Looking back at brokeNCYDE’s October 5, 2025, Raleigh show with Dot Dot Curve, From This Day Forward, and Heathen Sun.
If you spent any meaningful amount of time online in the late 2000s, “Teach Me How to Scene” probably brings back an entire visual language. There were neon shirts, meticulously planned hair, and profile pages that started playing music before you had a chance to turn down the volume.
On October 5, 2025, that corner of internet history had a real-world address: Chapel of Bones in Raleigh. brokeNCYDE brought the Teach Me How to Scene tour to the venue with Dot Dot Curve, From This Day Forward, and Heathen Sun on the bill. For Pretty Loud Mag owner and editor Alex, who was a huge fan of brokeNCYDE and Dot Dot Curve during her peak emo days in 2007, getting to photograph the two acts was a genuine full-circle moment. The music she loved as a scene kid was now happening in front of her camera.
brokeNCYDE have always been difficult to discuss without also discussing the reaction to them. Their collision of screamed vocals, rap, electronic production, and party music helped define crunkcore, a sound people embraced and argued over with equal intensity. The group did not wait for anyone to agree that those elements belonged together. Fans found the songs online, made them part of their lives, and kept listening long after the arguments moved elsewhere.
Having Dot Dot Curve on the same bill gave the Raleigh stop a particular pull for anyone who remembered that era firsthand. For Alex, it meant photographing two artists whose music had been part of her life nearly two decades earlier. From This Day Forward joined the tour, while Heathen Sun added a North Carolina presence. The Wilmington band describes its music as nu-metal, giving the lineup another connection between the scene years and the heavy music being made closer to home.
Chapel of Bones also has its own place in Raleigh’s music history. The building previously housed Volume 11 Tavern and The Maywood, venues that gave heavy bands and their audiences a place to gather. Seeing music once discovered through a computer screen return to a room with that history made the occasion feel especially fitting.
It is easy to joke about the scene years, and anyone who lived through them can probably supply a few examples. What lasts beyond the hair and the old profile photos is more personal. A song can bring you back to the person you were when you first heard it, then give you an entirely new memory years later.
For Alex, October 5 was the night brokeNCYDE and Dot Dot Curve went from teenage favorites to subjects in her viewfinder. That is the kind of throwback worth holding onto.