A Secret Riot at The Fonda w/ The Garden & Friends

FEATURES, SHOWS

March 31, 2026

Tags:

alternative, fonda theatre, Ghost Mountain, hip hop, HKFY, hong kong fuck you, powerviolence, punk rock, the fonda, the garden

It was one, strange chilly Tuesday night on March 24th 2026 going to see The Garden, Hong Kong Fuck You and Ghost Mountain. Unruly punkers and medieval court jesters engulfed the dim foyer of the Fonda Theatre, barely visible without the presence of the fluorescent glow produced by the brightly lit marquee overhead. A blanket of thick black smog enveloped the atmosphere, polluted with the smell of cigarettes. Limping away towards their otherworldly expedition, The Garden embarks on another journey across the West Coast accompanied by Ghost Mountain and special guest, Hong Kong Fuck You, teasing the audience with unreleased tracks from The Garden’s anxiously anticipated album. Ending 2025 off with an aggressive, emotionally charged single dubbed ‘Ugly’, expressing the “unattractive” side of fame and the unimaginable grief of celebrity life, The Garden twins continue to explore and cultivate their signature sound.

Setting the stage for the evening, HKFY (Hong Kong Fuck You) unleashed a set where deafening low-end frequencies and frantic basslines smothered the room in a thick, aggressive tension, channeling raw visceral rage that felt less like music and more like physical assault. The air inside turned heavy and pressurized, a mess of recycled oxygen and heat, pulling the pit into a hypnotic, thrashing trance as strobe lights cut through the stage, cementing frontman Christian Hell’s presence as a sinister, mad-scientist conductor curating a room moments away from a total kinetic meltdown, all before the night’s headliners The Garden even took the stage.

In between sets, a distinct roar of gasps and screams echoed from the balcony as a pathetic anticlimactic “street style” scrap unfolded in front of the audience. Turns out two intoxicated fools were brawling over a seat on the balcony! These two were stuck in a pointless tug of war over the best view of the fog, but security was having none of it. “adios muchachos!”

When Ghost Mountain took the stage, the frantic violence of the pit didn’t just stop, it vanished. Swallowed by a sudden, heavy stillness. The manic energy of the night slowed to a dreadful crawl, replaced by half-dead vocals that felt like they were being dragged through the dirt. Thick, droning instrumental followed close behind blaring through the speaker, vibrating the floorboards. While the tempo dropped, the aesthetic remained perfectly in sync with the night’s descent. It was no longer a riot, but a hollowed-out fever dream that felt just as dangerous in its silence.

Suspense seized the room before The Garden, fans practically jumping out of their skin as smog and ominous ghostlike howls enveloped the stage. The jagged, familiar guitar riff intro of “Horseshit on Route 66” instantly ignited a fit of primordial violence, sending spirited moshers slamming against each other like a haunted storm that had been swelling for days. Deep, reverberated bass lines drowned the theatre in complete chaos, leaving Fletcher and Wyatt as nothing more than wraith-like silhouettes hidden behind murky fog.

Wyatt beckoned the crowd to thicken the haze, urging every smoker and vaper in the room to exhale a collective cloud for the next track, “Squished Face Slick Pig Living in a Smokey City.” Under the cover of the smoke, the distinction between the stage and the pit evaporated. The song hit with a brutal percussive snap, sending a shockwave through the front rows. It was no longer a performance; it was communal friction, a blur of sweat-slicked skin crashing together in the dark.

The momentum never wavered as they slid into the raw, unpolished melody of “Highway Ponytail.” As the band retreated into the smog to overhaul their gear, the silence was filled with low distorted cackles and the hollow call of crows echoing through the PA system, turning The Fonda into a vast, haunted corridor. In the midst of the disarray, Christian Hell from HKFY suddenly reappeared, a blur of flying limbs clearing the air as he launched himself into the crowd, crashing into the sea of the front row. Following a brief, agonizing tension, the twins reclaimed the stage for a final, desperate encore. The band initiated “Thy Mission,” the iconic Mac Demarco collaboration that perfectly encapsulated the Vada Vada sound, ending the night in a fever pitch of distortion.

The house lights flickered on, but the fog refused to lift. As the crowd spilled out into the night, the feverish energy of the set lingered, a frantic prelude to the brothers’ next chapter. With a new album in the works, The Garden continues to sharpen their Vada Vada edge, promising to drag their sound even deeper into the surreal.