Iron Lung, No Statik, Acephalix, Merdoso

This was the Prank Records showcase of some of the label's local bands at Balazo on Thursday, January 19. It was also kind of the unofficial kickoff party for the Short, Fast, and Loud anniversary fest at Gilman the next two days.

The first band up was Merdoso who played such a short set that I didn't get a picture of them. They were a solid D-beat band that I'm going to be seeing again in the future.


No Statik killed. My favorite local band. They should really be at the point of being a headlining band at a show this size but they consistently open shows or play second. That's cool but I'm going to a show where they are on the bill because of them at this point.


Acephalix was a weird choice of band for this bill because they are such a metal band now that some of the crusto kids don't like them. They play fast so at least it wasn't like they interrupted the flow of the night too bad. They were rad as usual. Dan is really getting to be a fan of running into me when they play. I told him that one of these days I'm going to headbutt him and he seemed stoked on the idea.



Iron Lung are rather amazing live. I've seen them enough times now that I've got their current set pretty much down and kind of want them to play some of the other songs, they have enough.

Neurosis, Saviours, US Christmas

No pictures this time because it was at Great American Music Hall but with this post I will be caught up with the blog (I'm a bad blogger). The show went down on Sunday, Jan. 16 and Neurosis fucking killed it.

I got hooked up with a free ticket from a friend of a friend who had bought an extra one for each night and got canceled on. US Christmas was playing when I got there and I thought they were all right at first but they steadily broke me down. It was very ambient stony doomish music that sounded like a hippie version of Neurosis without any of the aggression. They had a violin player and a dude dressed in some East Indian cultist outfit and face tattoos playing tambourine. I just couldn't hang and went outside where half the people I know in the Bay Area punk scene were hanging out.

Next up was Saviours who I've seen about five times too many. They aren't terrible but they always kind of impressed me as hipsters who saw Metalocalypse and decided to start a death metal band. It's just pretty generic and vapid and they are always opening for an awesome band that they should be ashamed to darken a stage before. Once again, outside was where the party was at. Some guy walked by and said "hey what's up Jason" to me because I was standing next to Jason Stormcrow's girlfriend and he's a fat dude with dreads and a beard too. We had a good laugh about it.

I had never seen Neurosis before and to tell you the truth I'm not very familiar with their catalog, although I've always been stoked to hear them come on the stereo at a party. I was standing next to a Redding friend when they took the stage and the guitar player came out looking exactly like our friend Curt from Redding who has played in a bunch of bands. Our chuckling was cut short as Neurosis proceeded to blow our minds. They played for about two hours which is just a little too long for my fat ass to stand in one place but it was sufficiently incredible that I didn't mind much. They went off, the playing was excellent, the projected film behind them was disturbingly trippy, and the intensity made me want to punch somebody. I am converted.

Hammerlock, The Shankers, Shivaree

This one's a twofer. I went to the East Bay Rats party on Saturday, Jan. 15 and ran into some Chico kids, some of who I used to play with, who were headed to a show down the street at Copland where some of them were playing. The Rats show was some shitty Pyrate Punx related bands so I ended up heading down to Copland after doing some flyering and watching some of Hammerlock's set. Hammerlock play weak "metal" that sounds like it's influenced by classic rock. They do have a cute bass player though. Here she is:



Not the douchebag with the hipster mustache in the foreground, the hot chick in the back. I swear, you can't just snap a picture of a pretty lady and leave to hang out with your friends without some dipshit walking into the frame.

Down at Copland the Chico bands were shunted to the end of the bill so the lame hipster bands could play together. The other bands were terrible so I just hung out upstairs until the hipster element had cleared the building.



The Shankers are probably my favorite band in Chico despite being a rockabilly outfit. There isn't any of that punkabilly or psychobilly shit in their act. They play old school proto-rock 'n' roll and cover people like Jerry Jeff Walker. Johnny the guitar player used to play in a punk band with me and the guy is the best musician I've played with and a rad dude. I would want to play bass in this band if it wasn't for Kerra his girlfriend who plays better than me and looks better in a dress. The last couple years when I see them I've noticed that Kerra sings more songs than in the early days, which gives the band added depth. I was also stoked to see Christine back on drums after a few drummers had cycled through in the past couple years. She plays a stripped down kit standing up and it's cool to see live and adds a crashy simplified element that some of the dudes who have played in the band who play full kits lack. With this kind of band, less is more. Stoked to see them again.


