Saturday, April 5, is a solemn day for fans of grunge music. The date represents the tragic passing of two of the genre’s most revered voices: Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain and Alice In Chains’s Layne Staley. Although the singers passed from different causes – Cobain from suicide in 1994 and Staley from an overdose in 2002 – both deaths were a result of lives tormented with depression, isolation and substance abuse, themes they didn’t shy away from in their music. 

   Three hundred and four listeners were packed into the Student Center Theater on Friday, March 7, for the Battle for Music Fest. The event, hosted by Hofstra Concerts, featured four bands – Haug Haus, married, knot, Dylan Taganas & the Suitepaler and freak magnet – battling for the opportunity to open for the headliner of Hofstra’s Music Fest 2025.