Review by Lisa Burke
January 9th 2016, The Regent, Los Angeles CA: The ‘Show Your Scars’ festival, featuring headliners Municipal Waste performing their ‘Hazardous Mutation’ album in its entirety along with support acts Repulsion, Terrorizer, Ghoul, Gravehill, Night Demon, Crematorium, Nervosa and Skeletal Remains, took place at the Regent in downtown LA on Saturday Jaunary 9th 2016, and our writer Lisa Burke was on site to recap the action for us. Check out her review below.
On Saturday January 9th, 2016 at the Regent in downtown Los Aneles, I attended my first metal festival of the year called Show Your Scars. This mini-festival happened to feature nine quality bands and an extra abundance of thrash. I survived through eight bands in a row as I unfortunatly missed the skull fucking death metal of Skeletal Remains who opened the set. I arrived in time to see Nervosa which is an all-female thrash trio from Brazil. Rumor has it this was their first show in the United States and in Los Angeles, and it was a pleasant surprise for me as they thrashed up the stage with serious skills, death style vocals which were dueling at times between the guitar and bass players, and to top it off, the drummer played like Chuck Norris fighting a bear with her solo. These Brazilian girls sure knew how to keep an audience’s attention and the vibe remained strong throughout. I highly recommend checking them out if you can, and I believe they return to Los Angeles in February.
I have to say I really enjoyed this whole festival in terms of quality and how smoothly it was run, and how even just the flow from one band to another worked well enough to make you think someone thought about the order of the bands in terms of style and smooth transition. Thank you Daniel Dismal and Church of The 8th Day for rising above the rest and taking over the metal community the way it should be done. This brings me to the next band on the line up Crematorium, which is one of Daniel Dismal’s many metal artistries. This was my second viewing of this band and just as enjoyable as the first. This is what I want to call deathly elegant hardcore, or as he calls it murdercore and grindcore which totally works too. His transitional vocals between gutteral screeching to a more clear tone straight hardcore/punk style is commendably done, and the real life issue subject matter of the lyrics is equally appropriate. A great time for all as these guys are clearly professionals capable of bringing kick-your-face-in metal into 2016.
So it was about this time that I realized how many young people as in under age 21 were in the audience because of course it was an all ages show. Also, because this was taking place on the day of Lemmy’s memorial I figured the rest of the audience and older crowd would arrive a bit later as they totally did to this sold out show. Point is that it’s great to see a younger crowd still into this type of music and it’s my back up plan to help me to shoot down anyone who tries to say metal or rock n’ roll is dead. Even with Lemmy and now David Bowie’s recent passing if you open your eyes you’ll still be pleasantly surprised to find true rock and metal music is more alive than you realized. Due to the Metal Assault editor-in-chief’s personal ties with the next band to perform on this day I will not be able to comment on the awesomeness that was Night Demon. I can say however that after this set outside in the patio area someone was already riled up enough to knock over an entire wooden planter that almost sounded like a gunshot when it hit the ground. How very metal of him, but keep in mind it’s only 6:30 and we have five more bands and a long way to go.
Moving on to the band that blew the stage out of the theater with some excellent death, blackened thrash, and doom roots was Gravehill. You can never go wrong with unison hair whipping, and the best mix of the best genres. With tunes like ‘By The Edge Of Our Knives’ and ‘Open Their Throats’ you know they never mess around nor do they take any prisoners. Also they paid their respects to the the rock ‘n roll god and played a very well done cover of Motörhead’s ‘Eat The Rich’. You can bet I’ll be attending their next billion Los Angeles shows because they are that brutally entertaining.
Gravehill set list:
01. By The Edge Of Our Knives
02. Redeemed In blood
03. Open Their Throats
04. Fear The Reaper
05. Eat The rich (Motörhead cover)
06. Murder
What could possibly happen after Gravehill that would be as equally thrilling? That’s when Ghoul happened. These mutants from Creepsylvania come out wearing sacks over their faces bandit style, use backing tracks for announcing the next gore factor, and squirt the audience with faux blood using various creatures including one with a chainsaw hand to tear up the audience’s attention. The use of death lyrics and vocals mixed with thrash and a bit of punk is far from boring, and while you could refer to them as a poor man’s GWAR I believe they pull through with a uniqueness that I must commend. They are completely enjoyable to watch and ‘Spill Your Guts’ seemed to be a mosh pit favorite and I believe it was around this time that the guitar player expressed some ridiculously fun dance moves. There was a gimp with a gasmask squirting faux blood and somewhere towards the beginning of the set the audience was asked if they needed the energy drink called cocaine to basically keep up with them. The thrash is done so well that even in times of pure cheese you have to respect them. They followed the Motörhead cover trend of the night and played ‘Ace Of Spades’ which I must say out of all the songs Lemmy wrote this one is bottom of the list for me in order of amazingness and possibly it is even to him and of course it’s over played, yet for this band it was funny because it was almost like they turned into ‘Death Piggy’ playing Motörhead. If you don’t know ‘Death Piggy’ it was GWAR before GWAR and back when they used to open for themselves. Long story short but there’s so much to tell it might not ever end, Ghoul is refreshing to see and highly entertaining with some ridiculous characters including what appeared to be a dog/boar, a turkey/vulture, some voodoo dude with a staff, and some chainsaw wrench dude that had techie scum written in blood spray on his back. This band I believe had the most stage divers sans Municipal Waste and despite the amusing sign outside the men’s room in the venue that says no stage diving that of course someone ripped down by the end of Ghoul’s performance. They also called out a poser in the audience and later told the audience that the band had no tear ducts so they didn’t care and were unable to cry. Really great stuff here and some great riffs in that some reminded me a bit of early Metallica. Even though you aren’t supposed to know who these guys are because that’s the deal with ghouls once you do you certainly won’t forget them.
