Date: 22nd April 2018
Location: CSOA Spartaco, Rome
Wow! I had a lot of fuckin' fun on 22nd April 2018 at CSOA Spartaco, an occupied sociale centre that organizes a bunch of interesting events. That day there was a devastating HC/grindnoise matinée started at 6 am, even though it was supposed to start one hour before but, in Rome, it's really impossible that a live show opens at the hour scheduled by the organizers. But this isn't important: what is important is that 6 bands shared the stage to offer a memorable and intense show!
The first band in the bill was Closed Speech. They are a Roman punk rock band born in the now far 2007 that, as a mascotte, have a duck with a red mohawk. Apart the detail that, if I say correctly, they are preparing their debut album since "174 years and 9 months", they are really a totally odd duck in an ultra-extreme bill. This because they entertained the audience with a '90s melodic punk rock strongly influenced by bands such as NOFX and Rancid with hints à la Bad Religion. Very good stuff, I must say, with some notably fast passages. The problem is that no one thought to mosh during Closed Speech also by request of the funny singer/bassplayer (sorry guys, but I was drinking some beer...), that, throughout their exhibition, dubbed ironically themselves as an "happy hour" (considering their style) and a "filler band". The reason of this last definition is because they, in fact, substituted Zhauma, the raw hardcore punk band from Rome that it was supposed to play at their place. Anyway, this "happy hour" was good and intense, so who cares?
Fast stage change and now it's the turn of Fuoco (Italian for "fire"), a quartet coming from Viterbo (a city in the Northern Lazio). Unfortunately, I've got no fuckin' idea about their biography and discography but I know that their long-haired bassist play his instrument in very strange positions while their music is a wild and angry hardcore punk in the vein of Italian bands like Milizia HC, Woptime and the Viterbo's local heroes Tear Me Down. Finally, some crazy fans started to mosh...included me. FUCK, with my 29 years old, I think I was the oldest moshing head throughout the entire matinée!
What is the next band? yBUTTEROy! Behind this moniker ("buttero" means "wrangler" or "pock-mark") there are 3 guys from Paliano (a small town in the province of Frosinone, in the east of Rome) that released a powerful split with xVicox in 2017. When they took control of the stage, the first thing I wondered was "WHERE THE FUCK IS THEIR BASSPLAYER?"! And this is the exact question that a guy in the audience asked me! In fact, there is no bassplayer in the line-up of yBUTTEROy.
But how's about their music? POWER VIOLENCE! So, expect unpredictable and totally spastic tempo changes, noisy explosions, excellent technical skills, very short songs, and a singer that growls and screams in the most absurd ways, also by...covering his own nose! Ultra-manic stuff that reminds me a lot of Spazz! At a certain point, yBUTTEROy played also a cover...but I've got no fukken clue about it (both title and band)! During their show, the mosh started to be very wild with people that "flew in the air" after being held up by other maniacs!
After this power violence attack, the audience was going to be violently smashed by some grindcore bands. The first one were the infamous and prolific One Day in Fukushima (from Eboli, Southern Italy). Born in 2014, they released just some days ago their self-produced debut album "Ozymandias", so this matinée was very useful to them to promote their new opus by playing songs as "Automi" or the fresh "Deus Ex Machina".
One Day in Fukushima basically combines the ultra-brutality of the grindcore with the putridity of the death metal, and all this is mixed with socio-political and ecological lyrics. The final result is bestial and fit for the fans of classics such as Napalm Death, Terrorizer and Cripple Bastards but also of newer bands like Insect Warfare. The nicer thing is that the band played even a crushing version of that immortal shrapnel called "Spero Venga la Guerra" by Wretched, surely one of my favorite songs of the '80s Italian hardcore punk!
Ended their show, their singer Valerio de Martino, after receiving the congratulations about them by me and a friend of mine, gave us the sticker of his band. Thank you Valerio! I hope to see you again on stage as soon as possible! The problem is that I completely failed to take a decent photo to Valerio while he was shouting all his fury along with his band...
At this point, the stage was ready for the grindcore band from abroad: Extreme Smoke 57! Born even in 1990 and with a discography full of splits in the classic grindcore tradition, I had the honour, along with my cousin Alessandro and our mutual friend Alberto, to have a conversation with them shortly before their show...discovering that these crazy Slovenians are good to speak in Italian! What a fantastic surprise!
Already on stage, Extreme Smoke 57, that contains some members with a past in the legendary Croatian grindsters Patareni, have attacked us with their primitive and noisy grindcore very close, in my opinion, to Agathocles. Among the many songs played, especially the long "Obey" impressed me a lot also thanks to the theatrical and "religious" performance of the singer Boco. The end of their show has been memorable because their guitarist Miha, alone with his pedals, created a wall of pure noise, deafening and dangerous as we were attending a harsh noise performance! Our ears were bleeding during this noise experimentation!
But, at 10.30 pm circa, our ears were to be definitely destroyed by the last band: Tibia. From Rome Caput Mundi, they have as singer Daniel Casari, that sings also in Onryo (whose 28th December live gig with Hierophant has been reviewed just on these pages, if you remember well). Their style is very special because they play a sort of blackened hardcore punk (or black metal with hardcore vibes) with songs more structured and longer than the usual carpet bombardments of pure violence of the previous bands.All this is ok but, after a while, the show of Tibia suffered some technical issues about the vocals. In fact, at a certain point, you could hear well every instrument but not the vocals, strangely too low. To solve this issue, it took 10 minutes circa in which the band played some instrumental tracks and also some...Ac/Dc's hooks! These were moments of total chaos where the show seemed to be a party...very funny moments! When all everything was finally solved, 5 of us started to mosh...and I still remember with fun when the singer of yBUTTEROy and an unchained girl crashed on me (but I don't remember HOW they crashed on me haha!) with the result that they and me failed on the floor! This was a very very funny moment of TOTAL CHAOS as I like!
That's all, folks! The hostilites ended at 11.10 pm circa. I left CSOA Spartaco with some genuine bruises on my body after the fights into the pit. I appreciated a lot the bill (I have to say that there were no real main acts also because every band played, more or less, for 30 minutes circa) and, in general, the entire show. This was organized by the boys of Go! Fest, who are used to organize, every year, a festival with the same name whose 8th edition will be on 29th September 2018, always at CSOA Spartaco, showing also International bands like the Belgians Reproach, the Finnish hardcore legend Riistetyt and many others. I hope I will be there!
OTHER PICTURES:
FUOCO:
BUTTERO:
EXTREME SMOKE 57:
TIBIA:
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