The Breckening Report: La Panaderia Chichen - Itza April 13th
- Brian Breckenridge
- May 7, 2015
- 4 min read

Holy shit, somebody call the editor, I'M IN DALLAS!! (more specifically, Lower Greenville)
What the hell made me come out here? Was it the super accessible parking? The excellent driving conditions? The down-to-earth clientele of the local barz & grillz? Not exactly.
Last I checked, this 'zine was called "817Watts", not "214WHAAAT?". Now, what was so damn important to make driving through Grand Prairie's rancid I-30 sulfur wall worth it?
DIY PUNK, HARDCORE, & METAL!!!...AND MEXICAN FOOD!!!
Date: Monday, April 13th, 2015
Venue: La Panaderia Chichen - Itza
Bands: Wildspeaker, Clear Acid, Flesh Born, Sleep Sweet, Loma Prieta
Some may turn their nose up at seeing a show at a Mexican restaurant/bakery, especially one with no bar, expensive sound system, or pre-established history of skinheads ruining everyone's good time. But local music collective, School's Out, are too punk to care what and where you think a proper show should be and do it solely for the love of the music. Oh yeah, and keepin' it all things posi. Power violence, grind, doom, skramz (look it up) - all the extreme genres were well represented at La Panaderia Chichen - Itza, a family-owned bakery off Greenville Ave.
Having been to plenty of DIY shows before at various houses and garages, I wasn't holding this one to their advertised start time of 8pm, but HOLY CRAP, the show started promptly at 8:05pm. Now that's punxuality! (<< coined) In a lightless room, aided by the ambiance of a lamp lit background, the stage was set for the leadoff band, the doom/crust outfit of Wildspeaker. Their songs balance themselves out with sludgy opening riffs, lulling you into a foreboding trance, then quickly backhand you with a blistering black metal-paced barrage of hardcore sound. Natalie Trejo's banshee-like vocals could give any church- burning Scandinavian metalhead the chills. Wildspeaker brought a lot of energy to the start of the show, which is no easy task for a band playing around with doom chords. Don't take this band lightly just because they're named after a Magic: The Gathering character.
Clear Acid was next and, by the end of their set, I wish I had brought some with me so I could visit the higher dimension this music is made for. (6th, maybe 7th) At a loss for words, I now resort to their Bandcamp page for adjectives. While "lost", "drugs", and "bad" could be pretty accurate, let's go with "drone", "punk", and "psych" instead. And indeed they were. As cheap as using the word "experimental" is to descibe a band, sometimes it's just too damn accurate. But I believe Clear Acid has given birth to a new genre of indescribable music. Let's call it "post-experimental". Go ahead. Look this band up, or see 'em live, then try to explain what you hear to someone else. Then get back to me with what you said so I can add that in to the rest of this paragraph.
Flesh Born is a band that plays so fast that one smoke break can mean missing half their set. Thus is the tragedy of a skramz band - powerful, emotionally intense songs that pass by in the blink of a teary, wistful eye. I've never heard a genre of music that evokes both rage and sadness like that good ole violent 90s screamo sound. In my opinion, it's damn near the perfect form of music. It never relents and neither did Flesh Born. Towards the end of their set, the cops walked in to say "Hi" or something. Never have I seen a crowd of people this size not give so much of a fuck that the cops were sniffing around their good time music show. Apparently an apartment complex nearby was complaining about the sound...of one band...in a Mexican bakery...on Greenville Avenue in Dallas. Gee, I wonder was these concerned citizens do during St. Patrick's Day?
I'm guessing the best way to describe what I saw next is that a "band" "played" "music". A band by the name of Sleep Sweet, or Sweep Sleet? Wait, no, the first one. Or was it Skeet Street? Anyways, there was a guy on a laptop and a keyboard pressing buttons while two guys tried to swallow and gurgle into microphones, while moshing against each other. (Engage protective force fields. Trajectories unstable) This is technically a band, right? What I hear is closely related to, yet a bastardized impression of, industrial-grind-metal. Those three genres may sound like a good mix to some extreme music fans but the end result is usually something that sounds like a daemon raping the Lawnmower Man. By this time, I kind of wanted the cops to show back up.
Now for the reason this show was a show: Loma Prieta. On their way to the east coast to play with Pianos Become the Teeth, they booked some shows along the way. Somewhat placed into the skramz department, Loma Prieta also plays with a discordant hardcore sound which pumps the breaks on the full blown power violence tempo that bubbles beneath. This explains why they are on Deathwish Records, the label ran by Converge frontman, Jacob Bannon. Intense and loud, the lamp-lit set up from the beginning of the night fit the atmosphere perfectly. At this point, I'm realizing why I love these types of shows and hate that I've missed so many more. During the whole night, about 95% of the everyone in attendance intently watched every band all the way through. It was very refreshing to be at a well organized DIY show. They can be a hell of a lot of fun, and without the distractions tradition venues bring they're usually over well before midnight.
**BONUS FOOD REVIEW**
I wasn't going to come to a punk show at a Mexican bakery and NOT eat. Plus I needed something to balance out my giant can of Tecate.
While some poor ass punks got some basic street tacos, I treated myself to the al pastor torta, or "pastorta" (<< also coined). Excellent spices, a great mix of veggies, a noticeable bean spread, and a generous portion of pork ran circle pits in my mouth and the incredible mix of flavors moshed my tongue into a delectable submission. Three different sauce choices ran a Wall-of-Death of heat down my throat, one being hotter than the next.
Stayed tune for more Diners, Drive-Ins, and DIY Punk.
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