Midnight @ Kings Arms, 6th June 2013

To be honest I hadn't even heard of Midnight until the tour was announced, even though they're on Fenriz' Band of the Week list. But I checked them out and liked what I heard.

Anyway, I arrived at the venue in time to see one of the support bands, Bulletbelt, who are apparently reasonably popular in NZ these days. They describe themselves as some kind of crossover between black metal and thrash, and they were actually reasonably impressive. I mean, I'm almost never impressed by support bands. They had an interesting sound; the bass was very prominent and bright, kind of like how it is in Iron Maiden. I have to say their thrash parts were very good, the black metal parts not so much. If they got a different vocalist and only did the thrash bits I'd say they'd be great, but then I'm mainly interested in thrash these days so I'm probably biased.

After their set I checked out the merch table, and scored Midnight's limited edition hand-numbered tour 7" (every touring band should do this!) and a Midnight patch for my jacket, then went outside to stow them safely in my car.

Midnight arrived on stage suddenly. They don't have a elaborate stage show, but they get a lot of effect out of those hoods they wear, and they had a lot of energy, getting right up the front of the stage and into the audience's faces; ramming the necks of their guitars into the crowd.

By the second song the mosh pit was in full swing. It was only about 3 rows deep (there were probably only 100 people at the show), and everyone was in good spirits. A couple of people tried to crowd surf, but it kind of ended with them going nowhere and then getting put down again due to there being no crowd to surf on, and thankfully they gave up.

During Violence on Violence a young guy attempted a stage dive, unfortunately due the aforementioned only 3-row deep mosh pit, he went right over the pit and landed heavily on the floor. I went to the bathroom soon after that and he was in there. "That was an epic dive man" I said to him. He disagreed. Everyone in the bathroom was laughing at him.

The show went quickly. The singer reminded me of Fat Mike from NOFX when he'd say stuff like "I can't believe you guys came out to see these crappy songs". I'd checked on setlist.fm before the show to see what sort of setlist they would have, and knew it was only gonna be about half an hour long. About the second to last song was when the singer decided to smash a bottle into the crowd, which was quite close to hitting me. Some people did get hit. Not a good look exactly but very dangerous and rock'n'roll. In the last song the guitarist ripped all the strings off his guitar and threw them into the crowd. I got one as a souvenir.

After the show, some guy told me he'd been cut by the broken bottle, and seemed to think it was weird that someone near him had been complaining about getting glass in their eye. And some other people were complaining about the short set. But I was happy. It's not often that interesting underground metal bands come to NZ, and if they do they're usually boring grindcore/death metal shit.

setlist @ setlist.fm

Witchgrave

Yeah, so I just wanted to say that I'm digging Witchgrave at the moment. I know I'm not the first to say it, but yeah, definitely looking like a contender for album of the year. And that's up against Darkthrone's  Underground Resistance.

Paul Di'Anno, Thirsty Dog, Auckland, 3rd July 2010 / Transmission Room, Auckland, 13th June 2009

The first time I saw Paul Di'Anno was last year at the Transmission Room. The support band was World War IV if I remember correctly, and in places they reminded me of Incubus or RATM or something... just generally awful.... yeah, it was pretty cool to see some Iron Maiden songs, and yeah, the Australian backing band Killrazor were pretty tight... but Di'Anno had no presence on stage. I put this down to him having a busted knee and not being able to move. And the crowd were awful. Just awful. No moshing. Just like women in their late 40s standing at the front of the stage. I was stuck for quite a while standing behind some guy in a Motley Crue shirt. Who was just standing there. I dunno, for me metal doesn't work without a mosh-pit... or metal isn't working if the crowd doesn't feel the need to mosh... Di'Anno was kind of rude and obnoxious...

Fast-foward to 2010 and I guess a year had passed, and with this being a "30th Anniversary of the first Iron Maiden album" tour, where he would do every song off that album (and I really like that album), I was willing to give him another try... especially since Razorwyre were opening for him...

I got there early enough to see Dying of the Light. Although their music was technically competent and perhaps other people might like it if they were into that sort of thing, I found it very slow, and boring, and really offering nothing to me. When they played one faster song, I almost got excited.

