The Emergenza festival took to the stage for the first time in St. Louis on Feb. 2nd at the High Pointe. Eight shows in the books, each seemed to build toward the finale of the two weeks, which brought out the largest crowd and in some opinions the best night of music so far. With snow falling, it was cold and wet for the first Wednesday night show, but the club was quickly heated up by HOT FRUIT, a three-piece, all female punk band with the stage presence to seduce the crowd. BARE KNUCKLE CONFLICT turned the place upside down with their energy and interaction with the audience from their front man Josh. The first Friday brought a diverse group of bands to the stage including the melodic vocals of ONE LONE CAR, the acrobatic front man and amazing bass playing of the metal band SHATTERMASK, the eclectic '' world rock '' of NASHID, and a screaming, hard as hell version of "You Give Love a Bad Name" by ZERO PRINCIPLE. Saturday brought out an out of control madi gras crowd to see the ska influenced punk of THE UNMENTIONABLES, the hard rock of SIMIEN FALLS and LOCO 88, and the mellow vibe of MOSAIC. If your not from St. Louis, this is the day we pretend we are New Orleans. For Sunday, I salute the true live music lovers that said "Fuck the Super Bowl" and came out to enjoy the straight forward, no-frills rock of DBL Tap (Dana Rocks), the minute and a half punk epics of THE PUBES and the great shit from WHAT REMAINS. The second week started out with lots of the hard stuff. The seasoned musicians of FIELD OF GREY are going on as well as the heavy BROKEN SHADOW and even heavier, I''m talking sheer power, SCORCHED ERTH (spelled it right this time guys). The RESIDENTS OF MAKE BELIEVE just very recently lost their bass player but went on without and still prevailed, making into the semis. The second Friday started off SEMI-OK, those guys I think were drunk when they got to sound check and then played another gig an hour after this show. 3JC sang a song about lesbians and for some reason thats all that stayed in my head. LOST PARADE AND ULTRA BLUE went on back-to-back and played about as good of an hour of live music as I''ve heard in a while. On Saturday, DEAD DRIVE FAST entertained us with some good''ole dirty rock''n''roll and a guitar tone that made me jealous. BIG FAT EVERYTHING played their first gig ever away from the drummers basement, won over everybody, then just got completely goofy blitzed. FALL CITY finished off the night to a big following of their own, with a brand new guitar player that didn''t even have time to learn all their songs yet, and a giant of a front man that you might recognize from a certain, popular show on television that involves singing. The last night of the eight was nothing short of spectacular. I''m just going to list all eight of them because I liked them all so much. GOOCH RASH, CAT JUMP, OMNIPRESENT and BEGGARS CANT BE CHOOSERS just missed out and SPATIK, GROUPTHINK, FUNDAMENTALS and IF ALL ELSE FAILS made it through to the next round.