Catsclaw, LGHTBRNGR, Neo Sol and Sight Rot
The Waiting Room Lounge, Omaha, Nebraska
September 30, 2026
Words and photos by Adam Tibbott
On paper, Catsclaw, LGHTBRNGR, Neo Sol and Sight Rot might make for an unusual lineup. All four Omaha bands exist somewhere beneath the sprawling metal, hardcore and metalcore umbrella, but that’s about where the easy comparisons end. Each approaches heavy music from a noticeably different direction. Sight Rot brings the blunt-force aggression of hardcore metal. Neo Sol balances melodic metalcore with atmospheric elements and contrasting female/male vocals. LGHTBRNGR pushes toward a post-hardcore and post-punk-influenced interpretation of metalcore. And Catsclaw delivers the night’s most relentlessly aggressive take on modern metalcore.
They’re not necessarily four bands you’d expect to find sharing the same stage. Wednesday night at The Waiting Room proved that’s exactly why it worked.
I hope the kids stretched beforehand. Sight Rot opened the night by immediately erasing any notion that the crowd might need time to warm up.
Their set brought with it a rawness that felt wonderfully familiar. As the first hardcore pits opened across the floor, windmills and spin kicks started flying, and for a moment I was reminded of the shows I attended decades ago in random basements where somebody had decided that an empty patch of concrete and enough room for a few amplifiers constituted a perfectly acceptable concert venue.
There is something inherently communal about that kind of chaos. From outside the culture, a hardcore pit can look hostile. For fuck’s sake, from inside the culture, a hardcore pit can look hostile! I give the wind-millers and spin-kickers credit for moshing around me while I was photographing. Within it, though, there’s an understanding among the people participating in it. Sight Rot brought that feeling back into a considerably larger room.
Sight Rot also established what would become the pattern for the rest of the evening. Every band would change the musical atmosphere and direction, but the audience’s enthusiasm would only continue to grow.
Neo Sol shifted the night toward a more melodic and atmospheric interpretation of metalcore.
Where Sight Rot attacked with hardcore immediacy, Neo Sol created more contrast. Their music could become crushingly heavy before opening into melodic passages, and the presence of contrasting vocals gave the songs something approaching the classic “Beauty and the Beast” dynamic with the heavier side of the music counterbalanced by a lighter melodic presence.
The pit remained active, although slightly more subdued than it had been during Sight Rot, fitting the different character of Neo Sol’s material. It was also the first real demonstration of how casual this bill was. This wasn’t four bands competing to see who could reproduce the same breakdown with a slightly different guitar tone. Each had a recognizable identity, and the crowd seemed perfectly willing to follow wherever the next band wanted to take them.
By the time LGHTBRNGR took the stage, the intensity began climbing again. Their post-hardcore and post-punk-influenced approach gave the evening another stylistic turn, balancing heaviness with hooks and melody while retaining enough aggression to keep the energy established by the first two bands moving forward.
The set included the band’s updated live intro, “Feel Better,” “Take Me Home,” “Clarity” and “Suffocate,” alongside “Black and White,” “Hollowed” and “A Little Too Late.”
One of the night’s more anticipated moments came with LGHTBRNGR’s interpretation of Justin Bieber’s “Ghost.” On a bill this heavy, dropping a Bieber cover into the middle of the set could have felt completely out of place. Instead, filtering the pop song through LGHTBRNGR’s own musical identity highlighted precisely what made this four-band lineup interesting in the first place.
And, yes, vocalist Kyle performed without his balaclava again. I actually asked him beforehand whether the mask would be making its return.
Nope. He forgot it at home. As such the increasingly less mysterious era of maskless LGHTBRNGR continues.
Then came the homecoming we’d all been waiting for.
Catsclaw returned to an Omaha stage following their recent run on the road in the East Coast, and by the time they took over The Waiting Room, the steadily escalating energy of the previous three sets shifted firmly into high gear.
If memory serves me correct, their set included “Perfect Death,” “Become The Blade” and “Namesake,” with “Singing From the Grave,” “The Old Way” and “Measured Twice” also appearing during the performance. I’m certain to missing more than a few.
If Sight Rot had awakened the pit and Neo Sol and LGHTBRNGR kept feeding it, Catsclaw unleashed it.
There was also a box of merchandise sitting onstage. About halfway through the set, the band revealed that they had free hats and shirts to give away, but there was a condition. If the crowd wanted them, they were going to have to earn them. Challenge accepted.
As the audience became increasingly animated, merchandise began flying from the stage and into the crowd. It was a simple interaction, but it perfectly suited the atmosphere of the evening. Rather than separating performer and audience, Catsclaw gave the room another reason to become part of the show.
For a hometown performance following a tour, it felt appropriately celebratory.
Four Bands, One Scene
Perhaps the most memorable part of the night wasn’t any individual breakdown, song or pit. It was the sense of community surrounding all of it.
With all four bands coming from Omaha, The Waiting Room felt as much like a gathering of friends and family as it did a concert. Members of the bands knew one another. Friends and relatives filled the room. Between sets, musicians and audience members mingled, caught up with one another and talked about Catsclaw’s recent tour. I mostly kept to my own little corner and watched it happen through my camera’s lense. Believe it or not, after all these years of photographing concerts, I’m still pretty shy. But standing back made that sense of community particularly easy to see.
Then another band would take the stage, the conversations would stop, and seemingly friendly human beings would once again begin windmilling at one another. Hardcore is funny like that. First your kicking the shit out of each other in the pit, then next moment you’re outside cooling off in the drizzle, talking about the next concert you’re waiting for. And through every stylistic shift, the crowd stayed with the bands.
That may ultimately be what made the night stand out. There was no obvious reason that someone drawn primarily to Sight Rot’s hardcore aggression would necessarily connect with LGHTBRNGR’s melodic tendencies, or that a Neo Sol fan would automatically gravitate toward Catsclaw’s considerably more punishing attack.
Yet nobody seemed interested in drawing those boundaries. Instead, four very different interpretations of heavy music shared one stage, and the audience’s reaction grew progressively more intense as the night continued.
On a Wednesday night in Omaha, no less.
A packed room. Four hometown bands. Friends and family scattered throughout the crowd. Spin kicks and windmills. A forgotten balaclava. Justin Bieber somehow finding his way onto a metalcore bill. Free merchandise being launched into an increasingly chaotic audience. And Catsclaw returning from the road to an Omaha crowd ready to welcome them home.
Sometimes the bills that shouldn’t quite fit together are the ones that remind you just how much life there is in a local music scene.
This was one of those nights.
Yes, I will be adding more photos. I’m trying out a combination of DxO/Lightroom/Photoshop, and the edits take longer while I’m still learning the new programs.
