisson St.), doors @ 6, music @ 7. Tickets are $5!
August 19, 2026: Madeleine Usher, Sextool, Fight Fight Harm, Blame Point 2, and Ed Sheeraaam @ the Kitchen (2121 N. Charles St.), doors @ 6, music @ 7. This issue's gonna be a joint release with Eight Angels Zine, and tickets are $5!
But, yes. I am eternally grateful for you all, and everyone who's ever involved themselves with this magazine. Stay safe out there, and I hope you enjoy this issue; I'm experimenting with shorter, more easily digestible bursts, so that I can cover more ground. If you'd like to contribute to 11APPARITION5 in any way, please feel free to inquire at 11apparition5@gmail.com.
Taking the stage with clear-cut ferocity, Gunt helped ease any anxieties I’d had about this music shit. I remember that night as clear as day… the lights in the Undercroft shone like never before. Running my first show, I’d wanted to soak myself in the ooze of a local concert while keeping myself damn sure I was on my A-game— not only were there notes to be taken, but there was a show to be held down like clamps. The band sounded like a transposed killstreak announcer, as their lead vocalist zipped across the cellar floor in certain sections. Blast beats screeched, and kicked up against the crowd. Surprisingly, the musicians themselves weren’t too standoffish; throughout, they beckoned the audience to come on and dance. In my wafts through the crowd, I almost got caught up in one of those kerfuffles, swung under the might of some lanky guy looking to exhume whatever he had going on. Funnily enough, the band’s highlight of the night was a letter addressed rather hatefully to corporate minutiae. A crowd of mostly teenagers danced, jived and whipped freely to its cascading depths, as the drummer shot beats like slot machines into the crowd. With the end of Gunt, I could breathe a little, but, in all honesty, the night was just getting started.
Their fans hyperactive as ever, Pink Cars illuminated the room with light the size of a cannon. I didn’t even have the second to breathe when Pink Cars announced their arrival. Dashing from the inside and out, I’d gotten to know something interesting: we might reach capacity. Coming into the cellar, their music sprawled. Two guitars, and two vocalists, made most songs intimately self-aware. Their fans embraced that intimacy with singing, dancing, and every bit of themselves they could give. Singing steadily, Pink Cars yearned and waxed poetic in the language only a teenager with the world ahead of them could muster; tracks like “Perfume” inched closer and closer towards an imminent devastation. Fascinatingly, the track with the most give was a cover— Radiohead’s “Creep” set the crowd ablaze (déjà vu, anyone?). A boisterous screed of teenage boys to the room’s left-side, including me, belted the lyrics like they’d been bestowed upon us by a higher power. However, the Brits couldn’t stake a claim in all of it: Pink Cars infused the track with their own whispery, at times grungy delivery. Towards its end, my mind broke the set up into a few images. The band’s vocalists, lying on the floor of the stage strumming their guitars, eyes interlocked, singing as though the room was empty. One of the vocalists, rocking a ‘80’s style mullet made for a pop-star, singing pained confessions in the eyes of intermittent white flashes from their left and right. Lost in the mist of the center, Pink Cars vanished as quickly as they’d arrived, apparitions in the night doomed to fizzle out.
File Select oozed into the wooden stage like the panaque of South America, dragging into the crowd like a scythe and really ripping them a new one. The band’s drummer doubled on vocals, a feat I can’t help but admire. I watched from a chair in the back, positioned right up against a black, circle-shaped fan; pretty damn hot in there. The music itself was catchy, hard-hitting, and doused in ‘90’s post-hardcore and alternative rock sensibilities; abrasive, but you couldn’t help nodding your head to the rhythms, which had a real punchiness to them. Ahead of me, that abrasiveness was space for the crowd to thrash back and forth, imbuing themselves in the sound. There was a mounting tension, taking the spacier elements of File Select and bridging them to something more. Crackling, disparate and atmospheric, replaced by an even slower crawl. The band’s second vocalist, positioned further to the front, crooned on with a point-black lyricism. Amidst the drifting audience, File Select raged in the spaces between. In the final bits, they’d sounded more akin to a revving up car, building to something I couldn’t put my finger on. With a call to support immigrants, their set banged out.
Nykera B: Introduce yourselves, where you’re from, and what instrument you play in the band– I’d love to learn about how and when the band came together.
File Select:
Sal: I’m Sal, I play guitar and sing, Jane plays drums and sings, Joe plays bass. Jane and Joe are from Baltimore and I’m from New England. We’ve all been playing music together in different projects for like 20 odd years. File Select started with Jane and I in 2015 or so, and Joe joined after COVID.
Jane: Yeah this project, like many others, started with Sal and I “just jamming”, and I think the natural heaviness of the sound informed our focus on wanting to be a ‘rock band with rock songs’, as opposed to something else. Adding Joe on bass gave us more room to make the sound even bigger and more heavy, which has been crucial.
Nykera B: When it comes to writing lyrics, what do you guys draw inspiration from?
File Select:
Sal: A lot of my lyrics are inspired by cyberpunk, AI, modern physics and sci-fi stuff, often crossed with personal/emotional stuff I’m trying to work through: relationships, memory, self-destructive behaviors, work, conformity.
Jane: I think our shared appreciation for science fiction and other nerdy things is a pretty big part of the band, so a lot of my writing is thematically consistent with Sal’s (I think a lot about DOOM, and also Terminator 3). I find it a good backdrop for more “poetic” reflections about “the state of things”, and other shit I should probably keep to myself. A lot of criticism, basically.
Nykera B: Is there anything you guys are working on, or anybody you guys wanna shout out before the end of the interview?
File Select: We’re working on finalizing our first “professional” record - been holding it too close to the chest, we’re looking forward to finally sharing it. Wanna thank everyone involved in making the show happen, especially the organizers, volunteers, and everyone who came out and donated. Thank you for having us be a part of it.
