News: Withersin’s Unkindness

Withersin’s Unkindness anthology will be released on Halloween. It’s a collection of 13 bizarre tales, including my newest, “Complete Breakfast.”

Horror is about playing on fears. Most of them have been done to death. Luckily for me, some people have an irrational fear of breakfast foods. That’s what “Complete Breakfast” is all about.

The full list of horror short stories is:

• Forward by bizarro author D. Harlan Wilson
• “Inspiration” – Ken Goldman
• “An Unnatural Death” – Ben Duiverman
• “Complete Breakfast” – MP Johnson
• “Doddering Fools” – Gregory Story
• “Vanguard of Blood” – Patrick McCully
• “Medicated” – James Marcotullio
• “Starless and Bible Black” – Lee Zumpe
• “Chemical Man” – Mike Norris
• “The Forgotten House” – Patrick Rutigliano
• “Goatman” – Robert Sullivan
• “Updating” – John Rosenman
• “Interruptions” – JG Faherty
• “Paint it Black” – Brian Schiavo
• Interview with author Graham Hancock – Michael Lohr

You can preorder a copy at the Withersin Web site.

Review: Hellish Rock with Helloween and Gamma Ray

“Are you ready to metal?” asked Kai Hansen, the singer of Gamma Ray and, incidentally, one of the original members of Helloween.

The crowd yelled something that probably meant yes. I agreed.

And metal we did.

Power metal, and I mean really good power metal, has some amazing powers. It’s triumphant music that can really lift you out of a dirty, brick-walled club like Station 4 and take you “Somewhere Out in Space” or let you “Ride the Sky.” Life suddenly becomes a lot less complicated. A lot better.

When Gamma Ray finished, gently returning me and the rest of the audience to this plane of existence on the wings of a soaring guitar, I couldn’t believe that I had just witnessed an opening band. Helloween would have a lot to live up to.

While hanging out in the bar, waiting to find out if German’s metal legends would be able to do it, I stood next to some old dude who went on a loud rant: “Man, it was 1984! I saw Helloween on Headbanger’s Ball. Fuck Metallica! Fuck all of that other stuff! Helloween was it for me and they’ve been my favorite band ever since.”

When his favorite band took the stage and powered through their first song, I laughed as the bouncers dragged the same dude out of the joint. Apparently, he wasn’t a big enough fan to not be a douche bag.

It had been over fifteen years since I had seriously listened to Helloween. My friend had made me a mix CD to get me psyched up for this show, so I had a decent refresher course on the classics. I had Youtubed their more recent videos, which were cheesy as fuck to watch but fun to listen to. Surprisingly, just from those two sources, I was familiar with about ninety percent of the band’s set.

After somehow making “Halloween,” from their legendary Keeper of the Seven Keys album, into something that seemed even more epic than it did on the recording, they started into their more recent stuff. The soaring “Sole Survivor” gave me faith that their new tunes would keep me just as excited as their old stuff. The crowd agreed, singing along majestically and painfully out of key.

Midway through the set, the singer grew concerned about the state of the crowd’s vocal cords. “How are your voices? Still up and running?”

Everybody cheered. He must have liked the response, because he asked the same question after the next song, then again after the next. He asked it one more time, only this time the crowd’s response was different.

“Still up and running?”

Mouths opened and the vocal equivalent of tumbleweeds spilled out. The crowd was no longer up and running.

Not really though.

Everyone yelled the same response. Helloween played through the rest of their set and left the stage. When they reappeared moments later, the singer had changed his wardrobe. A black top hat sat atop his head and a shiny red jacket replaced the brown leather he had worn previously. Not being familiar with Helloween’s shtick, this seemed pretty bizarre to me.

For their first encore, they went through the clichéd process of introducing each band member and having them play a solo. Ninety percent of the time, this routine bores the fuck out of me and this was no exception, particularly since their new guitar player, decked out with retarded red beads in his hair, played like he was either in some cock rock band or a new metal band, any type of band other than the band he was actually in. They capped it off by playing all of 25 seconds from one of their most powerful and epic tunes, “The Keeper of the Seven Keys.” What the fuck is the point of playing 25 seconds from a song?