Razorwyre (or Gaywyre) I had been hearing a lot of good things about, and I have to say they lived up to their reputation. Later that night I was telling anyone who would listen that they blew Paul Di'Anno off the stage. It's great that NZ finally has a world-class thrash metal band. Sure, they're derivative of all the big thrash bands of the 80s, but that's why they're great. I especially loved the vocalist's range. I will be seeing them again.

Paul Di'Anno then. Well, he did play all the songs off the first Iron Maiden album, which was interesting... but very early in the night I realised I'd made a mistake. There can only be one Iron Maiden, and I saw them in a packed stadium, not in some tiny pub with less than 100 people in it. You know that thing singers do, when they get the crowd to sing part of the chorus or something? When the 20 people down the front couldn't sing the lines he gave them loud enough for him to hear (I know, surprising, right?), the crowd was met with jibes like "Oh, I didn't know this was a gay bar" or "Oh, looks like another audience just like Melbourne" By the time he started playing AC/DC's Highway to Hell (after some big spiel about visiting Bon Scott's grave), I left the pub shaking my head. I won't be fooled again.

setlists:
Thirsty Dog show
Transmission Room show

Breakcore Island (part 2)

The second round of Breakcore Island shows kicked off on Thursday 11th February with Escape the Bowels of Noise Island which was held at the Wine Cellar, again in St Kevin's Arcade.

I was playing at this one, so I got there very early and sat through a lot of sound-checks, most of which involved live sound engineer k5k having to tell Nomex to turn it down just a little more and a little more...

Yeah, Nomex made it to Auckland this time, and a lovely and dapper gentleman he was too. Robert Inhuman of US gabber-punk-noisecore outfit Realicide was also there. Robert was very impressive as he set up with lyric-sheet posters and stickers at the door to give away free to people. This is an old anarcho-punk trick that I've heard about but never seen done before - where you consider your message so important that you make sure that people can take it away with them; that they can participate. Particularly if you know your lyrics are going to be indecipherable. Everyone should do this really, but then when was the last time you saw an artist with a serious political message? Would you even know if you had?

The show started with ¡Recuerde! who performed a set of textured-and-layered noises, with some vocals even. I believe this is typical output from this artist. This was followed by my own set, which was a learning experience. Armed with a Casio SK-5, a discman to sample from and the kalimba I picked up in Uganda, I managed to not get too defeated by my own hardware, but when the microphone for the kalimba turned out to not be turned on at the mixing desk, I just gave up. Only Softsmell and Robert Inhuman were really paying attention anyways, so it's not like I lost some fans or something, and I learnt some things about the limitations of my hardware.

Anyway, what everyone was really here for was to see the fancy international acts, and first up was Realicide. This is where Robert Inhuman impressed again, as he greeted everyone, explained how excited he was to have come half-way around the world to be here; explained how this was the punk for right now and right here, not some retro guitar music; invited everyone to participate. This entailed pounding beats, noise, and very energetic but indecipherable vocals. Excitement. Energy. Those things that are lacking so often in this tiny scene. Infectious.

Nomex followed this up with brutal harsh noise, using a contact mic attached to a 12" vinyl that he ended up smashing, and some other device that he'd fashioned which was a kinda stick thing that he waved around. Certainly the most impressive noise set I've seen yet in my life.

Spent a few hours after the show hanging out with Robert and a group of other insiders at neighbouring Area 26, just talking about stuff. This guy is really right-on with his attitude and politics. He's living the dream, or at least a dream that I had that I couldn't realise for myself with my circumstances.

The next night, being Friday the 12th of February saw Return to the Conquest of Breakcore Island, which was another house party at a K' Road dive called The Brothel. House parties mean loading in your own sound-system, and for reasons that remain obscure, this involved me helping k5k lug big speakers up and down various flights of stairs.

Once the party finally got underway, it begun with N.U.T.E playing their industrial-metal. They are polished, professional... but for me too soft, too slow... I'm not their target audience, this stuff is for goths; allegedly they lap it up.

They are followed by Incredible Hexadecibels with Creassault, and people dance, and for once everyone's eyes are on the Hexadecibels instead of their visuals, because the visuals are being projected on the wall behind the crowd instead of behind or beside the Hexadecibels like it usually would be; it gets me thinking about the lyric-sheet I got last night and of course actually bothered to read and think about, and the Realicide songs Everything is a Camera, and The Audience Sucks... contrasting approaches to music and interaction...

