BALTIMORE - The evening's carnival of euphoria had concluded.
Denny Bowen was soaked in sweat. He was often drenched after nights of playing drums with Double Dagger, one of Baltimore's best noisy punk bands.
Nolen Strals looked plenty tired but greeted his friends with smiles and hugs. Like Bowen, Strals was dripping wet and still in a sopping "I (heart) BMORE" T-shirt. Some of the perspiration was his, some of it was from the audience he had been dancing with and crowdsurfing over all night as Double Dagger's vocalist and loose-cannon frontman.
Bruce Willen was drenched in sweat, too. He played bass guitar in Double Dagger and was hopeful his "Start a band" T-shirt would inspire a few people in the audience to do just that.
This was Double Dagger's final show and their breakup left a void to fill in the Baltimore music scene. The band broke up on this October night, playing together for the last time to a highly energetic crowd at the Ottobar in the Charles Village neighborhood.
Right alongside popular acts like Dan Deacon -- who recently worked on the score for Francis Ford Coppola's latest film, "Twixt" -- and the nationally praised Ponytail, Double Dagger was one of the most visible forces in the Baltimore music scene as its national visibility grew over the last decade.
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The music of Baltimore includes many distinct sounds. From the Baltimore club of the late K-Swift to the jittery, guitar work-outs of Ponytail to the subtle songcraft of rock band Wye Oak to the drone and folk experimentations of Daniel Higgs, Charm City is home to all types of music. This wide variety has not divided the community but strengthened it.
Underground spaces including the Floristree, in the H&H Building on West Franklin Street downtown, might host a punk show one night and a dance party that same week. The artists from both those events could be playing their own shows at a professional venue such as Sonar the following week. Across stylistic barriers, artists and fans share the same cultural spaces in the city.
And Double Dagger was a favorite. From its start more than nine years ago, Double Dagger gained a cult following across the United States, earned plenty of critical praise and toured Europe and North America.
"They're not doing it to get on the front cover of Spin magazine, they're not doing it to get in Vice magazine, they're not doing it to get on Pitchfork. They're just doing it because that's what they do and they're ... good at it," said Ed Schrader, a Baltimore resident and leader of Ed Schrader's Music Beat, a band that has played many shows with Double Dagger.
"They're carrying on a tradition of social observation," Schrader said. "I think people are going to look back 20 years from now, and be like, 'Man, that was the thing. Wish we could've been at those shows.'"
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Baltimore's City Paper named Double Dagger's 2009 record "More" "Best Album" in its yearly Best Of issue. "This year's 'More' (Thrill Jockey) shows the band at its absolute finest, plumbing sonic depths with verve and wide open ears: tense repetition, actual 'slow' songs, and, naturally, anthems that could stop a tank," the paper wrote.
"They remained fiercely D.I.Y. in a time when it was almost impossible to do so and served as one of the pillars of a vibrant and diverse Baltimore underground that even Rolling Stone dubbed 'Best Scene' in 2008," David Malitz of The Washington Post wrote in October.
Not everyone got it. "I'm not sure I know what the point is, and I don't care. That s--- gets on my nerves," wrote Annie Fischer of the Village Voice about a 2007 Double Dagger performance.
The group used the quote in its press releases for some time after, Bowen told the Village Voice in an interview last year.
But the band members are responsible for more than just Double Dagger. They made an impact in the visual arts and other pockets of the music scene, as well.
Bowen also plays percussion with the Dan Deacon Ensemble, which toured Australia and New Zealand in the first two months of 2012.
And Bowen has been playing shows with his four-piece, noisy rock band, Roomrunner, in which he plays guitar and sings. The band's first release came out on Baltimore-area label Fan Death Records late last year.
Strals and Willen run Post Typography, an award-winning graphic design firm with Baltimore roots and a wide-reaching client list.
And though Double Dagger is no more, the trio plans to release a collection of new, unreleased songs and a live DVD of the final performances in the near future.
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Today, Post Typography's clients include The New York Times, publisher Random House, the U.S. Green Building Council and many more. The firm creates everything from art to accompany newspaper features and magazine stories to advertisements used on Washington Metro trains.
In 2010, the studio reached a new level of visibility when it designed the album cover for "Wake Up!," an LP by John Legend and The Roots.