Last was Shivaree which features another old friend who I used to play with on drums. Sean looks about as stoked on his band as I am in that picture right up there. It's a folk punk band more in the style of the Pogues than Defiance Ohio which doesn't really make it fun to watch but at least they picked good material to rip off. I'm just over folk punk in general unless it's Mischief Brew. The shit is played out and that scene is filled with douchbags and scumfucks. Sean argues that they aren't a folk punk band but there's a dude named Rat that sings and plays guitar and a fiddle player with dreads.

And the backpatch of the week award goes to this guy:

And yes the dude was of African descent.

Owen Hart, Blood Hunger

I've fallen behind again. This show was at Gilman on Friday, Jan. 14. I was originally going to another show to see Mata Mata, who I've never seen before, over Owen Hart who are one of my favorite bands but I've seen a few times already.

It was a little weird because the four or so bands that played the first part of the show were all crappy screamo shit that wasn't worth watching so I got there late and hung out with people outside the club who were there to see Owen Hart too. I guess it was a combo show to accommodate Owen Hart's wish to have a Gilman show to release their new record at. Bummer thing was that all the screamo fucks left and the crowd was small.


The other Tacoma band touring with Owen Hart was actually a pretty decent death metal group called Blood Hunger. They were a little goofy, as you can see the singer wore a wolf hood thing that didn't really make me like them any better. They had some competent jams and really it was just the singer who was ridiculous.



Owen Hart played stuff off of their new record and it was hella good. I kind of liked them more when they had two guitarists because they would play off of each other and it was one of those weird things about the band that made them more notable. They still kill and are less gimmicky and more straight ahead. I got the new record but haven't been able to listen to it all the way through yet because my turntable is being a fucking asshole. It keeps switching the speed from 33 to 45 randomly by itself. It might get the toss soon.

After the show I went to the other show I was originally going to but it was dying down into the afterparty. Talked to a bunch of people there and then some people headed over to another house to party some more. As we were leaving some teenage crusties beat up some jackass tagger kid in the street in front of the place.

When we got to Will's house the two Tacoma bands from the Gilman show were staying there. I got pretty messed up with the dudes in Blood Hunger because the goofball singer kept passing me his bottle of whiskey. I stumbled home around 4:30 and don't remember getting in.

Hatred Surge and Mammoth Grinder round 2, plus hipster shit

So this show happened a few days ago at Copland in Oakland. The show was Tuesday the 11th and I got super hammered and spent most of the night hanging out upstairs. I met a dude who might be down to play drums in a metal project I'm trying to put together. I also saw Andreas who used to be in Vitamin Piss and we talked for a bit about how he's living in Sweden now. That's fucking cool.

It was a weird show with a bunch of really bad hipster bands trying to play fastcore or black metal since those are the new hip flavors in music so I didn't even bother with names of bands after immediately realizing that they sucked. Hatread Surge and Mammoth Grinder were fucking awesome again.


I couldn't get a picture of this dude where he isn't making a funny face. He spends lots of time headbanging. Also, the drummer for Mammoth Grinder has like 1% fat and when he plays all his veins stand out and he looks all buff and crazy.


The crusties in the crowd went pretty nuts for both bands, especially Hatred Surge. You can't quite see that shit is going off the hook here but notice that the dude in front of me is getting hit in the back of the head with the headstock of a bass.

This girl that I see at shows and sometimes talk to stood next to me during Hatred Surge and was aggressively dancing. I don't know her name and I don't know where I met her but barring that I think that we might get to the hanging out together level sometime if I can stop myself from being a weirdo long enough. Probably not going to happen.

Hatred Surge, Mammoth Grinder, Pink Nightmare, Torture Unit

God, I've been to the fucking Balazo three nights in a row. I need to get away from that place. I worked the door at this show so at times my attention wasn't focused on the bands and I had to deal with that asshole security dude they have there. He kept giving me shit about ins and outs when people would leave to get money to buy merch or drinks at the show.


The first band was Torture Unit which apparently has some well known people from other bands in it but I was busy taking money at the door most of the set. It was good fast hardcore punk. I'm down to see them again.


