Currently I am stuck on a flight from Chicago to Seattle. Listening to Grief by Thobbing Gristle. Chicago was just the connecting airport. I flew out from Pittsburgh on a plane that held about 50 people. I was reading Drew Daniels’ treatise on Gristle’s 20 Jazz Funk Greats. The plane was getting knocked around enough to make a few drops of piss leak into my shorts. I’m waiting on drink service so I can get my whiskey on.
I spent the last two weeks traveling to various Midwest and Eastern destinations. First week was spent visiting various friends and family. The second week was spent hanging out with, driving and guiding Japan’s Coffins at the tail end of their first US shows. I connected with Coffins and The Endless Blockade in Pittsburgh where they were playing their last show together after a week of shows in Boston, NYC, Philly, Richmond and Allentown. We met up at the house of Missy who helps run Pittsburgh’s Mr. Roboto Project, the location of that night’s show.
Blockade dudes were tired out but Coffins wanted to go out and maximize their time in the US. I took em record shopping at Brave New World (maybe it’s not called that anymore?), got em some food and then we met back at the house to caravan to the show.
Slices opened the show to an eager and enthusiastic audience packed into the small space, the incomparable Mantooth on vokills – solid fucking set by those natives. They were followed by the highly anticipated and mighty Hellnation. Insane 1000MPH devastation and anger served cold and raw. A band not to be fucked with and yet, completely humble and likeable guys, who kindly drove Coffins’ gear to Maryland, due to lack of space in my van, where both bands were to play next.
The Endless Blockade were next and by this time they’re a finally tuned machine. Nobody these days does powerviolence (sorry, neo-powerviolence) quite so well except maybe Iron Lung who are a different beast altogether. They mix in a sickly dose of noise and blaze through their set of mostly newer songs in the span of maybe 15 minutes. Coffins roadie Ryo joins them at the end on vocals during the set closing wall of noise barrage.
Coffins is set to close the show and for me it’s special having been working with the band for about two years now yet only meeting them in person and seeing them live for the first time that day. They do not disappoint, recreating their skullkrushing guitar sound through songs from the first two albums and demo including “Sacrifice To Evil Spirit”, “Slaughter Of Gods” and “Blood and Bone”. Newer track “Mortification To Ruin” manages to be even more pummeling live. The crowd of mostly punks and a few metals seem equally enthusiastic. I for one have a big smile throughout as one does seeing a favorite band for the first time.
That night Coffins and I crashed at my mom’s pad out in the Pittsburgh suburbs. The next day it was time to drive to Baltimore and spend an oppressive three days at the Maryland Deathfest. I was stoked at the chance to get to see Coffins on a bigger stage with a larger crowd, and the Fest was good enough to pay for Coffins flights to the US and make the other shows possible. But not so stoked at the prospect of 3 days of primarily 3rd generation Cannibal Corpse and Dying Fetus clones. Needless to say that was the majority of what occurred so I’ll just recount the highlights here.
Coffins are a three-piece but with their roadie they are four. The roadie, Ryo, is the only one who can really speak any English and his is fairly limited too but we managed to make our points when necessary and communicate them to the other members, Uchino, Koreeda and You.
We stayed at a hotel several miles from the venue in Baltimore since I made reservations kind of last minute. Apparently everyone else did too cuz there were many bands at that hotel including my old buddies in Impaled. We dropped our shit off there upon arrival and headed to the venue where things were just about to get under way. The band got free admission for all three days but Ryo and I had to pay the $90 3 day ticket. FUCK! Definitely not something I would have done had I not been escorting Coffins.
Skarp opened the show with a powerful set, Renae decked out in a white summery dress to go with the hot Baltimore weather; a far cry from the usual ragged crusty attire that made her instantly stick out in the sea of black clad fest-goers. I believe they were a last minute addition to the fest after several other bands had to drop out for various reasons. Always good to see my friends in Skarp who are on an insane two and a half month tour.
Phobia also is on tour and played Friday as well. Solid set as always and my Japanese buddies were particularly excited being long time Phobia fanatics and not having seen them in Japan for many years.
Not much else of note occurred on Friday that I can recall. I spent a lot of time outside knowing I’d likely be stuck at a merch table for much of the rest of the weekend.
Saturday we arrived at the venue by noon. Coffins was playing at 8:30 p.m. We brought all the merch they still had left but we had nowhere to set it up. No one gave us any details about selling merch or if we even could. Luckily for us this guy Mike who played in a band called Divine Eve back in the early 90s, an influential band for Coffins, let us share his table. The shirt printer he works for, Sick Seranades, prints Coffins merch so it made sense. He and I switched off doing shifts at the table so Coffins could enjoy the fest and hang out. This worked out well and we made about $700 in merch on Saturday for Coffins. The table was set up in the main room where the bands played so we were able to watch bands while working the table. Most merch tables were set up in another separate room away from the show so we lucked out, especially with the merch area being elevated about a foot off the floor giving us an obstructed stage view when on our feet.
