The sun had finally fucked off. After days of searing heat that made your eyeballs feel like boiled eggs, the sky cooled just enough for the shadows to come alive again. I stumbled into Heile Welt—that strange, sacred den of noise and righteous chaos—already on edge. Something was brewing in the air, thicker than sweat, louder than thought.
New Jersey’s finest degenerates, School Drugs, were in town, and the place was packed like a powder keg at a Fourth of July bonfire. A crowd of itchy, twitchy fanatics clung to the edge of madness, and we were all praying for ignition. We didn’t have to wait long.
Frontman Josh Jurk looked like a man with a mission and a blood debt. A proper hardcore priest with spitfire sermons and a leather-lunged scream, he didn’t waste time with pleasantries. This was old school hardcore—fast, loud, angry, and delivered with a cheeky bastard’s grin. You could feel it in your spine. This wasn’t nostalgia; it was warfare. Controlled demolition through volume and sweat.
Jurk talked about his roots somewhere between blasts—Negative Approach, Bad Brains, Poison Idea—the holy trinity of punch-in-the-face rock ‘n’ roll. And boy, you could hear it. Every riff was a shotgun blast of reverence and rebellion. No frills, no filler. Just truth, bile, and tempo.
I’ve seen a lot of shows in Heile Welt—hell, I may have bled in every corner of that bar—but this one took the goddamn cake and smashed it in my face. It was sonic euphoria. People were climbing the walls, punching the air, and howling like junkyard dogs at the moon. The band fed off it. The place turned into a feedback-drenched feedback loop of chaos and joy.
And when they ended… nobody moved. Not a soul. The band tried to slink off to the bar like war heroes in need of a drink, but the crowd howled them back. We were addicted. Two more songs. No choice. Total surrender.
When it was finally over, it felt like waking from a glorious, amphetamine-fueled fever dream. The kind of night that peels the years off your bones and reminds you why punk matters—why it still matters.
Godspeed, School Drugs. May the rest of your tour be loud, wild, and just barely legal. Come back soon. Or never leave 