They left the stage, leaving me a bit bummed out. They couldn’t go out like that. For a power metal show to be a true power metal show, it has to end with everyone in the crowd shouting along, joining their voices together and getting that whole soaring thing going.

Helloween came back to the stage, this time with original member and current Gamma Ray leader Kai Hansen in tow. Without any mention of the fact that this was a pretty amazing reunion, they took us back to “Future World,” which has always been one of my favorites, before closing out with everyone in the crowd shouting along to the chorus of “I Want Out.”

Yep, definitely a true power metal show.

(Helloween and Gamma Ray played at Station 4 in St. Paul on 9/28/08)

Review: Getting Wild and Weird With Monotonix

“Not sexy or too sexy?” The singer yelled from on top of the bar, referring to his scrawny, sweaty body.

A chorus of gruff voices eagerly replied, “Too sexy!”

The singer wasn’t having it. “No gentlemen! Just ladies. Gentlemen, shut up! Ladies, not sexy or too sexy?”

And all the girls cooed, “Too sexy!”

Of course, this prompted the dripping little man to drop his tight red shorts and moon the crowd at the Uptown Bar and Cafe. The smile on my face only got bigger.

Let’s take a step back. I had heard about Monotonix. I knew they had a reputation for getting pretty wild. I’m always happy to check out a band that knows how to push the boundaries in a live setting, but I’m also a very jaded music fan. I’ve seen some of the most notorious live acts around. I’ve seen fires. I’ve seen jumping off walls. I’ve dodged folding chairs thrown at me from the stage. I’ve failed to dodge urine.

So, as I waited through the blah opening acts, watching the tide of hipsters flow in and out, I wondered if this whole thing was going to be a waste of my time. Maybe it was just a bunch of hype.

My friend said, “If this band doesn’t make you smile, you’re a dork.” That sounded like a challenge.

Around midnight, after a crushingly boring set by a band that made me feel like I had stepped into a Christopher Guest mockumentary about bar bands, Monotonix finally decided to do their thing.

They set up on the floor a few feet in front of the stage. The crowd nestled in around them. From my jaded music fan spot in the back of the room, I couldn’t see much. I heard some rumblings. Fuzzy guitar riffs. Cagey drumming. Wild shouting. No bass? Ooooohhh, how avant garde. Typical garage band stuff. I saw heads nodding, but I didn’t see much action. Yawn.

Then I saw the singer, already covered with sweat, rise above the crowd. As he moved across the sea of hands, he kept singing. Okay, I thought, so he can crowd surf. How many bands have I seen crowd surf? Is that all they’ve got?

Nope. They had more. A lot more.

The singer got tired of simply crowd surfing. He needed to improve the art by crowd surfing in a garbage can or while standing on top of the bass drum. I wondered, where is the drumming coming from if the drums are floating around on top of the crowd with the singer riding on them? I had no fucking clue, but the music still filled the room.

It wasn’t just the music that filled the room either. The band wouldn’t stay in one spot. Nor would they stay together. After a while in front of the stage, the singer and guitar player moved over to the other side of the room. They stood on one of the tiny tables together, their long curly hair flailing around as they rocked out.

When they got sick of that, they moved over closer to where I stood. They reunited with their drummer and made it seem like the most natural thing in the world that they had already seemingly played in every corner of the room.

And the music wasn’t just an afterthought either. The bare naked rock is what fueled the whole ordeal. It turned out to be way beyond your generic garage rock fare. Yeah, the guitar was fuzzed out, but somehow it stayed cheerful. The riffs were goddamn musical smiles, good buddies wrapping their arms around your neck and pulling you back into the party. The drumming, despite always seeming to be teetering on the edge of disaster, managed to keep everything moving forward, not willing to leave anyone in the crowd behind. And the lack of bass? Who the fuck cares?