Realicide was brutal again, and in this smaller venue the audience was closer, and a spontaneous mosh-pit broke out, which was just what this sort of hardcore music needs. I'm deeply respectful of what this guy is doing. Nomex made sure that everyone in the crowd was given the lyric-sheet poster, which I believe speaks highly of him.

Nomex had the same set-up as the night before. This time, before his set started, I did the trainspotting kind of thing and went and looked what vinyl he was using. It was a Stiff Little Fingers 12". Anyway, this time Nomex had incorporated beats into his set, I guess via the laptop he had, so the set was more of a breakcore style, although still with massive noise running over the top. The vinyl got chucked on the floor and Robert and Nomex stomped on it a bit, before Nomex totally destroyed it by ramming it in this large gap in the floorboards. It was a good set from Nomex, although it was the kind of fractured breakcore that you can't really dance to that well. Which is fine. After the set was over I grabbed a chunk of vinyl off the floor as a souvenir.

The USA Kings, a Hungarian act that are also touring here for Breakcore Island were supposed to play next, but there was some sort of technical issue, so DJ Beatmeter ended up spinning records, as he had been between all the other sets. This continued for probably an hour or more, as everyone drifted away, but at this stage we were under the understanding that he might help unpack all the PA gear from the venue and get it safely back to where it belonged. Which didn't end up happening, so it came down on me again. Very late night...

These guys all flew down to Wellington the next day for a Saturday night show at the Happy venue, and when I spoke to Robert later he said it was probably the best show of the tour for him because it was the loudest.

Maybe there will be some more Breakcore Island events in March. The USA Kings still have to play sometime. Keep watching the sky....

Breakcore Island (part 1)

Summer in Auckland means "Breakcore Island".. that time when international artists get poached from their Australian tours or from Camp a Low Hum and play a show at some K' Road dive. This is all we get in this faraway corner of the world.. it's lucky that the local talent is so good here..

The first show The Great Wall of Noise Island was on the Thursday night of 28th of January, a noise show in Alleluyah Cafe in St Kevin's Arcade; more specifically in the atrium outside the cafe, which was walled off from the rest of the arcade with sheets strung from a line. Nomex didn't show up after some sort of private drama, so Toecutter and last-minute addition Daedelus both agreed to play improvised sets at the last minute as replacements.

Joining them on the bill were long-time and establishished (establishment?) noise scenesters Duncan Bruce, and Richard Francis with Clinton Watkins. They played the sort of noise you would expect: Bruce more experimental, Francis & Watkins more harsh; all based on sounds and textures and stuff.

Also on the bill for their first time out together in several years was Tumour & Beard, two young men who previously played together as pioneering NZ breakcore outfit Anti-Kati. These guys are long term friends of mine, and to be honest I expected big things. Their set was instead more in line with what I had already heard that evening.. entirely adequate, particularly given the setting lovely atrium setting and the other artists on the bill, but once upon a time I feel like I could have relied on these guys to shred speakers. ..

The speakers did get shredded somewhere along the line, and Daedelus' set was rather quiet and possibly compromised because of that. The dude did a pretty good job of doing some glitchy beeps and blips and stuff; I'm fairly sure he doesn't usually roll like that.

Toecutter's set involved a short amount of harsh noises, a whole lot of incense, and ended with a piece involving Toecutter and several audience members, including myself, dragging tables across and around the atrium floor in a synchronised fashion under Toecutter's direction. Very interesting, although tables were broken and the cafe owner was a little annoyed; mainly at how profusely Toecutter apologised about it.

Directly following this show was the last-minute Daedelus Surfaces on Breakcore Island show at Whammy, which for those who don't know is also in St Kevin's Arcade. This had secured heavy radio promotion, and Whammy rapidly filled up with kids. Happy kids, who danced the night away to future music. P.P. Flo was followed up by Manaia Toa with DJ sets; Manaia Toa with his usual old-skool jungle kinda thing, P.P. Flo his regular pop/breakcore mash-up.

Toecutter was playing as DJ Anal Erection, which apparantly means he plays more dancefloor friendly stuff. The kids were loving it. About 1 in the morning or thereabouts, when the oh-so-punctual kids had been thus warmed up for a few hours, Daedelus did his thing. Someone had predicted somewhere on the spectrum between Ninja Tune and Tigerbeat6, and I guess that was some way to being accurate. Definitely it was somewhere on the spectrum between electro and dubstep which is where the kids are at these days if this crowd was anything to go by. k5k took me and Roxy Riot out the back behind the bar to this little broom-closet that the staff sometimes use. It was weird.

