M.D.I.Why. the art, gear, music, filth, depravity of Ross Sewage
November 12th was an epic night for metal in Oakland, California. Napalm Death and Municipal Waste bringing us a show of epic proportions.
Along with long-time metal stalwarts and former locals, Exhumed, punk legends and actual locals, Attitude Adjustment, and last and probably least, our own gang in Impaled, you’ve got a bill worth getting in line for. A big fucking line.
Continue reading “Torture of Duty: Impaled gets Napalm Wasted”
We were invited by our friend Shlak to play the New Jersey Death Fest 4 this past weekend. With friends like Shlak, who needs enemas? We met this crazy mother fucker some years back after we’d watched him wrap himself in barbed-wire and staple dollars to his head while bleeding everywhere during a set with his old band, Call the Paramedics. You never could imagine a sweeter, more cordial fellow caked in blood. We flew out for what was sure to be a night of steady blast beats and pinch harmonics. We wouldn’t fit in at all.
This was going to be an epic weekend. We would play the fest, stay in New Jersey, and then follow it up with a sweet show at St. Vitus in Brooklyn. It WAS going to be a sweet weekend. Some colossal shit dickery occurred between some members of our band, promoters, and bookers which led to a misunderstanding that wasn’t revealed until days before the event. We had to cancel the Brooklyn show. All I can say is, my dick remained free of any shit. As it stood, we had a lot of fun in New Jersey, despite, or maybe because of, the chaos.
I played music on an aircraft carrier. How many people can say that? Okay, probably a bunch of enlisted men from the music corps., maybe some kids from a chorale group or something… but I play in a death metal band. And I played in the same halls that were once bombed and sent off bombers to war. There’s something in the left over bits of me that played with G.I. Joes as a kid that is really excited by that. No, we didn’t play on the U.S.S. Flagg, but even cooler, we played on the Bay Area’s own piece of naval memorabilia, the U.S.S. Hornet.
Yes, this stalwart steel lady battled in WW2, served in Korea and Vietnam, and famously recovered the astronauts of Apollo 11 from the first moon landing. And we were about to completely denigrate that proud naval history by swilling beer and playing heavy metal in her hull. That’s what it is to be an American.
The organizers of Slaughter by the Water thought for their third festival they should do something novel; that is, make the name irrelevant by holding the fest ON the water. It was an interesting choice, at least enough to entice Impaled to agree to play and see what the shit show would be like. We had also used the U.S.S. Hornet before, as a back drop for Sean’s solo in the video of our song “G.O.R.E.”
We were scheduled to play around 7 PM. Our load-in time was 10 AM. What the fuck? Well, in order to avoid the impossible task of carrying our gear up the gang plank, we had to be early to make use of the crane and the cherry picker to get stuff inside the massive ship. Most of the back line went in the cargo holder, our stuff was less ceremoniously lifted on the cherry picker.
There was lots of support staff about and lots of veterans volunteering at the Hornet helping. I can only imagine these guys dealing with a bunch of slacking musicians, remembering how they ate dirt to shit freedom… for this: a bunch of gear made to fight the system, overshadowed by gear made to fight and defend the system that makes the former possible.
All I can say about this is… hardly.
Slaughter by the Water officially started around noon. There was a stage outdoors that was free to all, though I think the families walking by going to the U.S.S. Hornet were a little less than impressed. Well, they could go and enjoy one of the multitude of food stands that normally wouldn’t have been there and eat some funnel cake to shut up their stinkin’ pie holes.
The power for the outdoor stage was from bicycles. Are you kidding me? No, Ross, I’m not. It was a clever set up, but not so clever as to recognize the inherent laziness of metal heads. You needed about 10-15 people on these bikes pushing transformers to get up enough power for a couple amps. This might’ve worked great at Outside Lands or at Burning Man, with some dude and his Fender Twin. Throw up an SVT or a Triple Rec and you’re running into problems: the fifty or so times bands had to restart their songs. Whatever, I did my part… for about five minutes.
A good number of bands played outside. There was enough metal to attract the Jesus freaks. Really? Don’t you have some gay military funeral to protest vainly? Somehow, I don’t think coming to a performance by slackers is going to win or lose you anything… except maybe an afternoon of your time. It’s fairly obvious that we’ll never give a rat’s ass about your son of man, save for His excellent hair.
I alternated between watching and exploring the vast aircraft carrier. I work within a stone’s throw of the thing, but I’d never gone inside. The U.S.S. Hornet is a great museum, carrying vintage helicopters and jets within its hold, test equipment for the Apollo missions, freedom to roam many of the corridors lined with information, and even a ghost tour. I wouldn’t buy into those things personally, until I’m standing right by a test Apollo capsule and I’m told to hush up because Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon, has just passed. Eerie. Godspeed, American hero.