After the singer finished the butt show, he looked around the room. Guitar still rockin’, he realized he had missed one important corner of the bar: the outside corner.

The guitar player held tight near the bar as the singer and drummer made their way through the crowd toward the place’s covered patio. The crowd followed behind. When I got to the exit, I was surprised to see the singer standing beside the door, smiling wide and ushering everyone out. When he was satisfied that the patio was reasonably full, he climbed onto the metal rafters.

“Yasoo!” he yelled.

“Yasoo!” everyone on the patio replied in unison, banging on the drums that seemed to be riding around the crowd on their own.

“Sit down!” the singer yelled.

Everyone sat down.

As he hung from the rafters, he told everyone that on the count of four, everyone should stand up and he would dive down and everything would go crazy. At that point, I think the music had technically stopped, but somehow it was so infectious that it was still in my head and, presumably, everybody else’s.

As promised, the singer counted to four, jumped into the crowd and everyone stood and went crazy one last time.

I walked away with a big smile on my face. Monotonix refuse to let anyone remain jaded at their shows. They simply won’t allow it.

(Monotonix played at the Uptown Bar and Cafe in Minneapolis on 9/24/08)

Review: 25 Years of Impaler

From a wall of fog emerged the face of a corpse framed by thin, twisted blonde hair. Blood dripped out of his mouth, forming a red death grin. He raised his microphone and began singing some of the greatest horror rock songs ever written.

Impaler began their 25th anniversary celebration by slicing through a pile of tunes from their first EP, Rise of the Mutants, and their first full length, If We Had Brains, We’d Be Dangerous. Among them, “Crack That Whip,” in which the singing corpse lasciviously details how he doesn’t “want no intellectual, I want something hot and wet, I want something sexual.” Lyrics like those are what brought them to the attention of Tipper Gore and her PMRC, who would have rather seen Impaler dead than, well…

If anything the singer’s delivery of such lyrics has become more potent. To the malicious snarl heard on those early recordings, he’s added a barrage of evil growls, howls and roars. Impaler has grown more sinister through the years.

As I sang along, I looked around at the sparse crowd, shocked by the fact that this celebration of a band that has become a Twin Cities institution was not going to be witnessed by more people. This was especially disconcerting considering the treat the band had put together for the people who did manage to climb out of their tombs, and by the looks of some of the old metal heads in the audience, I mean that literally. They announced that they were going to take us through all of the eras of Impaler, one by one, with the members who originally played during those eras coming on stage to give us a blast from the past.

On the stage at the moment: Impaler 1983. While most of the band had dressed the part of the gore mongers they are, their guitar player must have missed a blood-soaked memo. His fancy clothes made it look like he had been expecting to do banker business. Luckily, his playing made it clear he was there to do the devil’s business. His solos shined like butcher knives, cutting their way out of the songs and becoming their own evil entities.

One of the key elements that sets Impaler apart from all other shock rock bands is that these dudes understand old school punk rock. They demonstrated this by mutating classics like “Search and Destroy” and “Kick Out the Jams” into tunes that fit perfectly side by side with their own.

During one of the monster songs, a costumed psycho came on stage with a torch. The singer grabbed it and charged into the crowd, eventually landing right next to me. He looked around, his eyes wild. I backed away as he opened his mouth, spraying flammable liquid onto the torch, creating a burst of flames just above my head.

He ran back to the stage to join the band in proving that they understand the confines of their narrow musical subgenre, but aren’t afraid to push against the walls to make certain everything they do brings something new to the table. Sometimes that means branching out into related B-movie topics like the fine art of lucha libre. Other times it means bringing the speed up and thrashing out on songs like “Goblin Queen.” They don’t rehash. They reinvent.

After they had finished taking the crowd through the first few eras and were changing over to the Undead Things era, I went down. Maybe my head banging and singing along got the best of me. Maybe I should have eaten more than baked beans and ice cream that day. Maybe I just got sick.

