Scott

While not even remotely a metal band…
I saw Underoath at a small local venue years ago that basically did this. Prior to the “open the pit part” they announced that the owner told them no encouraging moshing or it’d forfeit their payment. Being that the band told us that prior to the “open the pit” part they obviously knew what they were asking for and welcomed it. They were pulling the crowd up on stage to dive off and everything. The venue cut the mics and they kept going to finish the song. It was absolutely amazing.

Yes

Loved that feature on Apollo. Filter out politics, shit I was tired of seeing (for example is filtered out “Shaggy” back when he was meme’d to death), I’d filter out keywords of movies I didn’t want spoiled. It was honestly one of the best feature of Apollo.

I wouldn’t even call their early albums pop punk. Closer to post hardcore (not nearly hardcore but aimed to that audience at the time.) But yea; Vheissue was a sign of what was to come but AI was totally unexpected at the time from what Thrice was and their newer albums aren’t even close to what they were. But fwiw the new stuff is still really good!