At least we still have Buzz Aldrin. That mutha fucka will punch a man in the face for claiming the Apollo missions were faked. Such is the fate deserved by any ignorant disparager of the incredible work, talent and bravery involved in America’s moon landing. The same goes for people who believe humans couldn’t have built the pyramids without help from aliens. Seriously, folks… ancient people were BORED. What else to do but stack some boulders to the sky when you don’t have great shit around to watch like America’s Got Talent or NCIS: CSI: SVU.
Around five, the most important moment of the day arrived: the families were kicked out and the bar opened. The bar was positioned on the airplane elevator that would lift jets from the hull up to the flight deck. You wouldn’t think it would have any problems, until later in the evening when it was evacuated temporarily because it was sinking a bit. Sure, it can lift an F-J2 Fury Jet, but don’t expect it to hold the massive girth of metal beer bellies en masse.
Severed Fifth opened the inside stage. It was a bit worrisome, being that the sound was being amplified within a gigantic tin tub. That said, it sounded better than I expected. They were followed with excellent sets by Fog of War, Witchaven, and Abysmal Dawn. The crowd was digging all of it, but I’m pretty sure the friendly guys in red shirts were none too stoked. I comforted myself knowing that this event was probably helping pay for the physical preservation of a naval relic, if not sullying a few veterans’ memories on the way.
We played next and it was chaos, go figure. Things were running late and we had to cut two songs. Nevertheless, we had a great time on stage and the crowd seemed to be as friendly to their father’s death metal band as always. It was almost like Impaled hadn’t completely slacked off for the last four or five years.
We were followed by Absu, who turned in an excellent set of original American black metal. These guys always destroy. That is, until they were unceremoniously unplugged. I guess things were running later than I thought. Well, a five minute bag pipe intro is bound to cut into your set time a wee bit.
The piecemeal back line hadn’t included a bass head, so I’d lent my Ampeg V-4B to Absu and left it up there for Autopsy. I’m proud to say it sounded bad as fuck for one of my favorite death metal bands of all time. Autopsy slayed it, sounding as sick as ever. By now, things were on time and Autopsy got a full set that pleased all the tigers.
Next up was Philm. That’s when we left to go drink some beers in the parking lot. I don’t know what “novo punk” is and by God I don’t care.
Lastly, Exodus took to the stage. Expecting anything less than a stellar performance from these guys is foolhardy. The came out and ruled. The sound in the tin can was actually exceptionally good for them. Other than a few crass remarks about Neil Armstrong later followed by a string of wretched jokes to fill in some guitar fixing time, I thoroughly enjoyed their set. But boy, oh boy, was I ready to go home after 16 hours of being on that fucking boat.
I thought Slaughter by the Water was a real success, despite the many, many hiccups it had. I’d like to see it continue on the U.S.S. Hornet. With some more experience at the same location, I could see things running smoother with the set times. Maybe they can figure out how to power a second stage with gerbils instead of metal heads. I also appreciated the special booths outside dedicated to Native American health and studies. It was weird to see such a thing next to a grand symbol of American imperialism, but a nice gesture nonetheless.
Besides, where else can you see an F-14A Tomcat like this while hearing pounding guitars… other than while watching Top Gun. R.I.P. Tony Scott, you shoulda waited a week. Your ego was writing checks your body couldn’t cash.
That’s RIGHT, Ross… man. I’m dangerous.
After the whirlwind of events in the past year, how fitting we should wrap up such a significant portion of our lives in a whirlwind event of a weekend. GWAR-B-Q 2012. We’d spent the better part of almost three months this past year with GWAR. Who woulda thought this little, technically unsigned, management-less project would ever go so far? With just a little heart and a lot of latex, we’d found ourselves amidst brethren we never knew we had. Richmond, VA, is rapidly becoming a second home. And a welcome one at that.
We took a red eye flight on Thursday night. I was schnockered, fitfully downing beer and shots of Maker’s Mark because our flight was delayed. The crew at Jet Blue did us fine, charging us next to nothing for all our guitars and such. The robot and the monkey had headed cheaply a few weeks earlier via Amtrak: much cheaper than posting them. We couldn’t disappoint our godfather’s in GWAR with half a show, not after all we’d been through.
GWAR had been inviting us to GWAR-B-Q for some time. Something I’ve learned is that when GWAR says something is going to happen that seems non-sensical, like going on a second tour, playing GWAR-B-Q, it’s not fantasy: it fucking happens. That kind of veracity and stalwartness are rare these days.
