4 posts tagged “crust”
Amebix, Poison Idea, Nux Vomica, and Lebanon at The Hawthorne Theater, Portland, Oregon, 5/24/09
It took a bit longer than usual to drive to this show, but I felt that it was worth the extra traveling time. So did Devon, who came along for the ride. We stayed with Howard, who lives walking distance from the Theater, and who decided to come along to the show as well. Good thing for him it wasn't quite sold out when we arrived. Having friends like Howard in Portland provided the needed extra impetus needed to go through with the trip, so it was nice that he managed to make it into the show with us.
We got there late, missing Lebanon's set and the beginning of Nux Vomica. The Hawthorne is interesting in that the main floor area is divided into an all ages section (near the stage) and a 21 and over section (at the back). Bouncers monitored the flow of traffic between the sections.
Nux Vomica were ripping through some high speed crust punk when we entered, with heavy guitars and shrieking vocals. The singer was also pounding on a floor tom (I think - it was kind of hard to see from our vantage point) and the dual drum attack added a little extra oomph to the music. The songs were dynamic, sometimes shifting gears to include quieter passages, but usually steamrolling along angrily. Their set ended with some half-heard thank yous from the singer, and was followed by a short wait while Poison Idea got situated.
The last time I saw Poison Idea was in the mid eighties, at The Farm in San Francisco. Since then, they've broken up and reformed a few times, their guitarist, Pig Champion, has died, and their drummer, Thee Slayer Hippy, was arrested for a series of pharmacy break-ins. I never really followed the band, and have always been sort of ambivalent about them. Still, I was curious to see them again. Their set, as it turned out, did nothing to change my original opinion. They played competently, although their singer, Jerry A., seemed kind of out of it. Devon opined that he seemed to be on medication, and had perhaps been drinking before the show. I'd have to agree with his assessment of the situation. During the set, he often pointed the microphone at the audience, and to my ears the audience members were doing a better job of singing than he was. Towards the end, a torch appeared in his hands and a large burst of flame momentarily lit the whole venue. I'm not sure if he was fire breathing or what, but it sure got the audience's attention for a moment. Oh well.
We moved forward for Amebix. What followed was every bit as stunning as their set in San Francisco a few months ago. They played nearly all the same songs, with the addition of Nobodys Driving (I don't think they did that one in S.F...). They just seem to have so much more depth than the majority of the bands in this genre. It might be because Amebix has a variety of influences outside the genre, and that their message, if they could be said to have a message, is one of hope. Sure, their songs wear the trappings of apocalypse, and their music conveys an almost palpable anger at times (and an exquisite sense of doom), but I find myself inspired and uplifted when it's all over. The conviction behind the words, and the unwillingness to compromise, makes all the difference.
I noticed more people singing along in Portland than I had in San Francisco. I was one of them, of course, and there was an incredible sense of cameraderie there in front of the stage. People were damn happy to be there.
After the gig, people milled around outside the venue. Some (no doubt the ones who got thrown out for being unmanageably drunk) were cursing the Hawthorne. Others just sat and enthused about the show. One guy, with his clothes falling off and a big smile on his face, talked about what a great week he'd had. "I saw the Meatmen, and (damn, I forget the second band he'd mentioned), and Amebix. And I just huffed a bunch of ether!"
By this time, the local police were getting grumpy and using their loudspeakers to encourage people to move along.
"Because you're loitering, that's why!"
We got the hint and went to the donut shop.
My first concert, back in 1979, was Ted Nugent and the Scorpions at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. My dad took me and a friend, and I remember him being shocked at the blatant drug use, and I remember him not letting us move up close to the stage, probably for fear of losing us in the crowd. The Scorpions were great, probably because at that time they still played songs off their earlier albums. I remember them playing We'll Burn the Sky, Steamrock Fever, and at least one other old song. Too bad I didn't get to see them when Uli was still in the band, but this was the next best thing. Ted Nugent, who was touring for the "Scream Dream" album, came swinging, Tarzan style, down onto stage wearing nothing but a loincloth, which in retrospect, is a visual approximation of his politics. I don't remember a whole lot else about the show...