The crowd basically left after Daedelus' set; I didn't realise until much later that it was mainly to do with it being a Thursday night. Manaia Toa played a bit more and then k5k took the 3am to 4am floor-clearing set. k5k's fakecore is brutal and tight, and the test for whether NZ audiences truly get breakcore is whether or not they ever start staying to see a local master like k5k do his set.

The next night on Friday the 29th of January was The Curse of Breakcore Island at Area 26, again in St Kevin's Arcade. This was house party, at the same venue that Belgian breakcore poster-boy Sickboy rocked at this time last year.

I arrived in time to see Glottis, which I am led to believe are a two-piece who are one half of teenage rave crew Ponny Fight (who were who were billed to be playing) and one of their other mates. Glottis do throat-singing. There's video on youtube. Anyway, the lounge was filled with their parents and younger siblings (!) so I stayed at the door and talked with Toecutter and Softsmell and Creassault and Audioslut and the other long-term scenesters, and the family all field out, but I stayed there for Gee Gee who is some teenage MC who I assume is friends with Ponny Fight, and even manned the door for a while by myself which I always find kinda nerve-racking because it involves asserting your will over people and capitalism-like situations.

Eventually I filtered through the party, which at some point had become filled up with teenagers from the Shore who were all tripping on Saliva or Salvia or something (allegedly). Whatever, there were some messy people there. Incredible Hexadecibels with Creassault ripped shit up, playing their European-tour-honed tracks off their forthcoming release. This was the first time I'd seen some of their new videos, and I was laughing on the dancefloor as they are filled with people that I know... I became overwhelmed with that feeling of elite and power you get when you have knowledge that other people on the dancefloor don't have... like when you know the chorus to It's Gotta Be the Shoes or when you suddenly remember the time like nine years ago when you went to a family dinner at P.P. Flo's house and his mother served this bolognese sauce with lots of tomatoes in it and Amy just won't eat tomatoes and didn't touch her meal and it was hella awkward. That really cracked me up. On the dancefloor. Good times.

Toecutter, who was also here last summer, ripped it up again. This is why he has a global reputation as the go-to good-time-party-breakcore DJ. Highlights for me would have to include Don't Cry; hell the whole thing was great really. It's a breakcore party. It was loud. At some point I was slam-dancing with myself in the hallway.

k5k did his usual crowd-clearing best. Dance-floor pretty much to myself. I went outside for a bit, took out my ear-plugs and realised just how shredding it was. Very cool. After his set we sat around on the balcony discussing the ramifications of the youth starting to come through and infiltrate our underground and elite scene/community.. the virtues of having an actual scene vs. having a best-kept secret... the sort of conversations you have late at night with drunk people... uncertain future... can change happen? can it be dealt with?

There was another show on the next night, at some shitty downtown bar that has a pentagram painted on the floor. N.U.T.E. played. Some goth bands played. I didn't go.

death of geocities

When I first got on the internet in 1998 (yeah, I know, so totally after everyone else) I made some sites on geocities. It's how I taught myself HTML. Anyway, through the years, and especially since I started the Industrial-Jazz label in 2000, it's been a pretty damn reliable free host for my website (despite all the annoying pop-up ads and shit). Of course for several years now A-Klass have been reliably hosting the Industrial-Jazz website (and all the mp3 files) but I've always had everything mirrored at geocites.

Anyway, that's out of my hands now. geocities is dead. this also means there is now no website for my audio/visual label unmerkliche Filme, my graphic design as Nilpferd... not that either of these endeavours has been particularly productive or even particularly exists outside of my head... still, it's lucky that I migrated vidu over here before that was deleted too...

Time to fix broken links...

Iron Maiden, Lauren Harris @ Mt Smart Stadium, 20 February 2009

I was nervous for days leading up to this; driving extra carefully, crossing the road extra carefully, basically trying to avoid any unfortunate injury that would prevent me from seeing Iron Maiden.

I made my way into the city to catch a free bus to the stadium. I found the correct bus stop: the small crowd of bogans in Iron Maiden shirts gave it away. I fit right in.