We were picked up from the airport by our friend, merch guy for the last tour, and co-prop master Jim Stramel. He’s the multi-talented Director behind the hit tattoo-murder move, “Degenerates Ink.” and an absolute pushover when it comes to letting us trash his abode in Richmond. Ya gotta love a sucker like that. We crashed, hungover, I mean, jet lagged as shit. It was the day before GWAR-B-Q, so the local dive, Strange Matter, had a BEFORE-B-Q show hosted by Mr. Dave Brockie. Some of us scraped our asses off Jim’s couch and made our way there.
We showed up late, but managed to see our friends George and Kent play in their band Savage Attack. Stripped down Pantera and Slayer worship, the boys let out with a… savage attack. One of my favorite moments was when the vocalist said, “We’re not gonna drop names like Dave Brockie,” except ya just did.
Dethrace from New York were one of the more bizarre things I’ve ever seen, a kaiju inspired… something… band. I guess death metal? Kind of. Drum machines, down tuned guitar, but gimme a break. All eyes were on the pentagram-domed front thing. With stuffed shorts. Dancing. They passed out comic books before the show, explaining their origin and what not, but does it matter? It made about as much sense as any Godzilla movie I’ve ever seen. That was the best picture I could get, because despite having such outlandish costumes, they preferred it covered in fog.
Then we had blessed sleep. We had to be at the fest at Hadad’s dirty grungy ’70s style water resort fucking early.
I’m not sure what Sean is pointing at. I’ve never heard of ’em. That’s my story, and I’m kind of sticking to it.
The first band of note was The Burial, Jameson aka Beefcake the Mighty’s pop-punk band. They put on a good performance early in the day and were really the first guys to get the ball rolling. I was really excited to see GWAR spew-tech, our heavy metal maniac, and good friend Germ get on stage and play some damn guit-fiddle. It was weird seeing him on stage and NOT getting beat up by a robot, but he nailed it.
There was some weird noiseness with Mutawawa, but more exciting for me was Antietam 1862. They brought forth the Norwegian style black metal but with an American southern bent. Not in they music, per se, but Antietam is a reference to the bloodiest single battle in American history. More Americans dead than even at Normandy. It was nice to see the corpse paint, wizards, and Norsk shit put aside for a mo’.
At some point around this time, GWAR was doing a meet and greet with the fans. Drummer Jizmak da Gusha apparently, as recounted to me by Beefcake the Mighty, pissed into a water bottle and told anyone who’d swill some that they’d get free beer all day. Three people partook. I’m SO SAD I missed this, said with all due sarcasm. Seriously, GWAR fans… they are another breed. Half.
The fest really picked up as the sun came out. The tigers were having a blast in the water park, disgusting as the water was.
This was a man made lake. The water looked fairly nasty, especially if you count these two fools were jumping in. Our boy Scott and Steve of Whorechurch make quite the strapping pair.
We had our set time, and it was a blast. There was a late start, with some confusion as to why there were no guitar heads on stage. Luckily, we were saved by Antietam 1862. We still had to cut a song to keep our set on time. Unfortunately, no one had told Scott, and I had to yell at him while playing to get his next costume on as he sat comfortably smoking a cigarette. He thought I needed a towel. Please, that’s why God invented sleeves.
We got a lot of grief previously for ripping up a baby on stage (spoiler: it was a toy doll). This time, we smashed a box of kittens (spoiler: some fake fur and blood bags). GWAR has really helped us a lot to become the complete crowd mocking, repugnant assholes that we were meant to be.
Sadly, I missed our friends in Occultist who we’d toured with as we cleaned up our mess. The next band I got to see was our friends from Portland, Murderess. It was a lot of fun hanging out with them all day.
When they started playing clad in bikinis and booty shorts,, it was clear that the crowd didn’t wanna take them seriously. As the first notes started chugging, and that PDX crust-death-punk started blowing eardrums, however, it was a different story. Murderess charged forth and literally had tigers hanging from the rafters air-moshing. They rule. Murderess, I mean. The dudes in the rafters were complete retards.
I had a bit of damper in the day when our new shirts arrived. It’s the old Splatterthrash design, but I had personally redone the separations myself for a new company. And they didn’t look good. Dino smirked at the travesty. I was a bit hurt and disappointed in myself. I was planning a blog post on how to do shirt separations, but alas, I have to go back to the drawing board. We must accept our failures and trudge onwards, otherwise we never get better. Or, just fucking give up. Washed out and crap. These suck, Ross.
After the Casualties and Valiant Thorr, the crowd wanted one thing… GWAR.
The chant was rising forth like bubbling spew from the tip of a cuttlefish. We’d seen a lot of shows touring with GWAR, but this one was special, especially for a dyed-in-the-wool old bohab like myself. The festivities were started off by the main man himself, Mr. Sleazy P. Martini. The nowadays rare appearance of GWAR’s manager is a sure sign that a carnival of chaos is headed your way.