Strals and Willen formally began their studio in 2007. In the years before they had larger clients, Strals gained attention for the posters he would create for Baltimore concerts. Strals and Willen continue to make eye-catching posters for area events.
"They're basically the perfect prototype of how to produce in a smaller city and do it well," said Gary Kachadourian, a Baltimore artist and the former visual arts coordinator with the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts.
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"They basically figured out -- largely because they have the energy, talent and that kind of stuff -- they figured out a system for functioning in a place where there's not really a huge graphic industry, not a huge music scene when they started. But basically they know how to (get things done)," said Kachadourian, who has collaborated with the pair on projects for Baltimore's free summer arts festival Artscape.
"They're definitely one of the first super successes coming out of MICA's rebuilt graphics programs."
Strals and Willen met while students at the Maryland College Institute of Art and bonded over their interests in graphic design and music. Strals, 33, graduated from MICA in 2001 and Willen, 31, graduated in 2002.
"I think we both wound up sticking around because we really liked Baltimore as a city and we liked the community here," Willen said. "There's a lot of people doing really awesome things, like, creative endeavors in Baltimore, both musically, artistically -- a lot of good people living here."
Strals -- 6 feet tall, balding, and glasses with clear frames -- is from Thomson, a town in the mountains of Georgia.
Willen is an inch taller and wears glasses with black frames. He is from Portales, N.M., a small town next to the Texas border.
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Last year, Strals and Willen won a $1,000 b-grant from the William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund, as a part of the Baker Artist Awards, which recognize exceptional work by Baltimore-area artists.
The duo had their "Floral Explosion" wallpaper on display in the Baltimore Museum of Art's Baker Artist Awards exhibit last fall.
"Floral Explosion" is a giant wall covering with a bold yellow background and several types of red-outlined, white flowers are scattered throughout the piece. But up close, the flowers are revealed to actually be weapons of mass destruction, explosions and flying bullets.
It isn't unusual for the collaborators to tackle serious issues in their art, whether working as Post Typography or as Double Dagger.
Much of the band's acclaim focused on Strals' lyrics, which veered from political to funny to touching -- often all in the same song.
A fan favorite and highlight of live shows was the "More" song "Vivre Sans Temps Mort," which roughly translates from the French to mean "live without wasted time.
The song gently builds before leading into a steady rhythm backing Strals? meditation on life and death. The song then blasts into a confessional about the power of music and the complex emotions encountered on the night of a life-changing punk rock show Strals attended when he was 18.
"No, me and death are getting along just fine/ I'm not afraid of taking my last breath, but I'm afraid of leaving nothing here but a mess," Strals sings. "No I don't mind all this death on my mind but if you wanna see tears in my eyes talk to me about being alive."
The song's lyrics could be found scrawled on a wall in the men's bathroom at the Black Cat, the Washington rock club where Double Dagger played its third-to-last show.
The graffiti shared the song's final line: "If we shout loud enough they can't turn out the lights."
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Some of the band's more political songs take on the problems that beset Baltimore.
"A fresh coat of paint won't make it go away/ That's what I call progress: Just build a wall around the mess," Strals shouts in "Luxury Condos for the Poor," a song from 2007 LP Ragged Rubble.
"You're building a ghost town/ If you lived here your whole life, it's time to get out/ We're building waterfront gravesites 30 stories high/ Where dreams of fictional people live/ While the city around you dies."
The song describes Baltimore's mid-2000s harbor building boom. In writing about the song, Baltimore's City Paper described this "urban renewal": "Like little pockets of malignant cells in an epidemic of gentrification, $300K condos are sprouting at an irreversible rate."
"It's very easy to fall into sloganeering when you're writing a song," said Jesse Morgan, a Charm City Art Space volunteer who booked Double Dagger at the alternative arts venue in the band's early years.
"I've always admired the fact that the band has been able to create lyrical content that makes you think, as well as makes you want to sing along," Morgan said.
"Nobody would have faulted them at all if they had stuck to quirky songs about graphic design and making flyers, but it's that step you take when you stop being an adolescent and you start to grow up.
"Some people become very withdrawn into their specific lives and they stop being political," Morgan said. "If nothing else, Double Dagger became more political."