Whatever it was, it pulled the fog in too close. I stumbled to the bar, fell onto it and begged for a glass of water. My legs went out and I tumbled to the floor. The bartender yelled down for me to take my water. I mustered up the strength to grab it and swallow some.

A blurry dude asked if I was okay.

“I think I’m going to pass out.”

“Do you want to sit down?”

“Uhhh,” I said, climbing onto the barstool he shoved my way.

“Must have had too many to drink.”

“I haven’t had any drinks,” I replied.

He said something about anxiety.

Kate, my girlfriend and partner in metal appreciation, emerged from the bathroom. I told her I wasn’t doing so good. Babbled some stuff. I don’t know if I was talking very clearly. I had to use my energy to keep from fainting.

Sometimes I like this feeling. I like the thought of my world curling up at the edges because my body is pissed about something. I liked forcing my mind to keep my body in check as foggy images of drunken metal heads and rocking corpses with mouths spewing blood circled around me.

Also, I had to shit. I kept thinking, if I pass out, I’m going to shit my pants all over Station 4’s slimy floor. I pictured myself lying there, metal heads gawking as the brown stuff glopped up in my jeans. Not a cool scene.

When I got my strength up, I made my way to the bathroom, happy to find a clean toilet and two full rolls of TP. Passing out on the shitter seemed like a distinct possibility, but at least I’d be able to clean up if I did. Luckily, I won the fight and stayed upright.

After all that, do you think I put my tail between my legs and bailed? Fuck no! That’s how serious I am about the greatness of Impaler.

I hunkered down at a little table with Kate and watched the rest of the show. Impaler took us through their horror rock history. Severed heads were impaled on stakes, the meat eaten out of their necks. Band members were bashed with giant mallets. Fire was sprayed overhead.

Impaler 2008 played tunes from their latest release, Habeas Corpus. Then they took us into the future of Impaler. They proved that they can still introduce new twists and turns by playing songs from their upcoming concept album, Cryptozoology. These songs, “Minnesota Ice Man” and “Jersey Devil” tell the stories of mysterious creatures, while remaining as memorably monstrous as the rest of the band’s catalog.

To close the night, they brought the whole gang onstage. The past and present collided as all the old band members joined the new. A virtual army of guitar players synchronized up to play the song that defines the band, “Shock Rock.” As they tore through it, their stage psychos – Dr. Corpse, Crisis Control and other costumed goons – tore up the stage. They went wild, slamming folding chairs into each other. In the melee, the singer fell to the ground. A nurse rushed onto the stage to help, only to have her caring attention repaid by getting her guts chomped out and spit all over. Never before and probably never again will that song ever be played with such intensity.

Happy 25th anniversary Impaler!

(Impaler played at Station 4 in St. Paul, Minnesota on 9/20/08)

Review: Impaler Brutality

Last night I went to see Twin Cities shock rock legends Impaler at Big Vs, a long, narrow and surprisingly well-lit drinking establishment in St. Paul. Prior to the evil, I witnessed a group of chicks lip-synching Tina Turner tunes in huge afro wigs and a band called 25 Cent Tacos playing a song with a chanting chorus of “Penis! Vagina! Fucking! Yeah!”

After that came Faggot, a local gay shock rock band. With their nearly naked, pale bodies covered with fake blood, they ran through a set that mostly annoyed me. It was fun to watch an audience member in an absolutley perfect Batman costume rocking out while Faggot’s long-dreadlocked dancer jumped on stage and simulated sex acts with the singer, whose scrotum overflowed from the ribbons of black material threaded through his crotch.

After covering the stage with severed body parts, heads on pig poles and various carnage-coated weapons, Impaler ripped apart their first tune. Led by a singer who looks like the ultimate public-access horror movie host, clad in a bloody suit and tie, thrashing out with his long blonde hair, they demonstrated why, after being on the scene for twenty-plus years, they are still worth seeing. They embody everything that is good and right in metal: You know, evil, chaos, bloodshed and no long annoying guitar solos. As they rocked, they had a lunatic in a bizarre medic outfit jumping around them on stage, spewing blood into the crowd and smashing things.