Fast forward to the Spring of 2008. Last Friday, I took my two oldest (step)children, with a friend, to see their first proper concert. I'd told them about Gilman St awhile back, and it had gotten them interested enough to want to go see a show there. Gilman St. continues to be an all-ages venue, with no alcohol or other drugs allowed. Add that to the community center feel and the overt social activism of the place, and you've got a great place to take kids to a first concert.
That said, I wasn't quite sure that Extreme Noise Terror was the best band for them to start with, but I'd had their records since the late eighties and had never gotten a chance to see them on stage, so I figured what the heck.
It was kind of cute the way the kids got all prepared to go, spraying their hair with some purple substance and applying eyeliner (of all things). Their friend C even rustled up a ripped Ramones shirt and a spiked bracelet.
We got to the club in the middle of Pillager's set. Our first stop was at the club's "stoar" to get earplugs for the kids, and by the time we got out into the main space, the band was playing their last song. It's just as well, because they weren't very good - they played generic thrash metal, with (probably thankfully) unintelligable lyrics. The kids took it all in stride, but stuck close to me. Nate would later claim that Pillager was his favorite.
The next band, Trap Them, was a little better, sounding more like an early Earache Records grindcore band, complete with requisite blastbeats and throat-tearing vocals. To my ears, the unchanging vocal style got a little annoying after awhile, probably due to the fact that the singer favored shrieking over growling. The kids jumped up and down and shook their fists in the air.
A.D.T. followed with a more traditional hardcore punk sound, eschewing metal in favor of straight-forward hardcore aggression. Sometime during either Trap Them or A.D.T., Alex kept asking to be allowed to go closer to the stage. I found myself in the role that my own father had played back in '79, except now there was a better reason for it - the Pit (I've always hated the word "mosh", so I won't use it here... oops, I just did. Sorry.). When you've got a bunch of punks flailing around in a counterclockwise circle and slamming into the people jumping around at the front of the stage, it probably isn't a good idea to let your kids get too near. I did, at one point, sit them down and explain the Pit to them - you know, things like how to keep your arms up in case somebody careens into you, and how standing near the pit is likely to result in having somebody careen into you, and how, despite the danger, it's a good place to stand because it has the best air circulation due to the constant movement of the dancers. It was funny to have to explain all of this. It was even funnier, later on, when Alex was looking at the little buttons for sale from one of the vendors (the same one who was on hand for the A.P.P.L.E. show from a few posts ago), and he turned to me and asked, "what does the "A" in the circle stand for?" The guy selling the buttons thought that was pretty funny, and even ended up giving the kids some free anti-drug patches (Punk, not Junk). Browsing the buttons at the same time as Alex was one of the singers for Extreme Noise Terror, who pointed out his favorite button to the kids - the one that stated, "I am not a pacifist!"
It was kind of fun to get to show all of this to the kids. I think it's good that they're exposed to this kind of thing too, since subcultures and countercultures always run deeper than mainstream culture does. Knowing about them gives you more of a complete picture, I think.
Next up was Stormcrow (named after the Deviated Instinct song?) and they sounded a bit like Deviated Instinct, or possibly Christdriver. They played downtuned crust metal, with growled vocals and long, chugging songs, occasionally broken up with quieter passages. One song sounded for all the world like Black Sabbath's Electric Funeral. I wouldn't mind hearing more by them.
Extreme Noise Terror took the stage and ripped through a relatively short set, which included a few older songs (Show Us You Care and Bullshit Propaganda come to mind), as well as some more recent ones. The newer songs had a bit more of a metal/grindcore influence than the older ones, but it all whipped by in a whirlwind of noise. They still have two vocalists (although from reading their website, it seems that one left for awhile and then came back), which allows them to be even noisier. It's refreshing to hear a band so unrelenting in their delivery, and sound like they really mean it. At the time they formed, few bands took things to this extreme, and now, with the band members in their forties (I assume), they still hold their own against the much younger bands they share the genre with. At one point, one of the vocalists said that the Gilman St. crowd reminded him of crowds the band played in front of back in the U.K. during the eighties. I guess I wasn't the only forty-something being nostalgic that night. The crowd was having a great time, bouncing and circling and doing all of the things that punks do. You'd think that being punk, they'd mix it up every once in awhile - I know we used to back in the eighties, with leap-frog pits, big-wheel pits, and all manner of silliness that got Gilman St. branded the "romper room" of punk clubs. It's a shame that the silliness is largely missing now.
