Live review: Anxious with Somerset Thrower and Holder live at Crossroads

Garwood, NJ- 06 November, 2025

Bodies lifted, lyrics screamed, a room built for it all. This is what we come for.

There’s just something magical about Crossroads. Sure, it’s a relatively small room in what outsiders might call the middle of nowhere, but the place vibrates with the ghosts of past performances; a perpetual reverberation of past performances. It’s not a venue that hosts shows… it’s a venue that breathes them. The walls feel like they sweat memories. Alf (Ex-Number Five) is at the door greeting everyone like a cool uncle of the scene and Andy Diamond continues to book some of the most heartfelt, chaotic and joyful lineups in New Jersey. The corner stage, the raised bar opposite it and the ever-present smell of wings and pub-eats add to the atmosphere. It’s voodoo. It’s church. It’s the beating heart of DIY. And tonight, that heart was thundering.

First up was Holder, a band I’ll admit I hadn’t heard going in. When they stepped on stage, I clocked how young they looked. Then they hit the first downbeat and I swear the room cracked open. Hoo-ooo-oooo-ooooooly FUUUCK! Absolute ferocity. A level of technical skill and tightly wound power that feels like being launched through a windshield. Every member contributed to this relentless, snarling, joyous assault. The crowd went bananas. Windmills. Cartwheels. Two-steps. Bodies moving. This is heaven. Pure core, pure brutality, pure catharsis. If Holder isn’t on your radar yet, that’s a mistake you need to fix.

Somerset Thrower followed and shifted gears without slowing momentum. Where Holder sounded like the inside of an adrenaline gland, Somerset Thrower sounded like the best basement show you ever stumbled into, where everyone in the room is quietly having some kind of emotional moment. It was melodic, punchy, emotional without pretense, it filled the crowd with the feelings we thought we’d lost. The band looked like they were having the time of their lives, and that joy translated immediately. Their set carried a warmth, an unspoken invitation to feel something with them. It was a tonal shift, sure, but one that raised the room instead of draining it. The crowd exhaled, then leaned right back in.

And then: Anxious. A band who have somehow dropped two of the best records of the 2020s. Little Green House was my 2022 album of the year, and Bambi is in the running for 2025. This is a group born of the early-aughts melodic hardcore lineage; The Movielife, Lifetime, the mixtapes burned for the crushes who never called back.  Thats not to say Anxious are nostalgia merchants. They’re heart-first and absolutely present in the moment.

The set erupted from the jump. No barricades. No distance. Crowd literally on the stage. Vocalist Grady Allen’s collar was drenched in sweat within moments, his energy and sincerity impossible to fake. The band moved like they were plugged into a power grid, bopping and two-stepping with enough force to shift tectonic plates. The crowd surged, climbed, fell, laughed, screamed. By the time they hit “Growing Up Song,” the entire room was on stage; bouncing in that shared, slightly awkward, deeply communal pogo that only happens when a show hits the sweet spot.

And when it was over, Anxious didn’t disappear backstage; they hung out. Talked. Took photos. Said thank you. Because they know where this all comes from: small rooms, no barricades, songs shouted into strangers’ shoulders. The scene, alive and kicking.