Background
This was the first meet-and-greet event at Eclipse, and we couldn’t have started with a more chill couple of metal heads. I just want to put it out there that I am one of the owners at Eclipse Boutique. I highly encourage anyone else who was at that store for the grand opening to leave a comment below. We’ve been wanting to start our meet-and-greet series for a while now. As the largest goth store in western New York, Eclipse has been serving music fans since 2020. With the sheer number of goth and metal bands that come near our store, we should be the go-to place for this sort of thing.
The impurity came out January 28th ahead of their show at the Montage Music Hall on January 6th. Frontman Jeff Young came with percussionist Peter Kazmierczak to play in improvised acoustic set, meet some folks, and overall hang out. The goal was to promote their show and draw some attention to our Grand Opening.
Let’s Start the Show
Everyone was excited to see the duo arrive no later than any normal show starts. In all actuality, they were initially delayed by a car accident on the NY Thruway near Buffalo. When 2pm arrived, there was about a dozen people anxiously awaiting them in our little Monroe Ave satellite location. There were friends of Eclipse, dignitaries from Monroe Ave, Vertex Nightclub, and more well-wishers. After waiting about a half hour without any word from the band, people started filtering out. After checking out their facebook page, they had posted they would be there. However they had the wrong address. They ended up at the Bug Jar at the other end of Monroe Ave. They finally arrived around 3pm and started setting up immediately.
The Band
The Impurity formed in 2012 with frontman Jeff Young. They have kept busy over the years playing hundreds of shows including an east coast tour in 2019 and Blue Ridge Rock Festival in 2021 with Lamb of God and Megadeth. There’s a lot more bio info available on their website https://www.theimpurityofficial.com/ I definitely encourage you to check it out.
The best part of the meet and greet is the meeting. They are fantastic at greeting customers, don’t get me wrong. They were just super chill to hang with. Peter is a relatively introverted drummer. In case you’re not sure what introverted means, he’s not likely to fire up a conversation out of thin air, and small talk is a form of torture. If you open with a direct question, you’ve got a great conversation on your hands. We had a nice chat about how he would book hotels requesting framed pictures of various celebrities left on the bed. Frontman Jeff Young, however, was happy to start conversations. I don’t know if I’d call him an extrovert, but I would call him a friend. He had a story for everything going wrong playing his song, In The End, where he came up with an alternative version on the fly, and he talked about bringing cucumbers on tour to stay hydrated and forgetting to eat them.
The Music
The music was a great mix for an acoustic set. They played a few of their originals including Wolf and In The End, spent some time just jamming riffs, and played a bunch of 90s grunge songs. The two of them have a very tight sound. I mean to say tight on a professional level. Listening to other regional bands, they usually struggle with sounding like one cohesive band playing their part of the same sound. The Impurity has that on lock. This coupling with a unique vocal sound for the metal scene. It’s like hard rock you can headbang to. If you want to hear more, their CD is now available at Eclipse Btq.
