Sorry for the brevity of this review — life kind of happened as it tends to do. To skip a few steps of explanation, I ended up filling in playing bass for the band Burma for this show. It was on April Fool’s Day at the Kent Street House in Raleigh, NC…

Backslider (photo by Will Butler)

I got there nice and early after practicing with Burma for the first real time (the day of the show). I’m glad I was there early because I got to see Priapus play. Priapus is a tech grind band from Greensboro, featuring Kevin from Malebolgia. The band has the Discordance Axis-worshiping sound and almost sounds like a live Agoraphobic Nosebleed. I admit I left partway through their set to grab some equipment and get stoked to play.

Next was Burma with me on bass. I haven’t played in a band since I was 16 or 17, so it was good to do it again. Had no problem with the songs, having learned them over a two week time frame. To tell the truth, I keep getting them stuck in my head when I go to bed and wake up in the mornings, so I think I learned them too well. I was very lucid while playing so I can describe us surprisingly well. Drumming was tight; I don’t think I realized until we were playing how well Kane plays the drums… his drum fills perfectly led up to the endings of songs. I saw my roommate accidentally pull down part of the ceiling during the set. Matt, the singer, kicked a 24-pack out of someone’s hands who was throwing beer around on everybody. Here is a short video of the set, if you want to see my friend Patrick from Backslider haranguing me with his video camera:

Third to play was Backslider. I was hoping they’d have their new split out for the show, but no such luck. I also hoped that Pat would have the Mind As Prison/Disciples of Christ split out on his label. Those were not ready either. Bummer. What wasn’t a bummer was Backslider! Two-man power violence done up right. People were pretty still during their set. I don’t know if that is a bad thing, but it allowed me to get some great pictures in that small basement. Tight set.

Backslider (photo by Will Butler)

Nearing the end of the night, Nimbus Terrifix played. The band is ex-Dead Radical. They play a kind of orchestrated noise-violence. I think I was annoyed that I couldn’t get a good angle to take their picture. People finally woke up and got a bit crazy during their set.

Nimbus Terrifix (photo by Will Butler)

Last band was a local band called Shit Horse. They were a nice fresh sound after a night of hardcore. They were more of a psych garage rock band, I suppose you could say. They have a delightful front man who was being pretty funny the whole night, and wore a velour over-sized hoodie that made him look like he might be a boxer or an MC. During their set they had a girl in very little clothing, who was donning a horse head and a toy machine gun and dancing around in the crowd. Weird schtick but good music and something to talk about at the end of a good night.

Nimbus Terrifix and Backslider (photo by Will Butler)

Besides being MRR.com’s premier show reviewer/photographer combo, Will Butler‘s claims to fame are To Live A Lie Records and Fastcore Photos. If you take photos and like to write about punk shows (or if you and a friend wanna team up to do this) drop us a line at webzine {at} maximumrocknroll(.)com with a sample review and pics, and maybe you too can be a MRR shitblogger!

This week’s show review is by Ryan Cappelletti of Punks Before Profits. If you take photos and like to write about punk shows (or if you and a friend wanna team up to do this) drop us a line at webzine {at} maximumrocknroll(.)com with a sample review and pics, and maybe you too can be a MRR shitblogger!

I think it is really important to play and make it out to shows in small areas that may surround your city. A lot of the time, if we get out of our box, we can find something truly fucking awesome. My band, POSITIVE NOISE, got asked to play a house show in Muskegon, Michigan, where our bass player and drummer live. Not sure if anybody has ever heard of this place, but it’s a pretty bleak area. One of the highest unemployment rates in the country, and with this new emergency manager law being put into play, Muskegon could be the first for a fascist takeover! I never understand why my bandmates decide to stay, but either way they give people hope through shows like this. So thanks for making me venture into Muskegon for another show.

OK, the show started with local band CYCLES. This band fucking rips total fast as fuck, HC crusty punk. They just did a demo and trust me, it rules, so get in touch with pullupmysocks {at} riseup(.)net to get a copy. They ended the set with a BREAD AND WATER cover that ruled. Up next was local hip hop superstar PHIL MEE. It was truly awesome to see somebody take a total punk crowd and rip through a few hip hop jams done very well. Sometimes I feel people with other musical backgrounds have a hard time playing in a basement situation, but this was not the case with this guy.