Ghoul set list:
01. Inner Sanctum
02. Brain Jerk
03. Boneless
04. Maniaxe
05. Spill Your Guts
06. Graveyard Mosh
07. We Came For The Dead
08. Rise, Killbot, Rise!!!
09. Destructor
10. Ace Of Spades (Motörhead cover)
One unpredictable aspect of metal shows is that sometimes you get a slightly intoxicated version of your favorite band or one of the band members which can alter the overall performance immensely not necessarily to a bad level but certainly to a more humorous level. Not that I’m here to judge drunk levels nor do I even know enough about Terrorizer to make such a claim, but I did get a sense that the singer was having a bit of a rough night especially when the vocals cut out mid performance for a bit possibly through no fault of his own. The overall performance was solid, and I was particularly impressed with the double bass tactics and overall grindcore riffage that carried throughout the set. They also gave some tee shirt love support to Nails and Iron Reagan, and interestingly these guys have been around since the late ’80s and they definitely stay true to the grind yet sometimes I feel they even sway to the punk side a bit which gives me nothing to complain about.
Terrorizer set list:
01. After World Obliteration
02. Storm Of Stress
03. Fear Of Napalm
04. Human Prey
05. Corporation Pull-In
06. Strategic Warheads
07. Condemned System
08. Resurrection
09. Enslaved By Propaganda
10. Need To Live
11. Ripped To Shreds
After getting terrorized it’s of course time for some death grinding Repulsion. They happened to be the only band late to the stage for whatever reason and although it wasn’t a big deal it may have set off my vibe of them to a rocky start. I’m pretty picky about grindcore and perhaps because I’ve had Misery Index on the brain lately with their beautiful death grind I was expecting as much from Repulsion and they are quite the opposite. It was the dirtiest sound of the night for sure, but if you consider their early ’80s roots and their association to Death the band you forget what I just said and give them the credit they deserve. Somehow the riffage was not impressive to me, but their Motörhead cover of ‘The Hammer’ was decent yet I didn’t feel they made it their own like the previous bands did, although vocally in particular it was strong and heartfelt. I’ll sum this one up with not so much my cup of tea but certainly worthy of praise.
Repulsion set list:
01. The Stench of Burning Death
02. Eaten Alive
03. Acid Bath
04. Slaughter Of The Innocent
05. Decomposed
06. Radiation Sickness
07. Splattered Cadavers
08. Festering Boils
09. Pestilent Decay
10. Crematorium
11. Driven To Insanity
12. Six Feet Under
13. Bodily Dismemberment
14. Repulsion
15. The Lurking Fear
16. Black Breath
17. The Hammer (Motörhead cover)
18. Maggots In Your Coffin
19. Horrified
Now is the moment when I’ve never been so ready for the punked-out puke-on-your-face thrash-it-up antics of Municipal Waste. I just recently saw Iron Reagan who shares singer Tony Foresta with this band and I could not have been more impressed with his clean vocals and perfect on-stage commentary between songs. This night was the same if not better and they went through the album ‘Hazardous Mutation’ brilliantly. They joked about playing a Motörhead cover first then bailed into thrash territory and comically enough, they definitely unleashed the bastards for this set. I saw one security guard push one poor bastard off the stage for taking too long to crowd surf, meanwhile a girl gets on stage only to take a selfie before her crowd surf attempt where of course she almost lands on her head, and the best of course was that die-hard crowd surfer who you saw bust onto the stage every five minutes. One of the notes I wrote about the set was: ‘No Lemmy, just punk rock and flying toilet paper’, so in case you weren’t sure, this should give you a pretty good indication of how it all went down, not to mention they did say they Went to the Rainbow Bar and Grill earlier to drink and pay respects. All members sounded as alive and thrashy as could be, and the drummer was as colorful as his playing with his rainbow striped shorts and red shirt. One last worthy fashion mention is that they recently marketed a new shirt design with Donald Trump getting his brains blown out and I think this may win the prize for the classiest, most brutally awesome move they’ve ever made. Congratulations, Municipal Waste. you’ve pissed off all the right people and won the hearts of all the ones that actually matter.
All afternoon metal adventures considered, I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed eight metal bands in a row and I’m excited for the next batch of kick ass metal shows coming up in the next few months. Do all these guys and brutal girls a favor and follow their lead and their band so you can support their upcoming shows.
Municipal Waste set list:
01. Intro / Deathripper
02. Unleash The Bastard
03. The Thing
04. Blood Drive
05. Accelerated Vision
06. Guilty Of Being Tight
07. Set To Destruct
08. Hazardous Mutation
09. Nailed Casket
10. Abusement Park
11. Black Ice
12. Mind Eraser
13. Terror Shark
14. The Thrashin’ of The Christ
15. Bangover
Encore:
16. Pre-Game / The Art of Partying
17. Beer Pressure
18. You’re Cut Off
19. Born to Party