Pink Nightmare shares members with another band called Foreign Objects who are rumored to be awesome and were playing another show down the street and they didn't get there until right before they were supposed to play. They were kind of boring to watch but the band played decent riot grrrlish punk in the slower and snarling vein. The grrrl singing has a super deep voice and I thought it was a dude until I checked out up by the stage and saw a petite female belting it out.

I've wanted to name a band Pink Nightmare for years and perform in the pink bunny PJs from the "Christmas Story" movie. Of course a bunch of SF riot grrrls beat me to it.


Mammoth Grinder was more of a metal band than a grind band but they were pretty good. I was vaguely upset that their name misled me but they made up for it. During the end of their set, that dude Stinkweed who plays guitar and sings in Plutocracy drunkenly made friends with me and insisted we smoke weed in the back room. That didn't hurt Hatred Surge's set at all.


After switching out a drummer and adding a dedicated singer, Mammoth Grinder returned to the stage as Hatred Surge. Killer band, brutal grind assault. Enough said.



I brought a box of records to the show to give to Hatred Surge from Martin at Lengua Armada and Martin hooked me up with the new Lengua Armada stuff most of which is already sold out. I got it on limited colored vinyl too bitches. High points are the new Vaccuum 7' and the Totsugeki Sensya 7'. Fucking stoked.

Nomos, The Men, Skin Like Iron, Face the Rail, Lie Still

Another night at Balazo/Submission. I'm going back there tonight to see Hatred Surge and Mammoth Grinder. Been taking way too many trips to the city.


Lie Still is a brand new band featuring Pete who has been in a bunch of metal and hardcore projects like Benumbed and Agenda of Swine. They played powerviolence with lots of stops and slowdowns and look like they could turn out pretty good. I think they would be better if I was playing bass for them.


Face the Rail comes out of that whole ex-Warkrime scene that I'm split down the middle on. This particular band was pretty fucking good, very garage rockish with a midtempo hardcore sensibility. Definitely worth seeing.

Next up was Skin Like Iron. I don't like them and their weirdo hardcore trying to incorporate bad elements of thrash metal. And they have a dude from Ceremony in the band which usually counts as a strike against in my book. I had a way better time trying to hash out a crusty metal project with a friend out in the back patio than watching that shit.


There have been a lot of New York bands coming through in a burst now that there isn't a blizzard canceling all tours. The Men are from Brooklyn and played a very catchy type of aggressive pop punk. That's not really what they sounded like. I kept thinking I heard a Dead Moon influence in there with some noisy garage style guitars, lots of effects and solos, and a driving style that builds up and dies down multiple times in each song. I really liked them and almost bought a 7' but they were $7 and the line was long so I said fuck it.


I had heard good things about Nomos and they delivered despite an initial prejudice against them when the pudgy singer immediately took his shirt off and started punching the stage. Yeah we've all seen Fucked Up and I can do without that gimmick again. By the end of the first song they had won me over however. They played good, aggressive East Coast hardcore with lots of fist pumping parts and moshy breakdowns.


The Nomos pit was wild and the singer spent most of the set in the crowd crashing into dudes. I like.

Comadre, Punch, Vaccine, Negative Standards

Last night's jams were at Balazo/Submission and were the second night in a row for me to see Vaccine and Punch. Both were worth it.


The first band up was Negative Standards. I'm friends with all these dudes so I may be biased but I like them quite a bit. The music is a heavy, crusty hardcore with parts that are almost ambient and a lot of samples. When they play live they have TVs that play a bunch of violent psychedelic images behind them. The whole thing is right up my alley. Here is their demo for download:

2010 cassette



For the second night in a row Vaccine was awesome. Fast and furious in a way that Vin Diesel couldn't comprehend. The Balazo is a bit more intimate than Gilman so there were a lot more kids packed up front and the vocalist took the opportunity to go apeshit in the crowd for a bit. This band is really fucking good live. That reminds me that I've got two of their 7's that I haven't listened to yet. Putting them on now.




Punch was also pretty rad but Meghan sat down on a stool on the corner of the stage the whole show because she had gotten a screw taken out of her foot and couldn't stand for long periods of time. I broke my ankle on tour once upon a time and sympathize with her completely with the injury. There are plenty of bands who just wouldn't play the show if their singer was injured. The mosh kids were wild during the Punch set. I couldn't get close enough for a decent picture.



