Date: 7th September 2018
Price: 10 €
Location: Traffic Live Club
Cripple Bastards in Rome! A very good news for the fans of the "Italian godfathers of grindcore", that weren't on a Roman stage for years. So, they came back in the Eternal City on 7th September 2018 for a very intense gig in which, to support them, there were devastating bands like Sudden Death, Enemynside and One Day in Fukushima (as you see, this isn't the first time that mostly of them appears on these pages). But now enough this fukken chitchat and it's time to see what was combined during this fantastic show!
One Day in Fukushima, strong of their recently released "Ozymandias", opened the hostilities with a really frightening intensity through their death/grindcore full of hardcore punk influences (also determined by some serious social speeches by the singer between the songs), that are so important that, also this time, they played an ultra-pissed off version of "Spero venga la guerra" by the legendary Wretched (surely, my favorite Italian HC band of all times!). Many are the songs played during their show like "Giù la testa", "Ipnosi dell'assente", "Ridursi al niente", "La giustizia degli spaventapasseri" or "Jiu Ming". But the tracks that I prefer is "Bergolio's Fistful of Sanctity" (introduced by the singer as a "really funny song" dedicated, with a lot of "love", to the current Pope), that show scrapping thrash metal touches and even a very nice solo. No one moshed during the first band but fuck that! What a great bestial intensity with this Southern Italian band!After the handful of metallic grindcore of One Day in Fukushima, now it's the turn of Enemynside! This is a Roman thrash metal quartet active even since 1994 when they were founded under the moniker of Scapegoat, so we're talking about real veterans with plenty of experiences (included three full-lenght albums in their discography) and that, on 31st October 2018, will support nothing else than the mighty Necrodeath in a gig in Nancy (France).
Well, maybe those 4 nice guys called Enemynside were a fish out of the water (as said even by them but using other words!) during that night but they have represented, anyway, a very good variation within a so ultra-brutal bill! In fact, Enemynside plays a US thrash metal with modern touches and a nice melodic taste also thanks to the singer/guitarist Matteo "Thrasher" Bellezza that, at times reinforced by his comrades for some gang choruses, is aggressive but catchy in a way that reminds me of James Hetfield of the good old days. And this is fukken OK! Playing songs taking from their various albums, they released a still fresh new EP "Dead Nation Army" (Hatestone Records, 2018). (Still) no one moshed but the important thing is that we in the front row headbanged a lot!
Back to the extreme brutality (IN EVERY SENSE!) with Sudden Death! Responsible of a new EP named "Stillborn" (Art Gates Records, 2018), they are known to be a war machine live band able to create killing shows and, in fact, they greatly kept this fame also that night. Bombarding the audience with a bunch of blasting violence but even engulfing it with slow zombie slamming parts, Sudden Death impressed me a lot also due to the ultra-aggressive performance of Luis Maggio (that sings, among the others, in Bloodtruth, an old acquaintance of Timpani allo Spiedo) with his crazy voice changes between frightful screams and deep growls...and without forgetting his long rotating dreadlocks! But the nicer thing is that Luis, at a certain point, incited the moshing heads to do a...WALL OF DEATH! So, (sometimes) there were moments of salutary moshpit...but, actually, the real fights still had to happen!Call them "hatecore" or "hategrind" (as they dub their music) or in any way you prefer, and love 'em or hate 'em for some of their lyrics but a fukken thing is certain: Cripple Bastards are an awesome band, especially on stage! In these days, they are celebrating their 30th anniversary in the sign of hate, and it's really incredible the fury that Giulio the Bastard (that was wearing a t-shirt of Zouo, a cult HC punk Japanese band!) is able to unleash after 30 years of militancy into the scene by also showing a continuous wild look in his eyes! And just during the first minutes of their show, he managed even to use that "wild look" to stare at me for a minute circa while he was singing!
But do you know what is the most incredible thing? The MOSHPIT! In fact, it has been truly fuckin' insane from start to finish since the first song "Malato terminale"! And, at times, you could see some flying guys in order to surf on the audience, in according to a total HC gig (it isn't a case if there were many punkers as well metalheads)! All this when Cripple Bastards were playing an annihilating series of old and new classics like "Fumo passivo", the mysoginists "Stupro e addio" and "I Hate Her", the legendary "Misantropo a senso unico", "Being Ripped Off", "Polizia, una razza da estinguere" or "Italia di merda". As last song of the regular setlist, the Bastards played a demented "Morte da tossico" and, after that, they left the stage. So, many attendants, as usual in these cases, called the return of the band also by screaming their moniker (like I did) in order to play one more song. After few minutes...Cripple Bastards were finally back on stage so to bombard us not with one of those songs that we asked (I asked "Odio a prima vista", that wasn't in the setlist) but with a hateful version of "Gimme Lies" by the '80s Japanese HC band Death Side! Then, it was time to say the usual salutations, at the end of a show that we'll positively remember for a destructive ferocity into the pit...and a miracle is that, even though I moshed a lot as always, I practically left the pit without damages, reporting only a miserable little scratch on a hand!In conclusion, I think that the bill has been programmed in a excellent manner. In fact, One Day in Fukushima was the perfect band to open the night with a brutal intensity also in order to make understand well to everyone the right mood. Then, Enemysinde were almost a way to "relax" the audience through a more classic extreme metal before the massacre of Sudden Death, which, instead, made rightly burning the atmosphere for Cripple Bastards, in which the moshing heads gone really mad! And another good thing is that, as sound engineer for the Bastards (that on 14th September will play near Milan along with Raw Power!), there Daniel Casari of Onryo and Tibia! So, good show, plenty of good people (included many friends of mine) and good moshpit (even though there was a stupid guy that used to mosh veeery badly!)! See ya at the next massacre, brutal fukken bangers!!!
OTHER PICTURES:
ENEMYNSIDE
SUDDEN DEATH
CRIPPLE BASTARDS
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