Terror bass— the first thing my eyes caught when Humidifier took the stage. Slow-core burgeoning legends, older guys with tarpaulin-guitars, laying a heavy film over the crowd. Fuzz, haze, and the aforementioned terror all came through the amps like a bad dream. Caught in the mix of it, my mind drifted to the last time I’d seen them; that very venue, I was paralyzed by the might of the rolling tides they’d conjured. At first, I was standing right up against one of the band’s guitarists, positioned by one of the photographers, caught in the building sludge. The music was infectious, slow, and heavy; riffs came, floated away, and returned with reinforced clarity. You could taste a few things in the room: spirit, every smile and dancing passerby, and coats of sweat. Moving into the back, by the soundbooth and array of chairs, I watched the band’s audio levels dance with oranges and reds, pounding at the walls and floor of the building. Suffice to say, I wore earplugs. By the end of Humidifier’s set, they’d descended into splintering noise most comparable to salt-shakers. When it came to their reign of terror, I couldn’t have asked for a better ending.
Nykera B: Hi! Who all am I speaking to?
Humidifier:
Rob: I'm Rob, the bassist and original founder of the band. Me and Scott live in Baltimore, while Abe drives down from Bel Air. Humidifier as it currently stands came from a need to form a new lineup. Scott and Abe entered the project around February when we had our first initial practices. Though I had known Scott from 29th St. Tavern years ago, he took an interest in the band and wanted to jam on drums. Abe [Abraham Ragan (of over me., Starveling, ex-Mondrary) messaged me when we needed a guitarist and vocalist, and said he wanted to try out. After only a few rehearsals, I knew we had something truly unique to Baltimore. We played our first show as a newly minted band earlier in May at Simple Underground in DC.
Nykera B: You guys have planned and played a slew of shows across Baltimore with all sorts of bands. What is the band’s approach to playing all sorts of shows, and what is the band’s favorite group to share a bill with?
Humidifier:
Rob: I believe in the power the mixed bill offers us. Because of our heaviness, we can mold to any show from hardcore to straight up rock music. My approach is that we will play any show in which we are a good fit or if there is a mission or community that benefits from the proceeds. This will always be deeply intrinsic to the selection process. We last played the Undercroft with Warmachine and Pew Pew from Boston, and that was easily one of my favorite shows to play. Major shout out to them; they blew our minds. Locally, we have a few shows coming up with the homies File Select, who rock.
Nykera B: Is there anything you guys are working on, or anybody you guys wanna shout out before the end of the interview?
Humidifier: We are recording our debut EP “Silver Chain” this weekend, which should be out in the fall, hopefully September. Beyond that, we have concepts for a music video for our newest song “Paralysis Demon,” which may be shot in an ice rink. Thanks for getting to know us and taking the time. Shout out to the sick bands who played, and everyone who donated to a great cause. Jack and Kai, y'all are the real ones!
The headliner’s set is a fascinating thing; all this built tension’s gotta go somewhere, and the duty of the final band is to relieve those knots like a masseuse. The last time we covered So Near, So Far, that tension short-circuited. Tonight, with the self-proclaimed title of “last band of the night”, they came out like warriors. Interestingly enough, they’d swept everyone inside and out, leaned against the church’s walls or hidden under night’s shade, without even prompting it. Heat from an orange lamp to the stage’s right centered the band’s lead vocalist like he’d descended from a higher plane, and every member of the band flirted with divinity through heavy-handed struts and sonic blasts bridging post-hardcore and the sound of a landslide. Shifting my attention to earlier’s boisterous faction, one man flashed a camcorder at the band’s dual vocalist-guitarist, his eyes twinkling under the stage. Opener “1902” felt, sounded, and drew out like inhibiting a washing machine; the band’s guitarist, with his hops and sways, jumpstarted the track like he’d been playing a chainsaw with strings. Slamming underfoot and calling out, the band’s engagement with the crowd was nothing short of electrifying. In a stand-out moment, the guitarist even reached out to the crowd— his smile, and the smile of his bandmate was infectious. Post-hardcore slurry and vocals, a cross between Title Fight’s Ned Russin and Bart Simpson, beckoned for youth while chastising its faults. Sincerity was hard to ignore. In the end, unfortunately, I must admit something to you, dear reader: my notes, or recollection, don’t really do these guys justice. The bits that slip between are hard to capture; they’re like lightning. The best thing about So Near, So Far isn’t their representation in word, but it’s the inconceivable, temporal feeling, like the music’s been stamped into my mind. Thank you, So Near, and goodnight.
A little while after the show, one of the members of Pink Cars, Kayla Downs, reached out to me with a few questions about not just organizing the show, but how politics and community organizing intertwine; the article's published on her Substack under her magazine, Grass Mag. Check it out! Anywho, I'd like to leave you all with a section of that article:
"That community inspired Jack to create a space where music could make an impact. Friday night was meaningful for the venue itself. The Undercroft is currently looking for volunteers to help keep the magic of live music alive. 'One of the first shows I ever attended at The Undercroft was in February of this year. I saw Ryosuke Kiyasu, this wonderful snare drummer. The experience was incredible, and I think from that moment on I recognized that the venue was something special. Ever since, I’ve been drawn to it for a myriad of reasons and a myriad of shows.' If you’re interested in helping keep that magic alive, attend volunteer training on August 15 at 7 p.m. at The Undercroft. 'If I’ve learned anything, it’s that music isn’t just what you hear, but every bit of labor that goes into facilitating the sound in the first place.' - Jack Gross."
please consider donating to the IOSC, they do tremendous work. hold up your community as best you can.
Links to all bands Instagram accounts:
Link to Google Drive file w/ all related photographs:
