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Wow, what a show! Natural Law/
Dystrophy/Trapper/Dethroned Emporer/Burma

• Published January 4, 2011 By Will Butler
• Categories Shows

Wow, what a show! is brought to you again this week by Will Butler of To Live A Lie Records / Fastcore Photos. But why let him hog all the glory? 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@maximumrocknroll.com with a sample review and pics, and maybe you too can be a MRR shitblogger!

Perfect timing for a slightly out of town show… I had Friday off for New Years so a show an hour away wasn’t a stretch. This was originally going to be in a Raleigh basement but due to some roommate issues it got moved to a Greensboro show space called CFBG. Word is that the place is a dance studio, and it had some cool artwork up. Appears to be a business where the owner is nice enough to have bands come play.

Technical difficulties caused a short delay… I think a PA needed to be brought or found or set up and a large bass cab was set up for vocals.  BURMA went on shortly after. They share members across Raleigh and Greensboro so they are a perfect band to have already been booked to play in Raleigh and to also play this night in the other town. They pumped out some jams to room of smiling faces. I think I must have been spoiled by Matt’s antics at their last show when he went off..  tonight he wasn’t as energized and bloody, although a guitar was swung fairly close to his head a few times. There were shouts for a Minor Threat cover but alas no cover. The great thing about Minor Threat is the fact that is really hard to ruin their songs, they are both solid and sloppy, so I always enjoy seeing one covered.

Following Burma was DYSTROPHY. I was really hoping this was the Cali thrash punk band who put out We’re Nice Kids, but it turns out this Dystrophy still rules AND also contains my friend Matt Thompson… quite a pleasant surprise. This Dystrophy is a NJ area death metal band. Lots of riffage which had quite a few people jumping around and getting wild. They played a solid long set and even covered a Death song.

This next band I had never heard of before, but based on their look I was highly interested. DETHRONED EMPORER took stage (took floor). The guest vocalist during the Dystrophy set is on drums and their singer as the guy  I noticed wearing a Cryptic Slaughter jacket earlier in the night. His guitar setup was super loud and crunchy on sound check. Later on I noticed he has two instrument cables coming out of his guitar and each cable was connected to a different head connected to the same stack. I talked to him later as I was super curious and he gave me an overly technical answer that I forget most of, but I know he was running each pickup to a different amp head and he mentioned taking off his volume pot and running 1 Ν© out to overdrive the whole rig I believe. The sound of this two piece death metal band was more familiar to me than the previous band, they obviously draw a lot of influence from early grind. They had a few parts containing what I call the mince beat… that really awesome slowed down grind beat that Agathocles is known for.

Second to last band that played was TRAPPER. Their second guitar player was nice and talked to me earlier in the show and I was in kind of a quiet mood so I felt like a douche, so I wanted to make sure to get some good pictures of them. The band hails from Charlotte and the other guitar player helped make the whole show happen at this venue.  Trapper had a definite hardcore sound but did have some darker guitar tone which was crunchy at times and I noticed sludge influence. I spent most of their set trying to get a picture of the singer who wouldn’t slow down… lots of bounding around and bending backwards. Some of this stuff falls off my radar as I write it off as Bridge 9/Converge type jams… in actuality they are  probably more along the lines of Doomrider or Nails… definitely not bad for a local area band.

The final band is one I had heard so much about but had not actually heard, NATURAL LAW. The fine folks from Double Negative talked about them in high regards and Ira wouldn’t shut up about their Slump EP, so I was excited to see them. The band shares members with Black Kites and seems to be a scattered New England/DC crowd. Their bass player lives with two members of Deathrats I later found out. The band played non-stop hardcore jams that definitely gives a nod to Double Negative but with its own originality. I think this is where my ability to describe music drops off. You really should just track down their demo or 7″, not many people will be disappointed.