The hits didn’t end with Slaughterama, either… it went double old school with the appearance of Sexicutioner doing his own signature song. I haven’t seen this guy join his fellow scumdogs on stage since the nineties, for fuck’s sake.
It was an amazing performance from GWAR, as always, but with a little more. I’m glad GWAR has evolved to the more tightly honed metal machine they are these days. A little bit of the TSR playing little kid in me, though, misses the old chaos: WAY too many people on stage flopping about like a bunch of half-retarded LARPers.
As with all GWAR shows, the paramedics were helping out a tiger at the end of the show, trying to figure out which blood was real and which was fake. I myself, was exhausted. Sun baked and still jet lagged, we headed out from Hadad’s, a lot of hugs to our benefactors and brethren in GWAR. This was it! The real end! Until the next time…
Some of our camp headed out to the after show back at Strange Matter to see the amazing Ratface from Pittsburgh. I’m sad I missed it, but dammit all, I was tired. I stayed in with our boy Jim and watched some movies while eating garbage and cursing our 6AM flight home.
It was a crazy weekend and the most excellent wrap up for a year with GWAR. We saw the first and last show of this tour cycle. We shared the best of times, we shared the worst of times. These boys were always in my heart as a fan, and now they’re in my heart as friends… or fiends. I can’t decide which.
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| photo by Glenn Cocoa |
Much love… right to the balls.
It’s not often our band is known for doing something nice. In light of the tragedy that befell our local music community, how could we do otherwise? Last Friday, we played one of many benefit shows that have been organized for our fallen comrade, Jef Leppard, and for his recuperating, beloved wife, Nikki.
| written about before that I restored, but in great condition. After the show we spoke about how he wasn’t too happy with his tone. He had an Ampeg SVT-4Pro to match the cab. I explained how he could bi-amp the set up to achieve a fuller sound. The SVT-4Pro has correspondingly named speaker outs to match the two sections of speakers in the 1540HE cabinet. With two speaker cables, the lows can be sent to the 15″ speaker and the highs to the four 10″s and dialed in to match dB levels. I know it’s the propensity of men to charge forward without reading instructions, especially musicians, but sometimes it pays to go over the literature. I’ll be curious to see how it works for him the next time I see them play.
Our set was… well, it was fucking chaos. It’s cute when a couple security guards on stage sit on the sides while I’m forced to push people off the stage, bass in hand. Ah well… those tigers really just hate the fuck out of Sean’s mic stand. They want it DESTROYED. I would like to advise folks who want to jump on stage with us and actually grab a microphone: please learn the lyrics. It’s really embarrassing for all involved when you just scream incoherently along with the beat. On me and Sean’s side of the stage, there was a piece of shit power strip plugged into an extension cord. That was power for our amps. Oi vey, I had no idea the problems it would cause. Sean sounded like he was coming out of a Marshall 900, sans gain, and I was losing a lot of oomph while my power light flickered. That power strip was more like a weakness strip. I was worried about our gear. Autopsy was borrowing this stuff, sight unseen, for their headlining stint. After we played, I had the club switch to a more robust power strip and the problem was solved. That’s just one more thing for the pre-show checklist, I guess. I first remember seeing these Autopsy when I was a scared young teenager going to death metal shows. I had few friends. I remember seeing Chris covered in green slime. I thought that was so fucking cool. Obviously. What an impact those shows had.  And what an impact this one had. Holy fuck balls, they are still so good. And they sounded great on our shit, if I do say so myself. And I think I just did. Autopsy was a great kicker to what was an awesome and fulfilling evening. Even after the show was over, poor Aimee was still giving away prizes to the peeps who bought raffle tickets. Madness! I imagine the show was an extremely successful benefit, but little can defray the loss and suffering… My one, my biggest piece of advice I can give here is to remember the loved ones around you. Give a hug, hold tight, give a kiss (if appropriate, natch). It’s easy to forget in the humdrum day-to-day bullshit. All the folks who came out this night remembered to show the love… just like Nikki and Jef always did. Nikki is still recovering and her medical costs will be enormous. So much has been done, but every little bit helps. If you haven’t been able to, and can, please try and give so that her hard road to hoe is just a little bit less hard. You can donate here: Nikki Davis – Caring Bridge Page Ghoulection 2012: Transmission ElevenIt had been almost five weeks since the end of our headlining tour. I swear, it felt like I had concrete shoes, lugging all that shit out of our practice place and back into the trailer. What the fuck? Is five weeks really that long? We was outta god damn shape. Did we really have to do this again? The metal gods commanded we play festivals in Portland and then San Francisco, and we obeyed! Ja wohl!  That was at our friend’s house, Emily of Ashland. She’s an insanely good tattoo artist and makes these detailed masks by reconstituting the paper of a wasp’s nest as a kind of papier-mâiché. Kinda makes throwing some latex over foam to make a robot seem trite, in comparison.
