Getting to the venue fifteen minutes before the doors opened was no help at all. For the sold-out show with three opening acts, fans of Sorority Noise already wrapped around the block in a line of over 70 people. But this show wasn’t going to be like any of their others. Earlier this year, Sorority Noise announced that following its scheduled tours in the UK and the US, the band would be taking an indefinite hiatus. In other words, there was a good chance that the night of April 6, 2018 would be the last time Sorority Noise would ever perform in Philadelphia.

Before the appearance of the famed emo rock band, there was a marathon opening set of three acts: Cara Cara, Jelani Sei, and Remo Drive. Cara Cara, a local band, started the night off with a series of distortion rock, connecting their songs together in elongated chords so that there were almost no breaks in their stream of sound. Despite this, the group purposefully stopped after their first song to make an announcement that became a running theme of the night: respect and be kind to everyone gathered in this safe place.

Jelani Sei rode the energy of Cara Cara’s set into a powerful rock-influenced guitar sound behind soulful vocals. This genre overlap accentuated the rise and fall in dynamics as the lyrics undulated in their intensity. When the group performed “Message,” a track off of their September 2017 EP, Lvndr Twn, they sent a ripple of communal strength and sadness throughout the church basement. Again, just as Cara Cara had, Jelani Sei reminded the crowd to take care of each other and help those in need beyond the realm of this small room.

Those two acts would have made an impressive concert on their own, but the night was far from over, with performances from Remo Drive and Sorority Noise still to come. When the former came out as the third opening act, they again made a brief announcement reminding the audience to respect the safe place, acknowledging the impending rowdiness that would follow the first chord of their emo rock sound. A surge through the crowd pushed everyone forward so much that those at the front were practically on the stage. And when lead singer Erik Paulson invited a fan onstage to sing with him, members of the now-frenzied audience began crowd-surfing back and forth across the room.

The heightened energy of the room was mirrored by the dramatic increase in temperature of the enclosed downstairs space. A look around at the fans yielded a view of expressions that were a mix of exhaustion, exhilaration, and anticipation. In total, the opening acts took almost two hours to perform. Instead of being an annoyingly long prelude to the main act however, each act gave the night a tinge of hope. For even if Sorority Noise never made any new music, these young and impressive bands would still be around for the foreseeable future.

When the long-awaited band finally emerged, the energy of the room somehow managed to increase once more. As front man Cameron Boucher and the band played through a set of their more popular songs like “A Portrait Of,” “Blonde Hair, Black Lungs,” “Using,” and “No Halo,” fans screamed out for their favorite niche songs, knowing that this might be the last chance to ever hear them live.

For most of the concert, Boucher was barely audible over the crowd’s collective voice, singing along at the top of their lungs to every word of every song. The mosh pit and crowd surfing continued in an unwavering excitement throughout all of the first ten songs. But when the band struck up an unfamiliar chord progression, the crowd took pause, until they recognized the words as the lyrics of Nirvana’s “In Bloom.”

The cover held a special poignancy that night, as the day before was the 24-year anniversary of Cobain’s death. In playing this song, Sorority Noise brought the message of the night full-circle. They’ve always been a band with depressing lyrics, with Boucher opening up about his struggle with mental health. And while the intensity of these words has turned some away from the band’s music, it’s also this same openness that has made them so popular in the emo rock movement. They show a quality of unashamed self-reflection that takes inspiration from bands like Nirvana who first brought that kind of underground music to the mainstream.

Sorority Noise finished off the night with a performance of “No Halo,” in which Boucher, overcome with emotion, jumped into the crowd and let them carry him, as they had already done with so many others. If there weren’t such a heavy element of finality to the performance, this reciprocated support between Boucher and the crowd might have been cheesy. But instead, the audience screamed for a return of the band, who then gave a one-song encore with “Dirty Ickes.”

And then the night ended just as transiently as it had begun. The concert provoked an experience of a mental push-and-pull between excited enjoyment and nervous anticipation of the end. Fans scrambled to the merchandise tables in an effort to have something material to cling to as a memory of the performance. But the night was a reminder that while all bands inevitably come to an end, the music and the meaning behind it live on, creating a community of support and connection decades down the road.