Midway through the set, a muscle-bound meat-head shoved his way into the mismatched crowd of punks, metal heads, drunken weirdos, guys dressed like King Diamond and the half-naked dudes from Faggot. He was drinking out of a full pitcher of beer and growling macho shit at his scrawny friend. As the band played, he randomly shoved people in the crowd, trying to start some sort of jock mosh. He got into a pushing match with the scantily clad guitar player of Faggot. The singer of Impaler jumped off stage, got in the guy’s face and told him to cut the shit so everyone could have a good time.

The rock continued and the guy seemed to simmer down… for about two songs. Then one of the Faggot dancers and the aforementioned guitarist fell to the ground, where they got tangled up in each other and rolled around on the floor in the middle of the crowd in a bizarrely suggested manner. This craziness only seemed to bother Mr. Meat head, who started yelling about how gay the shit was and about how the long-haired Faggot guitar player was really a dude. His tone demonstrated that he was really upset about it, as if he was hoping it wasn’t actually a dude. Personally, I thought the guitarist’s mutton chops were a dead giveaway of his gender.

When the rolling around stopped, Impaler’s bloody medic threw a piece of gore at the meat head’s face. Meat head approached the stage, growling and flexing his muscles cartoonishly. The words exchanged couldn’t be heard over the crazed thrasing, but they culminated in the medic pointing at his jaw and egging the turkey to strike. Meat-head took the bait, punching the medic in the jaw.

The medic jumped off the stage, slamming his fists into the meat head. Impaler rocked on as everything went nuts. The crowd turned into a pool of flying fists. At least fifteen people were throwing punches. I dodged a set of knuckles looking for a place to call home and smiled as a tangle of testosterone-fueled mayhem landed at my feet. For a second, I thought about joining in. It looked like fun. At the same time, it was already pretty much the whole crowd against the meat head and his wiry friend. Plus, I was having a good time just watching it. The mess of flailing limbs ebbed and flowed from one side of the small concert area to the other, as if moving to the psychotic metal that still wailed from the speakers.

I laughed as one of the Faggot members miraculously waded into the mayhem and removed the meat head’s shoes, throwing them into the corner of the room. The brawl went on and on, thrashing on the ground, then standing, then back on the ground, more fists whizzing by me. I started to wonder if the blood spots on my shirt were from the band or from the battle.

Eventually, the turkeys were dragged out to the street. Impaler’s singer made a climactic speech about how the good metal fans have to stick together and then slammed through their concluding song, appropriately entitled “Shock Rock.”

(Impaler played at Big V’s in St. Paul, Minnesota on 10/28/06)

Review: The Worst Show Ever

I have been to a lot of bad shows in my life. I have seen inept bands, bored crowds, evil bouncers and all the rest. However, it wasn’t until last night that I attended a show that I can officially call the worst show ever.

Six hardcore rap acts were on the bill. I showed up right away, knowing the one I wanted to see the most, Danny Diablo, would be playing early. Two hours passed before any musical action took place. In those two hours, I learned that two of the groups on the list would not be playing. I didn’t know whether to be bummed or to rejoice that I would not have to sit through a rapper named Boondox, whose shtick was that he was country and wore a straw hat.

While I waited among the throngs of fifteen year old male Insane Clown Posse fans, I watched them swagger as if they were tough. I listened to them talk about how the bouncers at First Avenue in downtown Minneapolis sucked because they wouldn’t let anybody smoke pot. I listened to one of them explain how one of those terrible bouncers once punched a jugalette (Apparently, this is the term for the female ICP fans, since the males are called jugalos.) in the face for saying the N-word. This sentence was uttered with a straight face. I watched them spend their allowance money on huge piles of CDs and T-shirts by the headlining act, Necro.