We decided to ask Emily if we could stay at her place the day before we’d play, and break up our drive to Portland into two days. That stretch of Highway 5 from the Bay Area to PDX just isn’t worth taking all the way overnight. It’s too long and too much bad mojo on that road. You can’t pass a landmark like “Jump Off Joe Creek” and not think bad thoughts. Anyway, Emily was kind and let us check out some of her awesome art, make some breakfast, and shoot arrows in her backyard. This delightful guy was lucky to be out front. He was left bereft of arrows.  We arrived in Portland a bit earlier than necessary. Our name was in lights! We got billed above karaoke… for once.
 How perfectly appropriate we would be playing on Friday the 13th… KnowhutImean?
 Revelations of Death was a two day fest at the Hawthorne Theater. Long time promoter and new club owner Mike Thrasher asked our old friend Jozy of Murderess to take up the reigns of booking again. She got us and Autopsy to headline the two day extravaganza. Sadly, we couldn’t stay the second day for Autopsy, Murderess and the rest, but thumbs up to our pal Jozy for getting us up here, again!
 Those fucking five weeks before this had really made us lazy. Our friends in Weregoat, who were also playing, offered to lend us some cabs. At the time, I thought it was a great idea. When we arrived early and were staging items, like our amps, I immediately regretted it. Here we were, headlining, but we’re too fucking lazy to bring our own shit? I started stressing out. We have enough to do before we start playing, let alone plugging in amps and shit. Eventually, we opted to split the one guitar stack we brought so Sean and Dan could plug in, and I just had to wait. And play a cabinet that was decidedly un-Ampeg. Sad (it turned out fine). Next time, we’re bringing everything just so I can have some piece of mind.
I love when six bands all set up, one in front of the other, and it looks like a god damned NAMM showcase.
 There wasn’t a lot of people when the fest started. Was it the early start time? What? I don’t know, but I much enjoyed the first band. Lord Dying was great. C’mon, folks, some times ya need to show up early, dammit.
 Next up was our buds in Weregoat. Not only are they face-smashing old-skool black metallers, but also quite the carpenters, too. Kevin showed me the lovely joints they’d fashioned for their decidedly evil looking microphone posts. Sometimes it takes order to create chaos.
 And Weregoat are quite the fashionistas, too. Just check out Kevin’s tres chic mink stole!
 Next up was the tour package of Speed Wolf and Witchaven. I’ve enjoyed both of these bands many times before and I did again this night. Speed Wolf brought the yummy meat and potatoes metal while Witchaven nailed the thrash to the wall.
Right before us were the actual old schoolers, PDX’s own Wehrmacht. They blasted through a classic sounding set, but not without plenty of reminiscing ala a 27th year high school reunion. I couldn’t help but notice the fancy dancy custom gear. This weird plexi Fender mod with custom blue LEDs was the first thing I saw, then the cabs with switching blue LEDs. What says old school more than flashing LEDs?
 Before we went on, I felt like I’d lost my sea legs a bit. I barely knew how to set up. But once we came out, it all fell into place. Well, mostly Sean’s mic stand fell… into the crowd. I think they musta hated Sean’s vocals, because all the people attempting stage dives decided to take Sean’s microphone down with ’em.
We called a “girls only” stage dive song, and that was awesome. Apparently, the ladies like to do it in pairs. Moral support? The guys thought they could take on our robot. Seriously, though… leave the robot the fuck alone. I’m sick of having to ACTUALLY hit you. It’s a show, folks, and while we appreciate lots of enthusiasm, the show is FOR you, not WITH you. Leave the poor man behind the curtain alone. He’s fucking TIRED.
 The next day, we made food errands, because we is fat kids. Portland, while being short on people who are non-young, non-white, and non-hip, is plentiful with the good food stuffs. First stop was Voodoo Donuts… the second location, ’cause fuck the tourists. A dozen wasn’t enough. We needed two.
 Next stop, the weird-o vegan health food store that allows us to buy cases of this. That’s just the way it is in Portland; we have turn up the ends of our mustachioes, roll up our pant leg, and be ironic just to get some of my favorite hot sauce. Why the fuck isn’t this amazing shit just at Safeways everywhere for everyone to enjoy, dammit?!?
