BALTIMORE CITY Bowl Crew

BALTIMORE CITY Bowl Crew

You don’t like us, and we don’t like you

Mandy Brownholtz

You know that old expression “If March comes in like a lion, it will go out like a lamb"?

Far be it from me to argue with the Farmer’s Almanac, but the final week of March was anything but docile here in Baltimore City.

March 26 saw the tragic collapse of the historic Francis Scott Key Bridge, almost 47 years to the day after it opened on March 23, 1977. This has massive implications on all our lives—the Key Bridge was a main thoroughfare that spanned the lower Patapsco River to connect the outer Dundalk area with the rest of the city. Baltimoreans found themselves in a haze, fielding well-meaning texts from outsiders who saw this story at the top of The New York Times.

And then, on a lighter note, March 28 was Opening Day at Camden Yards, in many ways a city holiday. It was sandwiched between these events that I met up with local hardcore five-piece End It at the AMF Lanes bowling alley in Dundalk, a working-class suburb in Baltimore County. It would be a little cruel to rag on Dundalk given the hard week it had had, but to put it succinctly, Dundalk is the home of the local sewage treatment plant.

End It emerged in 2017, releasing a self-titled EP on Flatspot Records with a slightly different lineup, as drummer Chris Gonzalez tells me. He joined the band in 2018; they began touring despite having only a handful of songs. They continued to build and to write, but just as everything was starting to pick up, the whole world shut down in 2020 because of...well...you know, and the band found all their hard work at a standstill.

But they didn’t give up. They put out the Unpleasant Living EP (also on Flatspot) in 2022 and began playing shows again. “It was almost like we were making up for lost time,” Chris says. “We were just playing so much.”

Which is where I found them. The band’s present incarnation includes Gonzalez on drums, vocalist Akil Godsey, Ray Lee on lead guitar, Pat Martin on bass, and Johnny McMillion on rhythm guitar. Their star is beginning to rise, as they’re hard at work in the studio recording their first full-length record. Part of me thinks the timing was all kismet, that the pandemic saw the renaissance for and attention given to Baltimore hardcore that Turnstile’s 2021 record GLOW ON would bring, and just wanted them to be patient.

I grew interested in this band seeing them at the Flatspot Records x The Hundreds (a streetwear brand) pop-up at the Metro Gallery in the Station North neighborhood of Baltimore, which was apt, given that the venue is co-owned by Martin. The band is anchored by frontman Godsey, who is an individual with a lot of PRESENCE, whether it’s his charismatic stage performance or his humorous monologues on Instagram reels. On stage, he almost has the affectation of a preacher, belting out a cappella songs like a gospel singer before the sound explodes into ferocious hardcore.

The synchronicity of meeting the guys between these two major events felt apropos, not only for a Baltimore story but for one about this band specifically. We found ourselves in a liminal space between light and dark, not unlike the band’s music and ethos. As far as the music, it has that certain grittiness that Gonzalez references as being a trademark of the Baltimore hardcore sound:

“All the bands that have come out of Baltimore, even though we don’t all sound the same, every time I hear one of those bands, I’m like, okay, that makes sense, they come from Baltimore.... The sound, to me, [has] a little bit of groove that makes you move even though it’s fast punk shit. There are still parts that make you bounce around and everything, and I think that’s a big factor in our sound."

To sum it up, he says that End It write “10 songs in one song,” many of which hover around a minute long. He says they “squeeze everything in and make it really fast, and then Akil’s vocals separate us. He’s got a unique voice—he’s able to be really aggressive with it, but he’s also able to sing, you know, really high, and that’s from him singing in church and all that stuff when he was growing up. ”

Between frames, I asked them what the name End It means, and they laughed and said, “Kill yourself.” (Perhaps realizing this was a little morbid, they clarified that it’s also the name of a record by the Long Island band Neglect.) “I personally love the divide that’s happening within society and have chosen to embrace the chaos,” Akil says on one of his recent reels. “Who will you call when the ones you were supposed to call upon have turned their back on you?” He then grins ominously, his face tattoo curling around his eye, and admonishes, “Get a gun!”

They have a keen way of articulating the way life feels right now, wherein everything kind of sucks, we’re all broke, and the planet is burning down, but at least there’s still community and joy in music, hardcore music specifically.

Despite any existential doldrums, Chris suggested we go duckpin bowling. Not such an anomaly, since duckpin bowling is believed to have originated in Baltimore around 1900, along with Old Bay spice, the first ice cream factory in the U.S., and the first handheld drill. I figured duckpin bowling was safer than a drill fight.

For the uninitiated, duckpin bowling involves a four-pound ball with no finger holes, roughly the size of a grapefruit, with shorter, wider pins. Though a turn includes three rolls (tenpin bowling offers two), scores are much lower. In fact, there has never been a perfect 300 game in duckpin bowling. The closest anyone has ever gotten was Connecticut player Pete Signore Jr., who scored a 279 in 1992.

For what it’s worth, I never even broke 50. But I care so deeply about reporting this story to you, dear readers, that I endured this athletic humiliation and persisted! I arrived at the bowling alley with my pal Dana in tow for moral support (she counts the band as old friends and said she also sucked at bowling, which was a lie. “Beginner’s luck!” she would laugh over another spare), and the Opening Day vibes were immaculate, the lane full of Dundalkians decked out in their best O’s gear.

Over pitchers of beer, the game’s difficulty quickly became apparent. Chris insisted that Akil was “the best bowler in the band,” which was obvious in his stylish, practiced form, but even he struggled to accurately roll these tiny lightweight balls down the lane in a straight shot. Pat was only slightly better than me, which is to say, misery loves company! Johnny seemed to lose interest rather quickly, his game taken over by pinch hitter Spencer Scott, friend of the band and tattoo artist at semi-local shop Tattoo Paradise. Chris and Ray were clearly the band MVPs, hurling their balls with the strength and acumen of Felix Bautista.

The whole thing was Chris’ idea, which makes me wonder if he was just trying to hustle all of us. Eventually, with his second-place finish r_ secure, he began to give himself handicaps—he rolled his ball from his seat; he placed his ball in an empty beer pitcher, rolling it by the handle of the pitcher and getting what I think must have been his only gutter ball of the game. I, on the other I hand, had several.

This sort of articulates the whole point, doesn’t it? In the end, life can be a little like a game of duckpin bowling. It’s hard, but you don’t have to take it that seriously. Things like sucking at duckpin bowling, bridges falling down, or rainy weather at the baseball ■ game are largely out of our control.

Perhaps Akil put it best, in another one of his Instagram monologues:

“Don’t ever forget that hardcore is a genre of music, and with the internet and the way we’ve let people in, it will be a commodity. It will be capitalized upon. Here’s what ■ ' you do: Don’t you forget the stmggle. Don’t you forget the streets. And continue to be there in support of the people less fortunate than you. And that’s literally all you can do. Go to the gig, buy the merch, fuck kids up in the pit. It’s music, dawg, it’s music, and it will be sold, much like sell[_, ing drugs.... Get your money while you can get it and then fuck off. I’m still gonna be well into my 40s and 50s, checking kids at the fucking door and X-ing kids up and shit, cuz I’m a dumbass and I ain’t goin’ nowhere. So how about you don’t go nowhere, and then we can be nowhere together? Don’t worry about the rest of the world, worry about yourself.”

If only I could have remembered this advice after throwing another gutter ball.