When it was time for Coffins to play they, Ryo and I met backstage and got their gear up on stage as Disfear was getting theirs off. They tuned up, turned on and got right to pummeling the eager crowd. After so many fast as fuck bands Coffins’ Autopsy/Hellhammer pace was a welcome change, adding some direly needed variety. The crowd showed great respect to the visiting Japanese death doom lords fistpumping and headbanging like true maniacs giving a response worthy of a headliner. I was several drinks in by that point and watching from the side of the stage was brilliant. It was so fucking heavy! Doom Death Destruction Over Baltimore!
About 4 songs in Uchino walks over to me, looking at me with paranoid eyes. We can’t talk so I’m trying to figure out what’s wrong. I look at his guitar and see a string dangling from the fretboard. He’d popped one, and the look in his eyes told me he didn’t bring in any extras. OH SHIT. So I’m frantically asking people backstage for a string but no one is stepping up. Finally the guitar player from Australia’s Fuck I’m Dead steps up and offers up his guitar. He hands it to Uchino and he tunes it up (well down actually) and Coffins gets back to playing. It takes a few minutes to recapture the momentum, but by the end of the first song post-breakage things are all good again. Ryo jumps in on vocals during the second to last song adding some extra movement and aggression. I can’t speak for the crowd, but with the set ending after 35 minutes or so, I was left wanting a lot more. Thankfully we’re already working on West Coast for 2009.
Aside from Coffins, or maybe along with them, gotta give the best show of the Fest award to Ghoul. The Bay Area maniaxe pulled out all the stops with several different costumed characters adding to the theatrics of the masked executioner’s thrash attack. Although I don’t live in the Bay anymore, I’ve seen Ghoul many times in the past and they just get better and better. It was great to get a taste of home so far away, and show that as usual, the Bay Area always represents with the best shit and the best bands. They had the pit going about as crazy as I saw it the whole weekend, proving yet again that Thrash will always be the best form of metal in the live environment.
Poor Monstrosity. As far as the early 90s death metal bands go they were always sort of second class citizens, never reaching the heights of their fellow Floridians like Obituary and Deicide. Indeed their biggest claim to fame is probably that they provided Cannibal Corpse with their second vocalist George Fisher. And at Deathfest the poor bastards had to follow Ghoul. About half the crowd dispersed by that point and with the exception of the very pumped vocalist even the Monstrosity dudes seemed to be phoning it in. Kind of a bummer after such a great Ghoul set.
Saturday’s headliners were non-corpsepainted British black metallers Anaal Nathrakh, or Anal Mathrock as I prefer to call them. Back in 2000 or so when I was working for NeCRAPolis Records in Fremont I recall that Matt Harvey, Jason Balsells and I were very stoked on this band’s album they’d put up on MP3.COM. It was called The Codex Necro, and eventually saw release through some label, and remains the crowning jewel in what to my ears is an otherwise fairly average catalog of albums. The depleted crowd that remained was excited however and they ripped through songs that mostly bled together. The clean vocals were just horrid sounding like Maniac from Mayhem’s attempts at clean style, but even worse, and I found myself wishing they just stuck to the harsh stuff. Why do so many metal bands think that “evolving” means trying to sing like some emo band? Still, an OK set, but it seemed like a lot of people were too tired to be bothered after 12 fucking hours of mostly shitty death metal.
Sunday was characterized by more of the same. A lot of the time I spent not working the merch table I spent dozing in the van. Highlights of the day included Impaled’s abbreviated set, which for reasons still unknown to me was cut short by Deathfest, pissing off Ross to no end. Dead from Germany played an amazing set of Carcass inspired comedic grind intensity. Those dudes were fucking A plus guys to hang out with as well. And the weekend was closed out by the occasionally reformed Nuclear Assault whose records I was always lukewarm about but live were pretty great fun. Maybe it was the alcohol kicking in, but those 40+ year old dudes thrashed about like young dudes giving a good lesson in violence to cap the weekend.
By this time the Coffins crew and I are exhausted, so we go immediately back to the hotel and crash out. The next morning I drive them straight to the airport and we took our final pictures and said our goodbyes until they hopefully come back to the US west coast in the spring of ’09. All in all an exhausting, often tedious weekend but ultimately a successful one for my Japanese brothers in Coffins.
The Coffins tour was the culmination of a lot of work for me, but would not have been possible without the help of many people most notably Andrew Nolan (Andy Stick if you prefer) of The Endless Blockade. Andrew booked the whole tour with the exception of Deathfest and made sure Coffins didn’t need to do much besides show up and play.
Also gotta say thanks to Quinn Dillon for picking up the band at the airport and receiving all their merch at his house, Christina from Pittsburgh for driving the van around, and continuing to drive for The Endless Blockade. Mike from Sick Serenades/Divine Eve for the merch help. Brian from Watchmaker and all the other people who let the Coffins dudes crash at their place. Evan and Ryan of Maryland Deathfest, and anyone else who helped. It was a great time for all involved and the Coffins guys went home without losing any money and hopefully gained some new friends and fans.
Anyway folks after all that, I’m too tapped out on brutality to review any material for you, so I’ll get back to the normal bullshit next month. ‘Til then…
Don’t Try, 120 State Ave NE #136, Oly, WA 98501, dontfuckingtry.blogspot.com
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