DriveTime Commute
Swinburne University Student Apartment, Hawthorn
24 November 2015
Review by Callum Doig
Photos by Louis the Strange Photography
House shows aren’t exactly uncommon these days. You’ll find them to be just as maniacal as any local show in a small venue that you would use for 21st birthdays and all. But to witness a show in a tiny student apartment for the first time was beyond what I would normally expect for a regular gig. One of my best mates randomly called me up after I finished my shift at work, and told me to come over to his friend’s apartment and go watch a show there. With nothing better to do, I accepted, and witnessed local mathcore act DriveTime Commute perform an extremely intimate and secret gig with the most full-on ‘let’s f*ck shit up’ approach.
Being foreign to DriveTime Commute, I was informed by my friend that they were a lot like Dillinger Escape Plan, which got my attention. The band performed to at least thirty people including myself, and there was more chaos in that small space than a stampede of bulls smashing through fifty walls made of cinderblocks with their horns. While DriveTime wrecked absolute havoc with tracks such Sir Seizure, Sharkitect and Genghis Khan’t, sanity was no longer a reality to distinguish. Vocalist Roscoe Schwarz and guitarist Basil Yu would have the habit of jumping off furniture, crowd surfing and even starting the riot in the pit while playing their instruments under the spell of lunacy. Everyone in the room had not even slightest of hesitation to jump off the kitchen sink and dive on each other.
Being my first house gig as I mentioned before, it was wilder than I originally anticipated for that short twenty-minute period. The madness in that set eventually led to creating a massive hole in the wall, which would later be covered up with a Pizza Hut box and a DriveTime Commute shirt. I mean shit, I’ve been to some heavily reckless local shows in the past, even especially massive international band moshpits I’ve been involved in, but none of them compare to this enthusiastically rowdy gig. DriveTime Commute were beyond expectations and almost no other local gig past or present can come close to the insanity I got to experience at that time. Its shows like these that prove how amazing and devoted the Melbournian hardcore and metal scene is.