Comadre finished up the show and I was stoked to see them after so long. It's been at least a year, maybe closer to two. They are basically a screamo band but with a lot of great hardcore influences and they are pretty good at the whole caring-so-much-I'm-pissed thing. And I'm a sucker for those parts of songs where the band doesn't play but just screams the lyrics together. Yeah.

The show was over before 11 p.m. that was fucking awesome.

Punch, Vaccine, No Statik, Loma Prieta

Still trying to catch up with posting. This show happened Friday, Jan. 7 at Gilman. I hadn't been to Gilman in almost two months, there are barely ever shows there anymore that interest me.

I got there late and missed Secret People. I found out later that Matt from Right On! is in that band so I'm checking them out later this month when they play in Oakland.



No Statik is the best hardcore band going in the Bay Area right now. By extension they are one of the best bands in hardcore, probably my favorite band that is playing shows right now. Every show I stand in awe of how much energy Michelle the singer has. And the rest of the band is constantly thrashing around with huge beards and long dreads flying.



Vaccine had a tough act to follow but killed it as well. When I think Boston straight edge this is not what I envision. Vaccine plays great straight ahead and aggressive hardcore with lots of '80s influence and none of that chug chug tough guy shit that I think of when I think Boston.



I found out what the young kids were there for when Loma Prieta started playing. The band features Val and the new bass player from Punch so I stayed for a song to check it out. It's a screamo band with some aggressive youth crew thrown in. I went and had a beer across the street.



Punch finished up the night and were pretty great as usual. I really think that this band sounded better a year or two ago when they had more of a powerviolence thing going on but they are still a rad hardcore band. Meghan the singer is still in a walking cast from breaking her ankle on their European tour a few months ago so she wasn't in her usual form and Dan Africa has apparently quit the band. I didn't really like the two guitar sound live anyway but Dan was a pretty cool part of the band. I liked him on bass a lot better than the dude they have playing now. I'm probably just jealous that it's not me playing with them.



I finally had some money at a show and spent it on rad hardcore accessories. I'm stoked No Statik had a shirt big enough to fit my fat ass.

Cervix, Acephalix, Bruxers, Neurotoxicity, and Shitty Fucker

I've been out doing too much shit the last few days and haven't been keeping up. This show happened on Thursday, Jan. 6.

I intentionally got to the show a little late because they never start on time at Hazmat and the opening bands were shitpiles that I had already seen. Little did I know that the lineup had been reorganized and I got there right as Shitty Fucker played their last song. They sounded like pretty decent crusty fastcore and I'll check them out in full in the future.


The second band up was Bruxers from San Jose. Nobody knew shit about them at the show and they surprised the crowd with some competent death metal. They weren't super exciting to watch and I pretty much instinctively distrust the suburban shaved head metal look that the singer was sporting but the jams were right on. The talk at the show was that they are pretty young and new so they might grow into something pretty fucking good in the future.


If you haven't seen Acephalix then do yourself a favor. They are a bunch of huge dudes going wild and playing a blend of D-beat crust mixed with black and death metal. They have been one of my favorite bands to see in the Bay Area for a few years now and as their music gets more into the realm of brutal metal, it seems like more people are into them and respond aggressively in the pit.

The next band was Neurotoxicity, which is a dumb as fuck name for a band and they are about as good as their name. Greg from Thousandswilldie plays drums for them and that is the only saving grace. The guitars sound like punks with little aptitude are trying to play black metal and failing, which is pretty much what it is. I spent this set outside the building. I've seen the band before and when they play they all look like they would rather be somewhere else, probably sitting with me outside the building.


The last band of the night was Cervix from New York. They are a crusty metal band. I didn't find them very interesting other than the petite female guitarist that fucking wailed. The cutesy-crusty female singer striking poses thing kind of seemed like a gimmick but the guitarist was on some shit.

Badr Vogu, Mindless, Reivers, and Hesitation Wounds

This was a smoky as fuck show at Hazmat, I feel like my lungs lost a couple weeks of life from that one. The bands were all pretty fucking rad. There were a lot of people there that I knew, including a few I hadn't seen for a while, so I was a bit more social than usual and had a really good time.

First up was Hesitation Wounds from Oakland. I say they are a crusty hardcore band with heavy Japanese influence but people have disagreed with me. I hear a lot of Confuse style in the guitars. They are pretty new, I only started seeing them about six months ago but I have come to really like their shit. I talked with Andy, their guitar player, and we might try to get a D-beat band together soon.