 On Saturday the fourteenth, we headed back to San Francisco. The next day, we were participating in the second day of the Tidal Wave festival, a tradition in it’s 13th year. Was 13 becoming a theme? Well, it must be good luck, or something, because we had a blast.
 Early in the day, there weren’t that many folks about, but that’s because it was god damned 11:30 AM! It filled up later, but I couldn’t tell ya how many. We were given excellent beer from Prohibition Brewery, a local SF joint that’s just a bit over the top in regards to alcohol content. My senses were altered. Yum.
 Tidal Wave is like a stay-cation in the city. It’s free, ya bring your own booze, and a mass of metal heads eventually congregate, eating and drinking merrily. The sounds of real heavy metal like Slough Feg hits your eardrums. Or these, guys, Haunted by Heroes… seriously, these little dudes are like 11 years old each and they ruled it. It makes me want to steal their lunch money and break their stupid, talented fingers.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDG3tKMv25U?version=3]
Christy and friends in Beercraft were actually sober when they hit the stage early on and set the tone for all the day’s revelry. They jammed some folk metal dedicated to (what else) beer. Gravehill came up from L.A. to fill the quotient of Satanism required at any metal show. The Lord Weird Slough Feg did what they always do… jam it the fuck out and rule. They even have costume changes. Yeah, that’s metal as fuck.
Before we went on, the promoter Tonus had us a sign a seven-string guitar they’d been donated for a raffle. Sean signed it, “Guitar has too many strings: Defective – Return”
And then we went on at the earliest hour that Dan, Dino, Sean and me have ever made it onto stage together. Or at least, it was the most daylight we’d all seen. We jammed it out it out while the local park constabulary, or “nature pig,” as I like to call them, looked on at us… aghast. And that’s how ya do it. Piss off the old people. Oh wait… we are the old people. Well, that’s what the masks hide.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMUQOwsG0Kk]
It was another good weekend with the boys, but that was it for now. I forgot how much shit we had and kept in the trailer, as I unpacked and watched our once mighty loft bow under all the weight. Fucking christ. Please, someone call Hoarders and let us please play in a normal band where I’m not stained red at the end of the night!
 Nah, fuck it. It’s too much fun.
Ghoulection 2012: Transmission TenChaos in Tejas is aptly named. I enjoyed a Saturday of watching loads of punk rock, but missed much more because of bands canceling, schedules changing, and sometimes just because the heat made me lazy. Saturday’s best band had to be Anti-Sect, who blazed through their set at Mohawk like seasoned pros. On Sunday, we prepped for our second show at the fest. My armbands were now an impressive showcase of summer fun. we’d done back in January. I also had to grab extra cabs from our space to relieve Toxic Holocaust from back line duty.
 The show was a Tankcrimes endeavor, starting early with Fucktard and then Theories. Ex-Toxic Narcotic members went all wicked hardcore for their Bostonian-driven set as Opposition Rising. This night was also graced with punk rock from Japan (as they reminded us often) as Forward made their mark. Then Toxic Holocaust got the circle pit raging for their first appearance at our little local landmark.
Finally, we were up. As I was getting ready, I remembered my wireless had run out of batteries. A wireless guitar set up is a funny thing to be worrying about at a punk club, but such is the way our theatrics have grown. We need a floor free of wires. I ran to the liquor store down the street and was set up again lickity split. The main reason I mention this is that while running, almost all of my keys slipped off the carabiner attached to my belt loop. What the fuck? I lost all my keys except… the completely irreplaceable trailer keys that only I had a copy of. Phew! This was all discovered later, mind, but a hurtful reminder I should have spare batteries in my case.
I thought San Diego was a battle… they can’t compare to those animals in Berkeley! It was invigorating as much as it was frustrating. Stage divers all night (on a stage that says “no stagediving”), mics getting smashed, monsters getting punched, blood going everywhere… it was completely insane. Well, I did what I could to discourage the lunacy during two songs where we have characters on stage that are apt to fall over, but it was no use. These numbskulls couldn’t be reasoned with.
 By the end of the set, I was pulling kids on stage and did my own flip out into the crowd while feedback wailed. Fuck it, baby, that’s rock ‘n’ roll, and we were finally home. Thanks to all those who put us up, put us out, and put us on. We’ve got a few more shows coming up through the year, but it’s time for a break. Nothing can compare to this tear of touring and traveling we’ve been on. The ups, the downs, the fun, the tragedy, the nonsense… it’s absolutely mind-blowing, the amount of love we’ve received and the kinship we’ve shared.
What else is there? Live for metal, die for… nah.
Just live for metal. And bang on.
Ghoulection 2012: Transmission NineMaryland Death Fest has become the premiere festival for extreme music in the United States. And there is a reason: it’s fucking fun.