It had been raining all day, but had basically eased off by then, and we cruised down the motorway, and finally arrived. I'd never been to the stadium before. We threaded our way through the grounds surrounding the stadium, and people were clustered drinking their alcohol and smoking joints before they entered.

There was a large queue to enter, but also another large cluster who were just pushing into the queue at the side, so I joined them, and I was in, and the local support band Chuganaut were just finishing up their set. I wandered down onto the field, checked out the stage and the fenced off diamond-ticket area in front of it, then went back up to check out merchandise stands and beer vendors. The queues were mad long, so I flagged it all and went back down to the field and entered the diamond area.

In the time I'd been away the diamond area had filled up quite a bit more. Furthermore, it was only 19:45. Lauren Harris was scheduled to play from 19:45 to 20:30, and Iron Maiden weren't due on stage until 21:00. So, lots of standing around, but also lots of time to try to find a place closer to the stage.

The diamond entry was to the left of the stage, so that's where I started, and used my patented trick of following in the wake of some big guy who was pushing through the crowd. Unfortunately I ended up behind a thicket of people who were all at least 6-foot tall. Always the way at concerts when you're short, but I felt more sorry for the many women I'd ended up near, all of whom seemed to be more like 5-foot tall. You could see they were fretting about what sort of view they'd get.

Lauren Harris eventually got on stage about 20:00. Some people politely nodded their heads. But really, it was god-awful hard rock. The guitarist and bass player seriously looked like they could have been in an 80s hair band. People all around me were smoking joints, and there was not a lot of movement in the crowd to get me a better view of the stage, and it had started raining, and Lauren Harris was really really not my cup of tea. I let it all wash over me, knowing that the time of Iron Maiden was drawing near, and things could only get better.

Soon after she finally got off stage, a big push forward occured, and things were looking up. Some English guy was telling everyone to "Swim down!" á la Finding Nemo, but everyone seemed baffled - "Is that a song?" - "No, it's from Nemo. Have you not seen Nemo?" I guess not everyone had seen Nemo; I guess they were too young to have kids or something.

The roadies or whoever had put on Deep Purple while they did all the soundcheck for Maiden, and dried the front of the stage now that the rain had stopped, and the damp crowd started to get more and more rowdy as 21:00 neared.

Finally it started, firstly obscure B-side Doctor Doctor was played, followed by Transylvania, for which they displayed footage of Ed Force One and Maiden fans around the world from earlier legs of this tour on the big screens to either side of the stage. And then finally some World War II footage, as Churchill's War Speech was played. Everyone knew what came next...

Iron Maiden burst onto the stage, playing Aces High. This was followed by Wrathchild and then 2 Minutes to Midnight. Already by this time the crowd was moving, and I'd managed to get a little closer to the stage, maybe even a little closer to the middle. I wasn't sure I was as excited I should have been. It occured to me that Iron Maiden play basically perfectly, like it's a recording. Like it's a live recording. Like if you've watched a bunch of videos of their live performance, then you've already experienced this.

But then they stopped, and Bruce talked, and he said they were planning to play some tracks we wouldn't have heard that much except on record, and I had heard a rumour that they were planning some obscure stuff they don't play much for the NZ leg of the tour, and so it was that they decided to play Children of the Damned, and I threw my goats in the air and leapt for joy, and realised that really the only reason I hadn't got excited yet is because they'd just played like the three songs I'd least been interested in.

And the crowd moved some more, and I got closer and closer to the ideal position, and already everyone, already damp from the rain, was becoming damp from sweat as well, and people were already escaping from the front of the mosh-pit because it was just too hot. They followed Children of the Damned with Phantom of the Opera, and that was from awesome to awesomer in my opinion. Unfortunately that was as obscure as they got; the rest of the show was basically the setlist you would expect if you'd done any research about what they were playing on the Somewhere Back In Time tour.

So, we got The Trooper, Wasted Years, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Powerslave, Fear of the Dark, Run to the Hills, Hallowed be thy Name, Iron Maiden, and then an encore with The Number of the Beast, The Evil That Men Do, and Sanctuary.

Anyways, once I'd got into it, and the pit started to really go off, and everyone was drenched from head to toe in sweat, it was fantastic. The atmosphere, the fact that everyone was singing along to all the songs, the pyrotechnics, and the giant Somewhere in Time robot Eddie - just the perfect live act. They claim they'll be back, and are hoping for a crowd even larger than the 18000 they got.