Two hours after my arrival, Danny Diablo appeared onstage. I’ve been listening to this dude’s music for nearly a decade, from his old hardcore band Skarhead to his new thug core hip hop stuff. He’s earned my respect by injecting everything he does with an intense level of testosterone. He makes the musical equivalent of bulging biceps and bench presses… oh yeah, and punches to the face. So, imagine my surprise when all five feet and six inches of this guy stepped onto stage wearing a fur coat that looked like a hand-me-down from a destitute grandmother. I accepted it and moved on, realizing that if anyone’s masculinity could overcome such a serious obstacle, it was Double D’s.

Unfortunately, his masculinity couldn’t compensate for what came next: A four song set, featuring one song that wasn’t even his, but one spit by his buddy, Ceekay. Even worse, it was four poorly-performed songs. He was just rapping over a copy of his CD and the CD was turned up so loud that I couldn’t actually hear him. For all I knew, he might not have even been rapping. He might just have been mouthing the tough guy lyrics. Actually, I take that back, he was definitely rapping. That was made abundantly clear by the fact that the CD was scratched and skipped several times during each song, leaving his rapping out of sync with the music. Each time, he shot a confused glance at the dude working the laptop computer behind him. Between songs, he asked if we liked hardcore. The dozen or so kids who had gathered seemed like maybe they did, but that didn’t cause Diablo to do anything hardcore. Instead, he apologized for the botched set. I’d rather hear him apologize for not living up to his reputation for musical beat downs. Blah.

Forty-five minutes later, the next group hit the stage. Actually, the next two groups hit the stage. At least, they were listed as two groups on the flyer. When they introduced themselves, they used at least three names: “We are Psycho Realm, Sick Symphonies, Street Soldiers, etc.” What kind of nonsense is that? You can only be one group and you should only be billed as one group. Maybe I’m just old fashioned.

The odd part is that their rhymes were tight. This was an old school Los Angeles group, considered legendary by some. They sure didn’t act legendary. They acted bored as hell. Maybe they were embarrassed by the tour they were on. Amazingly, some people in the crowd started getting into it. After four songs, I started to see some energy. I thought maybe they were going to turn things around and the night was going to start going in the right direction.

Instead, half of the crowd started chanting for Necro.

“Are you guys psyched for Necro? Okay, we’ll play one more and just get out of your way.”

As promised, they blew through one more tune before disappearing backstage. The fifteen minute set gave way to another forty-five minute wait.

Finally, Necro came on.

I was prepared to not like Necro. He’s a fat, big-eared sloth with a speech impediment. Still, he’s got something. He whipped the crowd into a frenzy fast, thanks in part to a hyper sidekick named Mr. Hyde. Everyone seemed to love his raps, which consisted of sick rhymes about choking people with tampons and, frequently, monotonous shouts of “Death Rap” or “Murder” or some such nonsense. I started to get into it. I started to enjoy myself.

Then the bad really started. The misogyny, homophobia and general asshole-ness just poured out. Now, I’ve enjoyed entertainment that contained these features to a lesser extent, but never have I been bludgeoned so intensely with them. I felt like I was suffocating in worthlessness.

After an array of murder-oriented tunes, he played one of his porn raps off an album called “The Sexorcist” or something like that. He invited the ladies in the crowd to come up on stage. All five of them did. It started out innocently enough, with him doing his rhymes and the girls dancing around. Then he had the crowd start with the “show your tits” chant.

The girls didn’t comply. The chanting got more intense.

Necro decided to help things along. He lurched up behind a cute Asian girl and started rubbing his gut, and whatever hid below it, against her. He grabbed her boob and squeezed. Maybe the fact that this girl was wearing a very tight tank top that said “I heart fucking” across the chest made him think that he had special permission to touch. He decided that she wanted to show some more skin. He took the liberty of lifting her top, revealing massive fake boobies. She hid them quickly as the crowd of puberty-ridden dudes cheered through their drool.

The song faded down and Necro stopped rapping. An awkward conversation commenced between the slug and the babe. Obviously, I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but there was a lot of pointing backstage and her shaking her head negative before she finally just bolted offstage and disappeared altogether.

He took a break from the sex rhymes to do one of what he referred to as “the rugged shit.”

