Monday, October 8, 2018

Go! Fest 8 (Rome, 29th September 2018)

Bands: Crisis Benoit/Dr. Gore/Igioia/Neid/Faršas/Riistetyt/Lugubrious Children/Reproach/Failure/Scheletro/Maxcarnage
Date: 29th September 2018
Location: CSOA Spartaco
Price: 7 €

















Do you remember that I mentioned in a live report of some months ago the 8th edition of Go! Fest, an International festival specialized on grindcore/power violence? Well, Go! Fest 8 was a fantastic experience and this is the live report about it! 12 bands on stage, plenty of wild moshing heads (included some also coming from USA!), good friends, a lot of mad moments, some distros with their own stuff, a nice sensation of unity between the attendants and the bands, and a sound engineer throughout the entire fest like Daniel Casari from Tibia and Onryo: this has been, in brief, Go! Fest 8! But now let's go to discover in the details what was happened during this festival in which the speed in its purest form reigns tyranically!


Firstly, there is need to say that the show was scheduled at the social centre CSOA Spartaco on 29th September 2018 for the 5 pm but, in fact, the hostilities started two hours later. Just entered in the place, I realized that there were some people and also friends that were wearing my same fantastic t-shirt of Verano's Dogs, even the drummer of the first band in the bill, Crisis Benoit.

Coming from Bologna (North Italy) and named after the late Canadian wrestler Chris Benoit, Crisis Benoit, in some senses, is a peculiar band. This because their lyrics are about wrestling and, in consequence of this, they are used to wear, both in the band pics and on stage, masks typical of the luchadores, the Mexican wrestlers. In addition, their line-up is formed only by a guitarist and by a talkative drummer that is also the singer. And surprisingly, they opened their show with a great version without solos of..."Breaking the Law" by Judas Priest! This is awesome by a band that plays a grindcore/power violence with raw black metal influences and able to alternate ultra-violent numbers with funny mid-tempos, included other surprising covers also from Kiss (and, in a song, they played also the most famous melodies of the Chopin's "Funeral March"!). Some attendants moshed already starting with Crisis Benoit, but believe me that moshpit has been really almost non-stop throughout the fest!

After this promising start, the fest continued with Dr. Gore. I already talked about them in occasion of their gig with Incantation, and I have to say that, in this festival, they played with a better intensity. Few words about them, their show has been a total massacre in the sign of a brutal death metal infected by a grindcore bestiality. They amazed me again for the incredible technical skills of the drummer Massimo "Mastino" Romano, that seem to be a living machine gun such is the ultra-demented pace that he can keep for 40 fukken minutes without any problems!

Next band? Igioia from Trento (North Italy)! This young band plays a spastic power violence with abrupt tempo changes (also in a doom direction), chainsaw guitars and a woman like singer that spit out terrific screams. All this is surely good and deserve attention from the maniacs of this genre but the problem is that I went very late to see them since I saw only the last 3 minutes of their show. Shame on me, ok, also because I took no photos of them but a friend of mine told me that Igioia played only for 15/20 minutes, so in a lesser time in comparison with the other bands.

Instead, with a beer in my hands, I managed to see the massacre made by the grindsters Neid, after I didn't manage to see them during that mentioned night with Incantation. Neid blown the audience with a really intense exhibition in which they shown their strong hardcore punk roots also by playing covers like "Cannibale" (Negazione) and "Nato per essere veloce" (Crash Box). Particularly amazing was the angry performance of the singer Guru Renato!

Now, the fest started to be seriously a pure delirium! In fact, the show by Faršas, a grindcore band from Lithuania (FUCK, I think it has been the first band from this country that I've ever heard in my entire life!), was truly funny! You have to consider that someone pulled out an...inflatable giant pizza, and also some coloured balls! This means that you could see us when, like too grown children, we were throwing them from various parts of the place! Another thing is that, at a certain point, a stage light started to dangle because it was hit just by the giant pizza! Musically speaking, Faršas plays a ferocious grindcore that's really awesome!

Faršas was the first International band on the stage but, after them, it was the turn of a band that truly belongs to the history of (Finnish) hardcore punk: Riistetyt! Playing since 1981 (gulp!), Riistetyt destroyed our broken ears with their d-beat hardcore punk with some metal touches (it isn't a case if the guitarplayer was wearing a t-shirt of the legendary NWOBHM band Tank!). These 4 Finnish maniacs played a lot, and they played even a HC version of "Bella ciao", an anti-fascist Italian song born during the Italian Civil War between 1943 and 1945. Needless to say, there was a gigantic singalong by the attendants during the chorus! What a memorable moment! And finally, I started to mosh just during Riistetyt after drinking another beer (I was a little drunken at that point!).


Then, a power violence massacre furiously returned with Lugubrious Children. Coming from Leeds, UK, they recently have toured in Europe along with Faršas just from 29th September in Rome to 6th October in Prague (Czech Republic). It seem to me that the singer of this trio without the bass was the only person in the place to wear a blouse but, despite this more "elegant" look, Lugubrious Children engaged us with a really dynamic power violence also able to be groovy in some parts. Great!

A more direct and purely grindcore sound was offered by the following band, Chiens, another trio with no bass. An absurd blast-beat mania, a severe riffing with slight black metal hints, a singer that rip his chords with not-of-this-Earth screams, and a sensation of pure apocalyptic chaos from these 3 French enemies of the music business! But I remember also that, before starting their show, Chiens had some technical issues, so the public was in wait for 10 minutes circa in which the attendants blasphemed a lot with some classic "tender" prayers to the band to play. (I took photos both about Lugubrious and Chiens but they are too out of focus, so I preferred to not publish them)

Sorry, but the live report ends just now. In fact, I left CSOA Spartaco after Chiens because I had to take in time the subway (that close at 1.30 am circa both in Friday and in Saturday) since I came at the place without the car. I know, it's a shame also because I would have liked a lot to see especially the last International band: the Belgian fastcore masters Reproach (their song "Onward to Destruction", coverized by a band reviewed on these pages named Indemnity, is fukken amazing!). At least, a friend of mine named Iacopo Capponi shot a video during their show that you can play below (it's the first time that I release a video on an article of mine!).
But the other bands? All Italians, they are the very young Failure (power violence from North Italy), Scheletro (grindmetalpunk from Rome that some months ago shared the stage with Raw Power) and those crazy veteran maniacs called Maxcarnage (grind/HC/power violence/whatever it is from Rome). With all these bands, the hostilities ended, in according to the words of Iacopo, even at 4.20 am, so this edition of the Go! Fest 8 was really a looooong slaughter from start to finish!

Other HC appointments? I'll mention just one: Marci su Roma Fest (flyer on your right), a festival scheduled on 3rd November 2018 at the infamous Trecentosessantagradi with bands like the same Maxcarnage, the legendary Italian HC band Impact, Contrasto or Speed Kobra (the only one from abroad, specifically from Berlin, Germany). Will I find you also there?

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