In case you missed it amid the three-day weekend, Saturday, March 29th was the Abington Indoor Colorguard’s and Indoor Percussion’s Home Show. These programs are an extension of the school’s Marching Band, who perform their own shows throughout Winter and Spring using just the colorguard or just the percussion section, respectively. This year’s shows are Symphony and The Red Umbrella for color guard and Buried Alive for percussion. As a former member of the Indoor Percussion, I would like to draw attention to the group and give a review of Buried Alive from the viewpoint of someone who has gone through the process before.
*For those unaware: battery are the drums that hang off the bodies of the people marching, whereas the pit (or the front ensemble) are the instruments kept stationary at the front. Basses, quads/tenors, and snares are all battery instruments. Marimba, vibraphone, glockenspiel, auxiliary percussion, and synth are all pit instruments. The “floor” in Indoor groups is not the actual floor but instead what the tarp they march on is called, and an overlay is a smaller tarp attached to the floor that typically has its own design.
Music
The first movement’s banging open from the synth immediately grabs your attention. The beautifully eerie pit solo that follows really sells the graveyard feel before the battery entrance pulls you back into the moment and the fear of the unknown. The second movement starts with the pit playing the recurring motif sped up, and the battery’s part in the background adds to the feeling of a high-stakes chase. This is broken shortly by heartbeat-like rim clicks from the battery and the inclusion of choir-like synth patches, before the chase resumes. The battery pick-up leads perfectly into the climax of the movement, and that part in its entirety has great use of dynamics, being very loud before turning quiet as we shift into the end of the movement with increased creepy synth patches.
The persistent knocking at the beginning of movement three makes the audience feel the characters’ stress, and later in the movement the rim clicks elicit the image of being trapped in a coffin. The pit parts in this show often sound like a funky little skeleton chasing after you, and as a former bass drum player, I can appreciate the talent needed for the bass rolls throughout, especially considering they have a six person bass line! The ending ritardando and decrescendo are classic, leaving you alone with the empty cemetery.
Visuals
The visuals start off with the first bass, second bass, and center snare drumless, interacting with each other like three frightened friends lost in a graveyard. The pit crawls up from the ground onto their instruments like zombies as the aforementioned battery members put on their drums. When the music starts, the rest of the battery emerge from behind gravestones and make their way to their own drums. Then begins the drill, which is excellent throughout as the battery moves together and in time with the pit. I especially like the leaning visual that closes movement one for how it is reminiscent of our previous shows’ iconic visuals, specifically the “power down” motion at the end of 2023’s Power, but this still feels in line with the current show’s theme. The bass and quad double time steps at the start of movement two are quite fun to watch, but not as fun as the digging motion the basses do just a few moments later. The highlight of this movement, though, was everyone slowing down to an undead pace at the end as the fourth bass laboriously hauls a gravestone towards the audience and slams it down loudly just before the center snare screams in terror.
The third movement begins with the drumless battery closing in around the center snare before mysteriously retreating back to their drums. The basses perform a well-timed visual where they sink down and bend their knees. Overall, I like this movement’s drill the best, particularly the alternating parts when the battery weaves in between each other. My favorite part of the whole show has to be the ending, the battery lies down their drums and stretches a black sheet in front of the center snare, who screams again, trying in vain to escape. The pit all sank back down behind their instruments, except for the now-zombified center marimba and the distressed senior vibraphone. The vibraphone chases the marimba tearfully, pleading and begging to no avail as the marimba limps onto the battery floor and sinks beneath the frontmost gravestone; both of their acting here is some of the best in the show.
Costumes & Props
A major issue with this show, which is no fault of- and actually much to the chagrin of- the performers, is the homogeneous costumes. The costumes are these skin-tight, unrealistic, black and red suits worn by everyone: undead and living. The costumes themselves are not the worst, not nearly as absurd as 2023’s kitchen-counter style Power onesies, or 2024’s Just Listen half-skirt, half-sleeve, not-so-cropped tops, but still. Would it have killed them to let the students get creative with some thrift store finds and really sell the decaying corpse feel? If nothing else, different costumes for the living and dead characters would make a huge difference in the viewer’s ability to follow the story. I will keep my fingers crossed in hopes that next year’s uniforms will be a little less abstract and a little less elastic.
For the props, the gravestones really add to the environment, and having characters emerging from and hiding behind them is a great detail. (A fun fact that people outside of the marching programs may not have noticed: the boxes the gravestones were painted on were used in the 2022 Marching Ghosts show, Left Brain Right Brain, and the 2023 Indoor Colorguard show 321 Let’s Jam, making this their third Abington use and their percussion debut.) The sheet used to “suffocate” the center snare is great in the ending scene, but I would have perhaps liked to see it shown earlier as foreshadowing. The overlay and floor, though significantly better than last year’s, are a little hard to discern from the audience’s perspective. However, the black floor does work well with the creepy subject matter.
The Abington Indoor Percussion has gotten better every year since its reinstatement in 2022. I highly encourage you to see one of their upcoming shows if you can, as they have been dominating in their recent competitions. The list of shows for the rest of the season is: April 12th at Salisbury High School, April 26th regional championships at Perkiomen Valley High School, and the preliminary and final championships from May 1st – 4th at the Wildwood Convention Center in New Jersey. Best of luck to our Indoor Percussion for the rest of their 2025 season!
