On 29 March 2013 a record label announced a free basement show at The Meatlocker in Montclair, New Jersey, and set out the terms in a numbered list: admission free, first 60 people in, wristbands from 7:30pm, free pizza, no alcohol, a 45 minute set. The next day the same label posted that the show was off. Those two posts sit one day apart in its archived news list, and between them they are the fullest account of a single booking at this venue in the sources gathered for this page.
What follows is what those sources document about the venue and, just as usefully, what they do not. Staple News is independent and has no affiliation with the original Staple Records label that used to own this domain, and none with the venue.
The show announced and cancelled in two days
The announcement, dated 29 March 2013, was for a Renacer release show on Monday 1 April. The label wrote that “the venue is quite small so only the first 60 people on line will get in”, with wristbands handed out from 7:30pm on a first come basis. Free pizza and soft drinks, no alcohol, a 45 minute set, autographs at the door, and a free poster for every person who got in. Our Senses Fail albums in order guide covers the record it was meant to celebrate. Those were the terms one label announced for one night in 2013. They are not a statement of anything the venue does as a rule, then or now.
One detail in that post matters more than the pizza. For venue details the label did not link a website. It linked a Facebook page, and it sent questions about the event to its own label address instead.
The cancellation post, dated 30 March, gives a reason. The label wrote that the band had been “misled to believe that the venue could do the show” and pointed at “friction between the venue and the town of Montclair”. That is one party’s account of a private arrangement, published by that party. Neither the venue nor the township is represented in it. No township record of any kind was consulted for this page, so nothing here says what the friction was about, who was right, or whether the township did anything at all.
A documented bill, three years later
The Montclair Dispatch published a review of a show at the venue on 31 May 2016, written by Phoenix Herring. That date is when the review went up, not when the show happened. The review says crowds gathered “last Tuesday”, and 31 May 2016 was itself a Tuesday, which puts the night in the week before publication rather than on the publication date. No source read for this page gives the exact date.
The bill named in that review runs seven bands deep, and the review is specific about who they were and where they came from.
Herring puts genres on most of them. Organ Dealer get grindcore crossed with death metal, Dutchguts get thick stoner metal built on distorted bass, Inertia get hardcore with math rock edges, and Sunrot get sludge with noise, punk, drone and post-metal running through it. Toxicology were playing songs off a demo released that April. Full of Hell were touring behind a collaboration album put out in March of the same year.
That review is the only entry the outlet’s Meatlocker tag returns, so it documents one bill and does not establish a pattern. It does line up with how the town’s business improvement district describes the booking in its directory listing: “Chaotic, noisy, uncatagorizable music”, danceable in a violent way.
Neither of the venue’s domains carries a schedule
Checked on 7 September 2026, themeatlocker.net returned a placeholder: the venue name, “Launching Soon” repeated down the page, a contact form, and a 2025 copyright line. No calendar, no hours, no door policy. Three archived captures of that same domain were read for this page. The 2010 and 2013 captures each serve a single line, “Click here to proceed”, and the 2018 capture serves an error page. The archive holds nine captures in all, with a seven year gap between January 2018 and February 2025; the other six were not opened, so nothing here describes what they held.
The second domain, the one the business district listing points at, does not resolve over https at all. Over http it returned a page whose only visible word was “Redirecting”, above a script that checks for ad blockers. A local nonprofit news outlet keeps a venue page for the room, and it listed no upcoming events when it was captured the same day.
How people say they find shows there
On 26 August 2026 a student new to Montclair State asked the town’s subreddit whether anywhere runs DIY or punk shows, and whether there is an Instagram that posts locations. Two people answered with the venue’s name. One of them, who said they were a freshman, added that shows there travel “either by word-of-mouth or just random insta posts”. A third reply pointed at a campus lounge instead.
Two comments in one thread is an anecdote, not proof that the venue is operating. Nobody from this publication has been inside the building, no statement of current status from whoever runs it was obtainable, and this page is not a schedule. What the sources above support is narrow: in 2013 a label sent people to a social media page for venue details, and in 2026 two locals described listings travelling the same way. Corrections with evidence go through our editorial standards page.