There is an air of lunacy, frivolity, and fraternity at MDF. Even the security (whom I’m sure others have stories of being too brutal) were friendly to the many crowd surfers, cradling them like babies and guiding them back to the crowd while spraying them with refreshing water. It was hot as blazes in Baltimore, but the fest was as cool as ever. One of the biggest highlights for me was finally, FINALLY getting to see Haemorrhage. I’ve been pen pals with Luisma for near as long as I’ve been in a band. Impaled has done a split CD with them. We’ve hung out in Madrid while Impaled was on tour, but never played together. We cancelled a festival appearance in 2003 in Europe when our guitar player quit that they were also playing. They cancelled an appearance at MDF years later that we were playing. But finally, I got to be right up front and head-bang with these Spanish maniaxe.  Some other highlights included Infernal Stronghold, The Devil’s Blood, Cough, and Bethlehem. Of course, I saw much more than that and loved a ton of it. The organizers Evan and Ryan do an excellent job of picking bands and putting on a varied show in terms of metal and punk music, but homogenous in terms of high quality. Then to have so many friends gathered in one place year after year enjoying music together; that’s the real highlight. After two days off of enjoying MDF, it was time to move on. We were joining up again with Occultist in Richmond, VA at Strange Matter for a Monday show. Our van’s AC must be top notch, because we didn’t notice the heat until it punched us in the face upon arrival. This was going to be a long day. The show had something like 10 or 11 bands, many finding their way back on tour after MDF. I lost count on account of my heat fever. We enjoyed a lot of punk like Marrow, doomers Cough, grinders in Nashgul, the excellent blackness of Dragged Into Sunlight, and our buddies in Occultist. If you ever wanted to enjoy the benefits of a sauna while listening to good tunes, Strange Matter was the place to be. Even some of our friends in GWAR came out to join in the fun, albeit in their human disguises like some kind of Transformers: Pretenders.  Earlier, though, I had set up shop in the prep kitchen in an attempt to fix my amp by replacing the internal fuse. I was sweating like a pig as I prayed this was all I’d have to do to get my monster breathing again.  It turned out to be hard work. The internal fuse needed to be soldered in. Guess what kind of metal doesn’t like to stick to solder? Yup, the metal on a fuse. Fuck my life, it took forever with what I had to finally get a couple blobs to stick to either side of the fuse and then bond that to the leads. I was ever so proud of myself.  It was all for naught. My amp made a tiny buzzing noise and then that was it. It never lit up, it never did anything. There was something else wrong with it. I am so SAD!!!!! The repair seems to be beyond my meager skills and this makeshift workbench. Fuuuuuudge. No more V4B on this tour. We played a very rough set, but plowed through in the 115° club. When we finished, I poured water all over myself and laid down on the concrete outside. One of our friends in GWAR walked by and called us pussies. I do love those guys so. The next day we headed to a local Richmond stage shop, Backstage LLC. I still needed a speaker for my cabinet and Guitar Center and Sam Ash chain stores are garbage holes that don’t carry things like… speakers. What the fuck? Backstage came through with the speaker in stock, a 15″ Eminence Delta. Backstage also had an OEM antenna replacement for Sean’s Sennheiser ew 172 G3 wireless unit. Sean had misplaced one of the antennae and them shits didn’t work anymore. He’d been wired for the last two shows. Sennheiser suggested a work around via their Twitter account with a scanner antenna from Radio Shat that had the necessary BNC Male connector (thanks, guys!). Instead, we lucked out and got the real replacement part. Raleigh was next on the tour with a show at King’s. I got to set up my next workbench to replace the blown-out speaker in my cab.  Classy. The speaker had originally been soldered to the input leads, but I attached some blade-style female connectors to the leads for easy, solder-less connection. The speakers are two 8Ω attached in parallel, meaning each speaker terminal has a direct connection to the jack. Wired this way, it makes for a 4Ω total load, pretty standard for bass cabs. In series, the signal would go through each speaker to the next, and this would make for a 16Ω load, not something much desired for the power you want pushing a bass speaker. Is there mnemonic? I’m gonna make one up now: the Ohms fell in parallel, and in series… do the opposite. Shit. That turdy mnemonic needs some polishing. The show in Raleigh was somewhat unfortunate in that our show was booked opposite another with our new friends in Cough and Dragged Into the Sunlight. This would go on for the next three fucking days. That sucks! If only we’d known or a promoter had checked, maybe we could have done some combining. Ah well… they were so close, people could walk to both shows if they wanted. We still had a fun show in Raleigh with a good local grind band, Priapus, opening. It was followed by two-piece power violence upstarts Backslider, then Occultist, then us. These two guys in the club didn’t like our set much, though.  