Damages (photo by Ryan Cappelletti)

POSITIVE NOISE was next. It’s always hard to talk about your own band, so all I will say is that it was cool to talk between songs and have part of the crowd take part, and bring it to a full-blown discussion in the middle of a fast hardcore punk set. Local Grand Rapids hardcore took the floor next: DAMAGES! This band just gets better and better every time. They play fast, catchy HC punk, and got the crowd moving into a total frenzy — it was awesome.

The last band of the night was ANCIENT FILTH from Boston, Mass, who drove many, many, many hours out of the way to play this one Michigan show. I was already stoked on this band before hand, but after seeing them they are one of my new favorite bands. The tour they just did I think only had two or three shows in all. They basically just wanted to get out of town and play a couple shows. They played an energy ridden set of HC punk with the emphasis on punk! They also ended with a ZERO BOYS cover. If you are fan of modern HC like LIMP WRIST and older Italian HC punk, then please get the ANCIENT FILTH demo now! If you don’t believe me check out www.ancientfilth.com for the proof.

Ancient Filth (photo by Ryan Cappelletti)

You never know where you will find great hardcore so never underestimate any town or scene this show is solid proof killer HC can be found all over the fucking place!

Brontez Dance Company, with Brilliant Colors, Pigs, and Tagi Maalik at the Berkeley Art Museum • February 11, 2011

Review by Anna Brown, photos by Janelle Blarg

When does modern dance defy boredom? When Brontez Purnell is on stage.

The debut performance of The Brontez Purnell Dance Company at the Berkeley Art Museum  felt like a watershed moment. Maybe it was the physical space. A museum has a way of making things seem momentous, different from a warehouse or a punk club where witnessing unique, radical performance is expected. But on a Friday night in February, I had the feeling Brontez Purnell + dancers may have done the impossible: made “free jazz” relevant to punk. Consider this: there is nothing more punk than getting on stage and doing something that scares the shit out of people. In this case, it just happened to be dancing.

Brontez Purnell, MRR columnist, noted author of Fag School ‘zine, and member of bands the YOUNGER LOVERS and GRAVY TRAIN!!!!, can really dance. He began leading “free movement” classes to a bunch of fearless volunteers in San Francisco and has been channeling his enormous energy toward choreography — live, and in short films — ever since. To watch him move is something to behold. He says, “I started  back in October and wanted to do this as a way to exorcise my dance demons. I  was working on some pieces at school (I’m a theatre/dance major at Cal State East Bay) and wanted to see the pieces come to life. I wanted to start a company that was mostly people I saw at shows.  Some people had issues with my lack of ‘professional dancers,’ but they can suck it.”

Brilliant Colors (photo by Janelle Blarg)

On this night the amazing conga player Tagi Maalik, and the bands PIGS and BRILLIANT COLORS, provided the musical backdrop for a series of short pieces punctuated by black-and-white films. In one scene, PIGS played a pounding rendition of “Electric Funeral” as the dancers depicted an impressionistic story of death and rebirth. There were three or four acts, some were narratives with a story to tell, others were loose and groovy. Finally, the audience was invited up on stage to participate in a lesson, so we, the spectators, could feel the dance revolution for ourselves.

Punk + free movement. Could this be the beginning of something transformative for us all? Brontez Purnell and Company are daring you to inhabit your inner dancer: Move and be moved.

Wow, what a show! is brought to you this week by Clint Baechle of hella bands and the Boca de Fuma blog, with photos by Jehn Cincinnasti. If you take photos and like to write about punk shows (or if you and a friend wanna team up to do this) drop us a line at webzine {at} maximumrocknroll(.)com with a sample review and pics, and maybe you too can be a MRR shitblogger!

For all the times in my life I’ve been told I smell like a goddamn brewery, there are few of them when the accusation could really be considered correct, and tonight was one such time. As soon as I got out of work, I wandered down the road to Speakeasy Brewery’s Friday night open house. My buddy works there and hooks me up with brews, and I uncomfortably stood there drinking beer after beer and munching popcorn in a warehouse facility brimming with with self righteous young professionals, freshly scrubbed and tweezed, and without a doubt twittering about what a “fucking wild night” they are having. But I digress. My point here is actually that there is nothing better to prepare one’s mind and body for a long night of anarcho-crust than a few (or quite a few) bitter beers. I could have used a few more myself, to be honest, but it was time to go, and I took the 19 Polk Family Adventure Bus along almost it’s entire circuitous route, from Hunter’s Point to the venerable intersection of Polk and Pine streets, home to tonight’s festivities. By now my stomach was rumbling, and I figured I’d better give it some kind of cushion for the battery that was to come. And so it came to be that I missed the opening band, the Neighborhood Brats (a great band by the way) because I was chowing Chinese food and accidentally catapulting spoons across the restaurant with my stupid elbows, agitating the staff who were still recovering from the antics of a hostile “chew and screw” customer.

