Movements: Chain Reaction’s Last Show
Artist: Movements
Venue: Chain Reaction (Anaheim, CA)
Date: Dec. 19, 2025
Growing up in Florida's hardcore and post-hardcore scene during the early-to-mid-2000s, Chain Reaction wasn't just another venue—it was mythic. The place bands aspired to play. I remember all nighter band practices and staying up watching Chain Reaction live sets. For nearly 30 years, this all-ages Anaheim institution gave kids who didn't fit in anywhere else a place to find community, scream until their voices gave out, and feel like they belonged.
Since opening in 1996, Chain Reaction launched bands like Touché Amoré, Thrice, and Throwdown while hosting touring acts like Paramore, Fall Out Boy, Jimmy Eat World, and My Chemical Romance. It was the room where local bands dreamed of headlining and where national acts proved themselves to Southern California's hardcore faithful.
Friday night marked the end. Movements, the Anaheim post-hardcore band who grew up in Chain Reaction's walls, headlined the venue's final show. Before their set, frontman Patrick Miranda pulled out typed pages and asked for silence. The packed room went still. He spoke for five minutes about growing up with strict parents, about Chain Reaction being the alternative space where he found friends and community, about how their goal was always to headline this room. "If we could do that," he said, "we'd know we made it."
The crowd held that silence, holding space for his vulnerability.
Then everyone tore the place apart.
An elder in a patterned sweater crowd surfed—arms raised, grinning, carried by hundreds of hands. The irony wasn't lost: a sign on the wall read "No Crowd Surfing, Crowd Moshing, Or You Will Be Kicked Out." On the final night, no one cared. “What are they going to do, ban me?” I overheard someone laugh. Bodies launched from the stage. The pit erupted. Kilig in its most ecstatic form: collective joy and sorrow moving through the room at once.
Cheri Domingo opened with melodic intensity, Militarie Gun brought their driving hardcore energy, and Movements closed nearly three decades of history. Between songs, people hugged. Strangers became friends in the pit, sharing collective stories of memories in these walls. The sticker-covered walls, decades of band names layered over each other, looked on as witnesses.
At the end of their set, Movements added their shirt to those walls—right next to Throwdown, another band that got their start in these four walls. One generation passing the torch to the next, even as the lights went dark for the last time.
Chain Reaction gave a generation of misfits a home. Friday night, we gave that home a proper sendoff.