Next up was Reivers. They are another really good band that hasn't really been around for a long time but kill on the local DIY circuit. They are a Will Sedition band with most of Salted Earth doing pretty much the same thing as Salted Earth but with a new guitar player. Female-fronted political crust with a heavy hardcore lean, they are the sort of band I would want to be in. They had tapes out for sale but packed them up before I could grab one. I waited till the end of the show because my pockets were full and they had already gone by the time I made my stumbling way back to the table.


The only band of the night that I hadn't seen before was Mindless who I had heard many good things about. They didn't disappoint with a brutal crust attack with lots of metal elements. Another band with a intense female singer, she kept crashing into the crowd the entire set. I tried to buy their record after the show but they were apparently out, at least that's what the confused dude at the merch table said.


Badr Vogu finished the night up with their doomed out crust sound. They are a little fast for my taste in doom but they deliver super heavy and gnarly jams. When I think of the term stenchcore I feel like they fit in that category but they have a lot of black metal strains so I don't know if they would belong in said subgenre. Fucking different subcategories in this kind of music are going to drive me nuts. If you like heavy crusty metal and smoking weed this is a band for you.

Great show, I was hammered at the end and grinning. Then I broke a pedal post on the bike I was riding on the way home and had to walk across Oakland at 1 in the morning. Fucking awesome. Needless to say, I slept in.

Death First round 2, New Year's Eve

There was a bit of confusion with the show that happened yesterday, shit it's already tomorrow, well New Year's Eve is what I'm talking about. Apparently two shows got half canceled and decided to join forces to conquer. It was at Will Sedition's house on 32nd in Oakland. The other Will who lives there and I hung out in his basement room and got down to partying while Will Sedition (or Useful Will as people have taken to calling him, related: the other guy is known as Useless Will) set up the show and soundproofed the house. I was unprepared for the amount of people who showed up, it was crowded as hell and everyone had been talking about how nobody was going to come when I showed up at the posted start time.

When the first band started playing I was trapped by the crush of people up front to witness some shit that I could have done without. The guy I see around at shows a lot and who I refer to as Raver Jesus in my mind was playing keyboards for most of what used to be Fugitive Kind. I don't know if they were playing new songs or old Fugitive Kind stuff but I've heard from several people that Fugitive Kind were pretty good and that is not what I would say about what I saw last night. The band is called The Smell and the keyboards were flowery goth style on top of punk drumming with a girl who sang and played saxophone in about equal measures and a dude who played bass and kind of held everything together.

I might have been in to this kind of thing in my late teens when I thought noise punk was the shit and was just stoked to see people doing something outside of the same stale punk formula that pervaded the small town I'm from at the time. Now I am a grown man who lives in Oakland and can see any kind of music any time. I'm over this. And the fact that I couldn't have moved from my position right next to the keyboard without disturbing the press of weirdos who were in to it without basically shoving my way through made feel doubly trapped. I decided not to be a dick with bad show etiquette and endured and they weren't that terrible, I just didn't really want to be there.

By the time that Death First started the party was packed with people. It was hard to open the front gate the yard was so packed. I ran into some Redding friends, one who I hadn't seen since he moved to New Jersey in the summer, and was talking to them for part of Death First's set and missed a few songs. I caught the last half and the band sounded way better than they had the night before at Balazo. They looked like they were way more stoked and having more fun playing a house show.

Blogspot is being a motherfucker and won't upload my pictures. Aha, fixed now! But yeah the band was way more noticeably a crust band without the bad drum mic debacle of the night before. Less boppy than I first thought still with a strong hardcore flavor. Not bad at all for a bunch of people from New York.

The last band that was up was the same pop punk band from the night before that I didn't really listen to. There were so many people inside that I quit trying to squeeze in when I couldn't make it all the way up the porch steps. I can just imagine what kind of clusterfuck it was inside.

After the show I went to a New Year's Eve party at my friend Caroline's house with some people who were all more normative than me. I weirded out most of the people who I hadn't already met before but the kids were generally all right. Here's me at midnight:

We got quite partied out and today was haggard. Spent the night there and watched movies all day today and didn't have a ride back across town till almost midnight tonight. I could use a shower.