Date: 26th May 2018
Location: Trecentosessanta Gradi, Rome (Italy)
I confess: ok, I am a metalhead but, said frankly, I largely prefer since a lot of time the hardcore punk live gigs! Why? Simple: because the HC shows are so intense, chaotic and funny! An excellent example of this is given by the concert that I attended on 26th May 2018 at Trecentosessanta Gradi (or, simply put, 360), a fantastic and small punk pub located in a very vital area of Rome called San Lorenzo, which is full of various pubs, clubs and similar places where the good live music is daily. Additionally, San Lorenzo, very close not only to the famous "La Sapienza" University but also to the center of Rome, is a working class area with a long antifascist tradition, so it's totally perfect for the HC punk music. This time, the show was unmissable for the fans because they had to be smashed very well by the Italian HC legend Raw Power with supporting acts such as No More Lies, Motosega and Rake-Off! LET'S START THE MASSACRE!
That night I was able to see every band since I was there already at 22.30 pm (but the hostilities started 45 minutes later), so, after drinking a good Ichnusa, I had the honour to see in action No More Lies. This is a relatively young band born in 2014 but, to say the truth, they consist of some veterans of the HC/metal Roman scene with past and/or current experiences in bands like Payback (Fabrizio, the singer), or Buffalo Grillz and Tsubo (Luciano Gux, the bassplayer). Proud to be Roman and proletarians and also strong of two albums, No More Lies are, in a certain sense, a strange creature since their personal combination between HC (both old and new school with some breakdowns), (heavy) metal and a strong street punk attitude. If all this wasn't enough, the band played (twice!) even a very short and fast song with more grindcore tunes! Apart this nice variety and a lot of singalong "Oi! Oi! Oi!" choruses, I appreciated especially the screaming performance of Fabrizio, also because he often gave the mic to the attendants in order to make them sing all together. Instead, a very funny moment has been when, during a break, their guitarplayer (that was wearing a The Dillinger Escape Plan t-shirt!) played briefly a Nirvana's hook..."even though we can't live without it" (in according to the words of Fabrizio)!
Now it's time for the next band: Motosega (Italian for "chainsaw"). With them, we entered a dimension of pure chaos! First of all, I have got no clue about their biography but I saw on stage a fukken impressive band from Naples that smashed us with love through their fast and energetic hardcore garage punk characterized by a catchy and moving rock'n'roll riffing, that can remind me of the early HC punk in the vein of TSOL, Adolescents and Circle Jerks. The nice thing is that, as a demonstration of the energetic performance of Motosega, the moshpit, during that night, started just with them. But a nicer thing is that the band was so on fire that, at a certain point, their drummer started to lose some pieces of his instrument until...to fail on the ground with his chair! What a great moment of chaos punk! Actually, pieces like the mic or even the speakers (already put on their places by some members of the audience) sometimes failed also during the exhibition of the other bands, so these chaos punk moments were very regular. Anyway, after playing amazing songs of their own repertoire such as "Preteen Pretentious", "Adrenaline" or "Bikerage" (with some noisy and psychedelic vibes during the breaks!), Motosega played a good version of "Amphetamine Addiction" by the classic Indianapolis-based HC band Zero Boys.
Presenting a bill with very different bands so to keep high the attention as well the curiosity of the audience, the third band was Rake-Off. Formed by 5 guys coming from even 4 various Italian regions (Lazio/Abruzzo/Campania/Molise), Rake-Off offers a sound very close to the NYHC à la Cro-Mags with a lot of breakdowns and good solos, but this formula have been fastened a bit in the second album "Feeding the Fake" (CBC Records, 2017) through more thrash metal influences. Very able to alternate furious and fast songs like "Closed Minds, Open Mouths" with some slower ones, Rake-Off entertained well the audience with the result to provoke a more intense moshpit that, at the end of their show, involved something like 10 maniacs instead of the 4-5 that were in front of Motosega. During their exhibition, I vividly remember two things: 1) a girl that was used to...comb the hair of the singer while he sang (in fact, he was singing not on stage but on the floor in a face-to-face mode with the attendants); 2) a terrible piece of a broken booze on the floor that I removed already from the pit after receiving a warning from a blonde (and nice-looking, I say!) girl when I was moshing. Fuck, it might be seriously dangerous for the moshing heads!
But what's about Raw Power? Finally, the mighty Raw Power, temporarily orphans of their official bassplayer Marco Massarenti well replaced by Alessandro "Ronko" Ronchini, took control of the stage at 1.10 am circa, and since then until the end of their concert, everyone lost their fukken minds! It's incredible the unstoppable will to kick a lot of asses by Mauro Codeluppi, the historic singer of Raw Power that, after 37 years of existence, are still able to produce a skullcrushing live gig with plenty of crazy stage divers! They played many many songs, included a bunch of classics taken from their first two albums ("You Are the Victim" and "Screams from the Gutter") such as "Politicians", "No Card", "Power", "Nihilist", "Hate", "Raw Power", and without forgetting other numbers like "Fabbrica" (the version in Italian of "Burning Factory") and the legendary "Fuck Authority". The last minutes were totally blowing because the band played not only the evergreen "Ace of Spades" by Motörhead but also, for the second time during the show, "State Oppression", perfect to end the hostilities! After that, at 2.40 am, Mauro thanked the audience and, then, he said "And now you can go fuck yourselves!"!
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