This didn’t last long. He segued back into the dirty stuff by having the crowd chant the word “porn” over and over again. Then he got the remaining ladies back on stage. The Asian chick was noticeably absent.

He bragged about how he always brought out the babes. During the song, he forcefully shoved one of them to her knees to simulate oral sex. After going along with it for a second, she fought to get back to her feet quickly, blonde hair all disheveled. Strangely, she didn’t seem too phased by it. Later, she gladly responded to one of the “show your tits” chants from the teenage boys in the crowd.

After that song finished, Necro yelled, “I always bring the good pussy. You all like pussy, don’t you?”

The crowd cheered enthusiastically.

“You better,” he threatened.

I wanted to yell, “I like dick!” I didn’t, because it undoubtedly would have caused me to be attacked by the throng of misguided high schoolers. The last thing I wanted to have happen was to punch someone and get their popped zit goo all over my knuckles.

But there would be violence. The real kicker, the thing I have never before seen in my life, came toward the end of the set.

A kid in the front row started shouting something.

Necro crunched his little blob paws into fists and punched the kid in the face.

Then, as an after thought, he lisped, “What did you say to me?”

Through the microphone, you could hear the kid sobbing a bit as he said, “You’re the shit. You’re the shit.”

Mr. Hyde, Necro’s crony, tried to pull the blob away, saying, “No, man. That’s your fan. He loves you.”

Necro’s response: “Oh, I thought you said ‘You AIN’T shit.’”

He went on to explain that you don’t dis him while he’s on stage.

The kid didn’t leave. He stayed right there in the front row, shouting along to the rest of Necro’s retarded songs. How much do you have to love a rapper to do that after they punch you in the face? Too much.

I stuck around to the bitter end, not able to take my eyes off this ridiculous display. Then I rushed to my car, took my Danny Diablo CD out of the stereo and put my Gwen Stefani CD in.

(Necro, Psycho Realm and Danny Diablo played at Station 4 in St. Paul on 1/15/08)

Review: Finntroll and the Bad Hot Dog

When I walked into the Triple Rock and discovered that another band had been added to the night’s lineup, I was psyched. I was not psyched because of the band. Definitely not. With all the generic thrash riffs and warbling female vocals they could stuff onto the stage, Archangel was definitely not my style.

No, I was psyched because I was hungry and the addition would give me enough time to enjoy a bowl of the Triple Rock’s delicious macaroni and cheese. Their mac and cheese is like no other. It’s like they harvest their cheese from the clouds of heaven and serve it with a thick slice of bread.

I chowed down and chatted with friends before heading over to the music half of the T-Rock to enjoy the old school thrash stylings of Warbringer. I could take ‘em or leave ‘em. Nothing all that special.

I was there for Finntroll, and so were all the dudes in skirts. What skirts have to do with troll metal is beyond me, but I suppose they go well enough with chainmail. Whatever the rationale, the scene was set for some triumphant dungeons and dragons style metal.

The scene was then destroyed by the singer’s constant whining about how it was the worst day ever. Comments introducing songs as being “about the evil things that live below the black waves” were undermined by griping about the stomach poisoning the singer got from that “fucking American fast food.”

Between song banter can make a difference. Every time I got sucked into a song and my mind filled with images of grabbing a spear and slaying some goddamn orks, the tune would end and the singer would go on about how he just had to have that one last hot dog.

I imagine that the commands of “I want to see some serious mosh pitting” were ineffective because they were followed by “I’ll try not to pass out, okay?” That makes sense to me. I go to this type of show because I want my head to fill with fantasies of running through caves and slitting the throats of thick-headed trolls. I want to do some serious mosh pitting to that. I do not want to do some serious mosh pitting while thinking about scrawny Finnish dudes bent over a Dairy Queen toilet barfing up pickles and mustard.

So, Finntroll, next time you come through, I recommend the Triple Rock’s mac and cheese.

(Finntroll played at the Triple Rock Social Club in Minneapolis on 8/31/08)