Easton Connell

RampArt 08/29/2026

Against All Odds, the all-day all-ages punk festival organized by Burnstitch Artist Collective, was more than just a bunch of bands playing. It was a full-on community event! Artists and craftspersons selling their creations, nonprofits tabling to share info and resources, Humboldt Roller Derby slinging beers, local food trucks keeping people fed, a whole slice of the Humboldt community coming together. It was so cool seeing so many kids out having a great time. Plenty of Humboldt hijinks in the air – capoeira moves kicking off mosh pits, piggyback rides through the crowd, people skating, perched on ramps, great energy and a great vibe. Everyone I talked to was so grateful for and conscious of how special it was and is really hoping it comes back next year. If you want to make that a reality, volunteer with Burnstitch! Run sound, put up fliers, run the door, there’s no shortage of ways to contribute.

I’ve gone to a couple shows where Executive Order has opened and I’ve managed to arrive exactly Executive-Order’s-set minutes late every time. I was late to the festival as well, but so was Executive Order. I finally got to see them! Something about their music felt vaguely circusy – a drunken lilt to the percussion, a seasick spin to the guitar and bass chasing each other through their riffs, the chaotic crooning and sudden shrieks traded back and forth by their two vocalists. Maybe the feet kicking dancing of their female singer brought the circus to mind. Either way – grateful to have finally seen them!

Every time I see Brain Dead Rejects they just get better. The second stage was set up next to the bowl and it was rad seeing their performance punctuated by a skater appearing from outside of view, spinning and disappearing, or landing gracefully on the platform surrounding the bowl. Their drummer went so hard he literally hit a cymbal off its stand. They have a couple shows coming up in the near future. If you haven’t seen them yet, get on it!

I enjoy the contrast between the two halves of Radical Ape‘s set – the first with guitar and drums, the second with the musicians swapping places and swapping the guitar for a bass. There’s an escalation that happens during the shift between the guitar & drum songs with their anarchic hiss and spitfire, and the bass & drum songs with their aggressive groove. The low end in the latter cuts through the distortion in a way that hits the body, not just the head. They classically ended their set with the spectacle of All Apes On Stage. Apes together, strong. For a taste, check out their newly released debut album Gorilla Warfare.

Reeking Slug from Reno was sludgy, groovy, and one of my favorite bands of the night. They perfectly rode the line between lulling you into somnambulistic headbanging and psyching you up to slam into your neighbor. It’s refreshing to hear doom with as much punk in its DNA as metal.

Gritty, catchy, with all the radical rancor and reckless abandon of punks on tour. Buffed tossed a flag into the crowd and offered a prize to whoever held the biggest pieces at the end of their set. A knot of folks quickly latched onto the flag and set about shredding it with the same tenacity and fury Buffed brought to the stage. And those folks brought it to the stage too – dragging each other through the pit, across the stage, halfway up a skate ramp, lurching through the crowd in a ten-way tug-of-war before giving up their spoils and worshipping at the altar of a drum stand instead.

I have to admit when I saw a band named Ratfuck on the bill I expected something with more crust and vitriol than talent. I was blown away. Too belligerent to be called psych rock. Too complex to be dismissed as punk. Almost doomy in some places. Ratfuck’s songs swing as much as they seethe. Within a single song the singer would switch seamlessly between aching howls and haunting clean vocals. In a word, Ratfuck were GREAT.

Canaille took the night downward into labyrinthine music that I would only call crust if you remember that the same word is used to describe the deep layer of rock separating us from the molten heart of our planet, the crust whose buckling and grinding casts seismic ripples, often to catastrophic effect. They’re on the death and doom end of the metal spectrum, but without the navelgazing or stoned & zoned disengagement that sometimes accompanies the genre. Canaille’s set felt very much plugged into the world around us even while rejecting it, a nihilism pointed outwards rather than at the self. This is entirely speculation based on vibes as I couldn’t parse lyrics. Bombastic riffs. Rich textures beyond what you’d expect from a three-piece. Barked vocals. Fucking brilliant.

Scam Likely feels like an all too apt name in the age of ai and the ever increasing prevalence of schemers as our paychecks stretch thinner and thinner for those of us lucky enough to still get em. My friend saw the trombone and thought maybe they’d be a ska band, but I saw the effects pedals connected to the mic and thought it might be more of a drone and I was not disappointed. Post-hardcore with brooding vocals, funky bass, rich guitar, all anchored by precise percussion. Well worth a listen.

Kickass hardcore punk from the Philippines by way of the Bay. Blood Compact were the most vocally political band of the night, playing songs informed by their personal and familial experiences as Filipino immigrants. They played samples between songs that I wish I knew more about. A woman shouting “we’re not a poor country, we’re a plundered country” stands out in my memory. I particularly enjoyed their song speaking to the experience of not learning your mother tongue as the child of immigrants. It hit home as a third generation Colombian who had to learn Spanish in school, as a second generation Finn teaching myself Finnish and connecting with my roots and myself in ways that I hadn’t before. Tonight marked their first anniversary as a band and I’m grateful they came up north to celebrate it with us.

Savage, caustic, punishingly heavy, as grueling as they are groovy. Braintooth absolutely rips. The slippery riff of “Devil’s Backbone” gets stuck in my head all the time. They may have been the only band that the crowd demanded an encore from. They obliged with a blistering rendition of Agent Orange’s “Bloodstains” loud enough to drown out an entire skate park of people screaming along.

I’d like to give Braintooth a shoutout for being the band that kicked off my re-entry to taking photos at shows. I brought my camera with me when I saw them at Savage Henry in April (read and see more here) and it reminded me how much I love photographing live music. It made me realize I should bring my camera with me every time I go to a show, and inspired me to actually do it.

ARPH capped off the night with one of the most dynamic performances I’ve seen at RampArt. Talking to the guitarist after, he was a little worried seeing the energy expended in the pit earlier that the crowd would head home or be out of gas before ARPH came on, but they just kept going and going and going. If anything, the crowd was more amped up during ARPH’s set than they had been all day. Oh, the endless energy and bottomless zeal of youth. ARPH were as heavy and abrasive as you could hope for from a metallic hardcore band, but more than anything else they were FUN. It was clear that the band and the crowd were all having a blast.