That night, the rain made everything around “Thuồng Luồng Đục Xuồng” feel strangely right.
People walked into the venue with damp shirts, wet shoes, rain-messed hair, and the kind of short silence that follows a run through heavy weather. The room felt thicker than usual: humid, dark, and strangely low, as if the whole space had begun to sink. The show had built itself around Dark Oceanic Mythpunk, with deep seas, ancient creatures, blue light, smoke, and things that have stayed under the surface for too long. The weather became an unofficial opening act.
But the night did not survive on concept alone. The lineup gave the idea weight. Thryv opened the show with forceful metalcore. ROUTE59 pushed the room into a hardcore eruption. Chân Trời softened the pace with melody-heavy alternative rock. Delirio de Cordura closed the night with a long, dark, almost hypnotic industrial noise set.
The order did not follow the usual energy curve. It did not push everything louder and louder until the end. Instead, it heated the room early, cracked it open in the middle, then slowly pulled it downward.
THRYV: A METALCORE STORM BEFORE THE DESCENT
Putting Thryv first felt risky. Metalcore usually needs a crowd that already has some heat, but the band walked on as if they had no interest in waiting for the room to get ready.
From the first riffs, Thryv pushed the energy up quickly. The guitars hit with sharp, tight chugs, while the drums locked the foundation hard enough to give the breakdowns real weight. This did not feel like an opening set that simply checked a box. The band played like they wanted to drag the whole room into the show immediately.
What made Thryv easier to catch was that they didn’t rely on heaviness alone. Beneath the riffs and screams, the band carried a clear melodic layer, matching the way they describe themselves as “angry pop.” The vocals broke into emotional passages instead of staying in one constant growl, giving the set more anchor points for listeners who had just stepped into the room.
For a band still preparing its debut EP, Thryv sounded sharp. They carried the hunger of a young band without sounding undercooked. More importantly, they did the hardest thing an opening act can do: they made the crowd forget they had just come in from the rain.
ROUTE59: THE EXPLOSION IN THE MIDDLE OF THE OCEAN
If Thryv heated the room, ROUTE59 made everything break open.
Most heavy shows save the biggest mosh pit moment for the end. ROUTE59 brought that explosion into the second set, and somehow it worked better than expected. Their hardcore hit directly: heavy guitars, a locked-in rhythm section, and vocals that pushed the tension with raw, honest force. When the riffs dropped and the drums snapped into place, the crowd knew exactly what to do.
The most interesting part of the set came from ROUTE59’s use of backing tracks. They did not use them just to fill space. They used them to create drops, turns, and unexpected impacts. Some beats almost made people dance, and seconds later, a heavier shift opened the pit. The crowd moved between dancing and colliding, between groove and chaos.
That became ROUTE59’s clearest signature of the night. The band did not just throw energy at the crowd and let them figure it out. They shaped the way that energy changed form. At times, the set felt fun. At times, it felt rough. At times, it felt almost playful. But it never lost its hardcore core: heavy, real, and dependent on the people in the room to complete it.
ROUTE59 gave the night one of its most alive moments. Not because they played the loudest, but because they turned the room into something that moved.
CHÂN TRỜI: THE CALM INSIDE THE STORM
After ROUTE59, the room needed space to breathe. Chân Trời stepped into that space.
In theory, placing alternative rock right after an explosive hardcore set could have killed the show’s momentum. But Chân Trời did not try to beat ROUTE59 through heaviness. They made the smarter move: they pulled people out of the pit, reset the room’s breathing, and let melody and guitar lead the way.
Chân Trời’s music hits the room differently. It doesn’t land through breakdowns, but through ringing guitar lines and melodies that rise just enough for the crowd to follow. After the heavy pits of the previous set, watching people stand still and nod along to each guitar solo created a different kind of movement: less chaotic but more focused.
The guitar stood out most clearly. Some passages stretched outward with just enough reverb or delay, giving the songs a blurred edge without making them feel loose. The rhythm section held the ground, while the vocals sat inside that space instead of trying to force everything higher.
As the show moved forward, Chân Trời’s place in the lineup made more sense. They became the bridge between ROUTE59’s hardcore eruption and Delirio de Cordura’s industrial noise world. Without this softer passage, the final set could have felt like too sharp a turn. Chân Trời shifted the crowd from release into listening.
DELIRIO DE CORDURA: AN INDUSTRIAL WHIRLPOOL THAT SWALLOWED THE ROOM
Then Delirio de Cordura began, and the room changed its rules.
With an experimental industrial tag, people could have expected something difficult, noisy, and confrontational. That expectation made sense, but it did not go far enough. Delirio de Cordura did not bring noise just to shock the room. The set felt more like meditation inside distortion: repeated electronic beats, stretched-out riffs, and warped layers of sound slowly covering the space.
The set ran for around 40 minutes, but the crowd did not react the way it had earlier. The pit no longer controlled the room. Nobody seemed to need an immediate release of energy. People watched more. They listened longer. Some sat down, but almost no one looked away from the stage.
That became the most striking part of the set. Delirio de Cordura didn’t hold the crowd with predictable climaxes. He held them through sustained pressure. The electronic beat pulsed like a mechanical heartbeat. The distorted guitar did not punch straight forward; it crawled through the room like metal dragging underwater. Noise sat between the layers, uncomfortable enough to keep everyone from fully relaxing.
This was also where the show’s concept became clearest. The blue light, smoke, dark visuals, and industrial sound made the room feel less like a venue and more like deep water. If Thryv and ROUTE59 cracked the surface open, and Chân Trời became the calm inside the storm, Delirio de Cordura made everyone look down and realize the depth went further than expected.
Not everyone can easily digest a set like that. That also made it valuable. Delirio de Cordura did not cater to the crowd in the usual way. He forced the crowd to stay inside the sound. At a heavy show, that kind of focus can feel harder to create than a mosh pit.
“Thuồng Luồng Đục Xuồng” did not follow a perfect formula. It did not give the room a clean rise from low to high. Instead, it offered different states of heaviness: metalcore opened the room, hardcore made everything burst outward, alternative rock pulled the breath back in, and industrial noise sank the ending.
The heavy rain outside made the concept feel more grounded. People came in from a soaked city, then moved into a space that felt even darker, thicker, and heavier. The deep sea no longer sat only inside the guideline. It lived in the blue light, the smoke, the damp floor, and the way the sound offered fewer exits as the night went on.
That night, “Thuồng Luồng Đục Xuồng” did not try to explain the creature underneath. It simply let you hear it move.
Words: Vuong Gia Bao