Of course, strangely enough, a couple of members of one of the bands most known for their silliness back in the early days of Gilman, Stikky, popped up the evening before playing for jazz/reggae band I've Never Been to Brisbane. Todd and Chris Wilder (drums and bass - Chris having switched from guitar to bass since his Stikky days) have joined forces with Andrew, who used to play in another silly band, Nasal Sex. It was great to see the Wilder brothers again - I think it's been at least fifteen years since I'd seen them. And here they were playing in a place called the Sonoma Chicken Coop, with an enthusiastic toddler grooving away on the dance floor. The music was nice, in a laid back sort of way, and it was a surreal treat to see them playing it, considering their musical past. That said, they were jealous that I was going to Extreme Noise Terror. Once a punk, always a punk, I guess.
As for the kids, who aren't actually punk, they had a grand old time shaking their fists in the air and whipping their heads around in time to the music at Gilman. They all liked (or claimed to like) Extreme Noise Terror, but C said he liked Stormcrow best, and Nate, like I mentioned earlier, said he liked Pillager best. Alex favored Extreme Noise Terror, as did I. Stormcrow was a close second, though.
I hardly saw anybody I knew. Back in the eighties, when I was hanging out there every weekend, I knew more people than I didn't, but on Friday I only ran into one person I knew - Harold O., who used to play in Hellhound, and has most recently been doing time in D.R.I., and his new band Kill Kops. He works security at Gilman.
There's nothing quite like good Swedish punk, so if you're like me and you like bands such as Asta Kask, Strebers, and their ilk, check out www.swedishpunk.com This site is also helpful if you're like me and can't actually understand Swedish, because it's all in English. Yay! Now if only there would be similar sites for Italian and Japanese punk.
Speaking of punk, I noticed on the Amebix myspace page that they actually got together and re-recorded some of their songs for an upcoming DVD project - this occurring shortly after bassist/vocalist Rob wrote a post explaining why they wouldn't ever play again. Go figure... Amebix are one of my all-time favorite bands, and definitely my favorite band in the whole crust/punk genre, so I'm overjoyed that there is a bit of activity on the Amebix front. I even commented on the post there, breaking my usual myspace silence (yeah, dammit, I have a myspace page, but pretty much only for band bulletins on cd releases and tour dates...), and surprisingly got a comment back from Rob - it turns out he's been here in Los Gatos (of all places). Granted, it was ten years ago, but the comment gave me a music geek moment. He's currently a swordsmith on the Isle of Skye. Punk!
Maybe I'll be able to keep on top of things this year... Of course, I write some variation of that sentiment at the beginning of every year. Hasn't happened yet.
Anyway, the first cd I got this year was given to me by my old friend Devon Morf - his band's new cd, actually...
Conquest for Death "Beyond the Hidden Valley" cd (an admittedly biased mini-review)
I love that this sounds like European hardcore, circa 1985. Truth to tell, I don't by a lot of punk cds anymore, but when I do get one, it always has more impact than it would have at the height of my punk consumption during the eighties and early nineties. It sort of stands out amongst all of the non-punk I buy. Anyway, this is fast hardcore with shouted vocals, good lyrics, and just the right kind of frantic energy. Also, they're probably the most ambitious band I know when it comes to touring. They just recently got back from a tour of Africa, and the Middle East looks to be next. Devon even wants to play Antarctica. Buy this so they can support their touring habit.
The first record of the year was...
Crow "Bloody Tear" lp
Since my nickname is Crow, I'd been wanting to check out these guys for awhile. Good thing I actually like them. This is Japanese crust/metal/punk, with heavy, grinding rhythms, growled/shouted vocals, and stark, black and white graphics featuring the usual genre staples of dead bodies, demons, guys with swords, etc. One song even sounds like it has overtone singing thrown into the mix. Hard to tell though. Good for upsetting the neighbors and scaring the kids.
