It’s no secret: Glassjaw is my favorite band. I bought their first full-length album Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Silence at the campus bookstore when I was a freshman in college and it completely changed my view of music. It was my first hardcore album, and to this day, I never found any band that quite matched the intensity and experimental nature that Glassjaw embodies.

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I very rarely trek out of my comfort zone to hit a show, but since Boston was the closest tour date that Glassjaw was slated to play, I knew that I had to step up. Paradise Lounge is an interesting venue – it’s wider than it is long, and it has a balcony that can make for convenient shooting, especially when a telephoto lens is involved.

Glassjaw focused on playing quite a bit of songs from their second album Worship and Tribute, including “Pink Roses”, “Radio Cambodia”, “The Gilette Calvacade Of Sports”, and “Two Tabs of Mescaline”, all of which the audience sang their hearts along with, including filling in the more screamy vocal parts that Daryl tended to skip. Glassjaw has been busy releasing albums this year, and played every song from their January release “Our Color Green”, the lyrics of which the audience has already memorized. Notoriously known for omitting songs from their first album, the surprise of the evening was when they ended the set with “Siberian Kiss”. The crowd was so enthused by this move that one bold fan jumped up on stage to scream out the first line with singer Daryl Palumbo, before getting pulled off-stage by security. Other audience members took this as an opportunity to go nuts crowd-surfing and still others just pumped their hands in the air and sang along.

They return to the stage, encoring with songs from their latest album (which isn’t for sale; rather it is handed out at the end of the show as you are exiting the venue) Coloring Book. It’s a pretty bold move for a band to play mostly unknown songs as their encore, but Glassjaw knows that their fiercely loyal fans had been starving for new material since Worship And Tribute‘s 2002 release and had all but given up that they would even tour again. Coloring Book is decidedly more mellow than fans are likely used to, but it still falls into the experimental nature that embodies the band’s mission. There is no screaming on this latest release, rather they play with a grungy, beat-driven layering of sounds and textures that gets jazzy at times, not unlike Worship and Tribute‘s sound. The progression of the band is amazing, and I can’t wait to hear what comes next.

Infectious track: “Gold” – I still have it in my head 2 days after the show and it’s been on constant repeat on my iPod.