All the bands from both shows were invited to the house of the Primitive Ways folks, the promoters of this event. It was bit of a cluster with a big party of folks, three vans at the end of a dead-end street, some neighborhood domestic violence, and then an impromptu bluegrass crusty train-hoppin’ band jam. Our show in Atlanta had been a little fucked. The venue we were supposed to play had been shut down and the show got moved to a basement. This was going to be some ol’ school punk-off, something we haven’t done in awhile. Our show had grown quite a bit in terms of extraneous theatrics; would we pull it off?  Mangled started the evening nicely with some medical-style grind and death. Next up was Hot Graves from Florida, who excelled at grind with a good amount of humor. Occultist nailed it, as always. Next up was us, and it was insane. People rushing at us, hanging from the beams, being covered in blood… mad, I tell you, MAD! A cop helmet went flying and undid the hastily taped together extension cord that was powering everything, and greatest American hero Scott Bryan saved the day… by plugging us back in. After a furious set, Dino called last song as he was about to pass out from the heat. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfdRnqJVgzA]
We ended up all staying at the palatial new abode of the guitar player from Mangled. It was like a McMansion that was a victim of the housing bubble, with three or four bathrooms, tons of bedrooms, a huge kitchen island, and a closet with a cage door on it for the gimp. When he told us what he paid, moving to Atlanta seemed like a good idea. Except for all those other reasons to not move to Atlanta. We stayed the night, and the next morning Occultist, Hot Graves, and us all met at a Waffle House to enjoy the finer things in life… together.  Mobile, Alabama cancelled our show just a week or two prior to the show date. Hot Graves was taking care of these two last shows on our tour with Occultist, and they’d managed to secure us a venue inside a vegan restaurant in Pensacola called Sluggo’s. With time and everything else against this show would it be a success?  Sorry, this is no M. Night Shyalamabanana twist story; the show was pretty lame. I hate to complain, but we were asked to not to do blood or anything messy. There goes half our fun. I believe there were 15 paying customers. They were 15 of the coolest mother fuckers ever, don’t get me wrong. They even moshed as much as one could in the back lounge of a hippy restaurant. Alas, the anemia of the evening was felt across the board. We still had fun with Hot Graves and Occultist. It was time to bid them adieu as we were driving all night to Austin for the first of our two dates at Chaos in Tejas. Occultist were great, and I’m sure they’ll be kicking ass on longer tours and making some excellent releases. In the meantime, poor vocalist Kerry needs to find some better razors for tour.  Onward through the night we went towards Tejas. Sometime in the middle of the day after passing through Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana, Jim pulled over to a rest-stop for a quick piss. We headed into this “Texas Welcome Center.” What the fuck. It was some kind of massive community outreach thing going on. They were giving away pizza, sodas, cupcakes… there were about eight old timey cowboys showing off real guns (and real bullets, I think)… there was a guy with a live owl perched on him… cops giving talks about drugs… a dude who let me hold a young alligator… all this free shit made me realize Texas wasn’t as afraid of socialism as I thought. I used to have a problem with Texas’ corporate welfare, dominance of religion over science, and corrupt gerrymandering politics, but I think a free slice of pizza and a cupcake has really made me change my mind. We arrived at the Mohawk in Austin, Texas, approximately five minutes before doors opened. We loaded in, and a band was playing 10 minutes later. We were on in an hour, and we hadn’t even parked the car yet. It was fast and furious. I think that translated into our set. After a rousing jam by Mauser, we crammed onto stage and did our full show for the early evening audience to much warm reception. A quick load out followed and then finding parking in a horribly disorganized and overwhelming downtown Austin. And then… we got drunk. Very drunk. It was awesome. Our buds in Municipal Waste capping off the evening made it even more awesome, along with seeing a grip of old friends from Texas and elsewhere.  The bulk of our group convened at the hotel, drunken a little by booze, but more so by weariness. A late night discussion evolved into a three-way yelling match. About what? Good question. We are still scratching our heads, trying to figure out what we were fighting about. Sometimes these things happen. And sometimes I storm out of a hotel room with all my shit into the hot Austin evening and call my friend Kim Rae pissed off and taxi to her apartment and stay up all night drinking champagne and talking shit with her and her fiancee and then crashing out on her futon. Sometimes. 14 or so hours later, I woke up, much more refreshed and relaxed than I had been in days. It’s not always rosy on the road. Later that day: “I think we were too drunk and tired to discuss anything.” “Yeah, I don’t even know what that was about.” “Sorry.” “Yeah, sorry.” And that’s how childish musicians can act like grown ups once in awhile when they’ve been friends this long. Doktor Ross Sewage |