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Bowen grew up in and around Baltimore, first living in Belair-Edison and then in Perry Hall. He has scruffy facial hair and sports an uncombed head of brown hair.
He first made a splash in the Baltimore music scene as a singer and guitarist in Economist when he was 18. Now 27, Bowen said he first learned to play guitar and drums as an 8-year-old.
"I begged my parents to get me some sort of instrument to play on so I wasn't beating on inanimate objects," Bowen said.
His parents even let him and many of his bands practice in the basement of their Perry Hall home. The basement became Double Dagger's main rehearsal space from 2006 to 2007. Each time the group would play, its loud ruckus would shake Bowen's father's music collection off the shelves.
Bowen's dad was in the front row at Double Dagger's final show and the smile on his face was as wide as any teenager's.
When Brian Dubin -- Double Dagger's drummer from the group's start in 2002 until 2004 -- left the band, Strals and Willen knew Bowen from Economist and asked him to join the group.
"Obviously, he's really super incredible," Willen said. "He also just plays really, really hard. That was kind of one of our stipulations when we were looking for a drummer. 'We don't really care if you're really talented or not, as long as you can play the drums as hard as possible. That's what matters.' Luckily, Denny was both."
In recent years, Bowen has toured with Dan Deacon, the experimental musician and Baltimore mainstay, as a percussionist in his Dan Deacon Ensemble.
"Denny's like a shaved muppet," Deacon said.
"Denny's just hilarious," Schrader said. "He does voice impressions and he's the life of the party when he walks in the room. Just good energy, super positive guy, amazing drummer. He makes people lighten up."
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Double Dagger announced its break-up via a note on its website on Sept. 12.
"Like any relationship's end, it's complex, but for us it mostly comes down to time," read the note, signed by the band's three members.
"As the band got older and grew and changed, the people in it did too, and our individual lives are pulling us towards other pursuits. With this in mind, we decided to focus on playing a few final shows in some of our favorite cities, and go out on a high note instead of slowing fading away. We still like the music, the shows, and each other, and we think it's best to bring things to a close while we can still devote our full energy to this music."
Working with only drums, bass guitar and vocals, the group inspired mass shout-alongs and frenzied crowdsurfing at their last show. Strals added to the good humor and energy by making his way in to the audience to dance and confront fans.
"It was really emotional; it was powerful," said Dan Deacon, who opened Double Dagger's final show with a solo set of his joyful electronic music.
"They were super strong performers, they were in their prime, at the peak of their popularity," Deacon said. "It must have been a difficult decision to stop being a band, but, I think they just didn't want to repeat themselves and they didn't want to fade away.
"They'd rather explode."
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The Ottobar could have been mistaken for a pool or sauna on the night of Double Dagger's final show. The people there -- most of them soaked in sweat -- filed out, or stayed inside to loiter and remember, or to say thanks to the men who brought them together.
A line formed around Strals as fans said their farewells and offered their gratitude.
One young man asked Strals to sign his red, penguin-covered felt pajamas.
"That's the weirdest thing I've ever signed," Strals said.
Another young man, with a very short mohawk and wearing a blue Double Dagger T-shirt, approached Strals, and the two shared a hug.
"Thanks for everything, Keenon," Strals said.
"My mother wants you to sign this shirt," said a teenage boy with dreadlocks. Strals obliged as the boy pointed to his mother in the balcony.
Strals said the boy and his mother have been attending Double Dagger shows for the last four years.
"In the weeks leading up to it, I was sure I was going to cry," Strals said of the final show a few days later. "But it didn't happen because I think I was just so happy. The response from the audience was just so overwhelming.
"The only time I got really sad," Strals said, "was when Bruce and Denny were playing (instrumental) "Neon Gray" and it's just because I don't sing. It gave me this pause where I could think about what was happening and it just hit me, 'I love this song. And this is the last time I'm going to hear them play it.'
"It was really intense for everyone in the room, I think. At the end of it, there was all these kids who came up to me, who said that our music has gotten them through good times and also through hard times and there were multiple people at the different shows who said they started playing music because of us.
"This morning," Strals said, "there was an e-mail that the band got that was an mp3 from this kid who started his band a couple months ago because of us. So he wanted to share that with us. And that's huge. That's so huge."