Ratface (photo by Jehn Cincinnasti)

I ascended the golden staircase into Kimo’s “Penthouse Lounge” just in time to catch MUNDO MUERTO from L.A. I’d never seen them before, and due to their association with the Silenzio Statico posse, I was expecting something a bit more rawponk. Instead it was something tight, (barely) controlled, brimming with hardcore anger and attitude. The instruments were individually distinguishable, not a hot mess of chaos, and the songs went from fast rippers into bouncy mid tempo parts. Awesome.

Considering how easy it actually is to pack a walk-in closet the size of Kimo’s, I’ve seen relatively few packed shows here. This one wasn’t the biggest, but it was pretty close, and things were starting to get tight by the third band, but not too tight to easily get up to the bar and get another few beers, thank god.I had to enrich my punk state of mind.

DESPERATE HOURS is a band I’ve seen many times before, so I knew what to expect. The trio of Isla Vista, filthy, beach-crust bums ripped through a succinct and serious set of blown out, Japanese worshiping, crusty d-beat. Chris and Chuck made plenty of snarling faces in our direction, and Denver stomped along, holding it together with wild bass lines. It seemed like moldy black denim and phlegm was everywhere. If that was actually the case, then the problem only increased during the set of Pittsburgh, PA’s Ratface.

Desperate Hours (photo by Jehn Cincinnasti)

RATFACE seems to have several things to its advantage in the midst of the massive d-crust noise punk barrage we’ve been experiencing lately. One of these things is a healthy sense of (self deprecating when necessarily) humor. It has nothing to do with the show review but check out the “Cider Song” intro to their half of the Desperate Hours split tape. Hilarious! Rather the the bombed out mass grave shattered corpse ridden battlefield in which most of their contemporaries dwell, Ratface is perfectly at home falling down cider-drunk in gutter with yer mates and laughing it off.

Ratface’s next advantage is an acknowledgment of pre-Discharge and Anti-Cimex punk music, as evidenced by their covers (yeah, I don’t really think punk bands should do covers; yeah, I went crazy as fuck when they played “Religious Wars,” because that’s the only thing appropriate to do, plus I love that song) and the stylistic variables in their own songs. Yeah, they’re basically d-beat still, but they sound less diluted than most of the shit out there these days, with more tasty ingredients stewed into the studded vest, mucous, cum, blood, spit and filth stew that they’re cooking up for us to all enjoy.

Ratface (photo by Jehn Cincinnasti)

Ratface’s third advantage is their guitar player, Jimmy, who was apparently in some other band that people really liked. He takes take a uniquely workmanlike approach (must be that Midwestern blood) to playing noisy-ass guitar, almost gracefully(?!) piling on the extra squeals, feedback, wah-wahs and rudimentary solos. Right the fuck on.

After that I drank more beer.

I wish someone had told me beforehand that this was to be the final DOPECHARGE show, I would have paid closer attention, maybe tried to break out some teeth or at least spill a beer on someone during their set, but I thought that I would always get another chance to see them, to let them be the soundtrack to another wasted night in San Francisco City, in front of too many kids who were too drunk in a too small bar in a not quite shitty enough neighborhood. It’s a band that I will probably remember more for their attitude than their wild d-beat bashings, more for the nihilistic party atmosphere that their presence seems to suggest. Oh well, I wonder what they’ll do next.

After that I drank a lot more beer.

All in all this was a very satisfying punks spending loud night — it included bus rides, wastedness, alleyway drinking, public urination, denim, leather, and lots people having a good time. And I don’t want to jinx it by talking about it, but damn, there are not only so many good bands coming through right now, but enough venues in San Francisco and the East Bay to host them, and enough drunken retards to go to all the shows, mosh it up, and maybe even take home a nice t-shirt with a skull on it. Ride the wave, boss.