Boston may have been clear and sunny Sunday afternoon, but things got stormy at night as Diarrhea Planet finished up a three-night residency at the Great Scott in Allston.
Diarrhea Planet was in the area as part of its 21-stop tour. Two of the three nights sold out in advance and approximately 50 people gathered Sunday night to hear the group end its extended stay in Boston with a rowdy bang.
Members of Downtown Boys, a Providence-based punk group of five and an opening act, got the crowd’s heads bobbing with their music, which they describe as a “bilingual political dance sax punk party.” Their 30-minute set lived up to the Bandcamp bio, as lead singer Victoria Ruiz discussed the police and racial tension in political monologues between each song.
Ruiz urged the crowd to embrace the music and concentrate on what made them angry so they could truly rock with the Boys.
“Our absolute biggest fear is that you might not feel anything while we are within these four walls together,” Ruiz told the crowd in between songs.
The crowd thickened as the set continued. Most attendees started fishing earplugs out of their bags and pockets because they had noticed that the night’s loudest party had begun.
Ruiz and guitarist Joey DeFrancesco screamed the band through their set, which included lyrics in both English and Spanish on popular tracks like “Wave of History” and “Future Police.”
Along with Downtown Boys, Music Band went on stage to warm the crowd up for Diarrhea Planet’s performance.
“So Downtown Boys got you guys all doped up, huh?” Harry Kagan, Music Band’s lead singer, asked the buzzing crowd as he took the stage.
In 30 minutes, Music Band let the crowd flow to a distinctly more rhythmic rock that gave way to a collective warming up of mosh pit moves.
Kagan led the band into its set with raspy, Southern rock vocals that woke the entire crowd up to dance its way through songs from the band’s May 2014 release, “Can I Live.”
With six members and lots of hair, Diarrhea Planet overwhelmed the already restless crowd when it finally took the stage.
The group’s entrance was so exciting that a nearby couple stopped arguing about which one of them forgot the earplugs in an Uber and joined the beginnings of what would become a full-venue mosh pit.
“Hashtag school night, am I right?” singer and guitarist Jordan Smith asked the crowd. “Thanks for coming out to triple trouble at the Great Scott!”
The crowd’s energy hit a fever pitch as the band plowed through its set. Smith stepped in front of the microphones and towered over the crowd with his elastic facial expressions as he shredded through songs from the group’s past two albums.
Members of Diarrhea Planet made their way through approximately a dozen of their songs as a mosh pit consumed much of the entire area in front of the stage. Crowd favorites from the set list were tracks from their most recent album “I’m Rich Beyond Your Wildest Dreams,” including “Lite Dream” and “White Girls (Student of the Blues) Pt. 1.”
Diarrhea Planet eventually finished its hourlong set, but not before remarking on how much the members had enjoyed their time in Boston.
“Thanks for having us. This is really our home away from home,” guitarist Evan Bird said. “You know when you stay at your friend’s house for three days and your s— is everywhere and you have totally overstayed your welcome? We don’t want to do that. Thanks for coming out.”
The group members said their goodbyes to the crowd, but weren’t gone for long. Kagan returned and joined the members of Diarrhea Planet onstage for a cover of AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” with a performance that left the crowd buzzing and exhausted.
The dense crowd then filed out of the Great Scott after having flattened Pabst Blue Ribbon cans on the floor as far as the eye could see and given Diarrhea Planet its manic energy all night long.
