Show Review: Balaclava, Epoxy, Holidays In United States, Death Drive at Cinnamon House, NYC.
October 18th, 2025.
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“I’ve been getting into horny fairy books” -Anonymous
October 19th, 2025
Last night in Gigsville Brooklyn we crawled through a side alleyway in the middle of a block into the Cinnamon House backyard. It looked like a whole other apartment used to be there, the open square lot was scattered with bricks and enclosed in a 12 foot wall of cracked stone, rusted rebar, and more red brick. The top of the rubble wall gave way to the open air with trees looming overhead, dangling vines into the pit where Balaclava, Epoxy, Holidays In United States, and Death Drive turned on their amps and turned up the evening. Here’s our account of the cinnamon toast house show:
Death Drive started the night with groovy, vocoded glitchgaze. The usual guitar/drums/bass was paired with trigger samplers, keyboards, and autotune. With all these musical powers they were able to flip between hyper IDM-rock one moment and spacey glitchcore the next. In the quickly darkening evening in this seemingly bombed-out backyard, the headturning sounds fit the space perfectly. The whole band wore business casual white collared button ups with custom insignias, possibly in solidarity for Epoxy’s later set or maybe for some other reason.
Holidays In United States was next, transporting us to some psychological cornfield of midwest emo and math. Hallmark genre features like bright, legato guitar lines and melodic screaming were in high supply. Sometimes it was bouncy with a pop-punk flair. We were convinced that one song was a Blink 182 cover for a whole minute. A sizable group in the front knew the words to their springiest numbers, they shouted along and threw themselves around. The band also wore business casual button ups, and ties.
Epoxy was celebrating the release of their debut album CIVILIANS!. Whereas the previous bands had gotten up in business casual, Epoxy was business professional, suit jackets and all. They were escaping the corporate drudgery to rock out with their 9 to 5 clock-out. This was a treat because we had seen Epoxy’s second ever show over a year ago at Alphaville. It was Feb. 29th, the leap year day. Our favorite song of that night contained a thrashing breakdown with the words “there will be no rapture”. It was a magical moment then, now it’s the song Friendship, track six of their new album. When they played it last night, the mosh pit exploded into a rapturous fury. Turns out, there will be one.
Ever since the great Digging Deep zine covered Balaclava in their April 2024 issue, we’ve been itching to see the shiesty’s in action. Their set was so intensely captivating that all we had time to write in our notes was “manic hypnotic”. With multi-colored ski masks and frenzied songs, they were like the punk rock power rangers. They were masters of fast, as well as heavy riffs that could fit on a Rage Against The Machine record. At one point one of the Balaclavs crowd surfed, except their feet were somehow straight up in the air. It was the first vertical crowd surf we had ever seen.
This show was jam packed, people were climbing the sides of the wall to get a view and see over heads. We saw tons of familiar faces, and met a few new ones. Members of at least ten other bands that weren’t performing on the bill were in attendance. After the bands a cake with candles suddenly appeared and the backyard sang happy birthday to someone. Shouts out to Cinnamon House for hosting and curating such a killer event. Congratulations again to Epoxy on their debut album CIVILIANS!, if you missed the gig you can connect with Balaclava, Epoxy, Holidays In United States, and Death Drive below. See you around, Rrrat Pack.
| Keywords: | New York City | Balaclava | Epoxy | Holidays In United States | Death Drive |
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