Go! Fest #9 (Rome, 21st September 2019)

Festival: Go! Fest #9
Location: CSOA Spartaco, Rome (Italy)
Date: 21st September 2019
Price: 10 €















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if you don't still know the existence of it, my ebook about the first wave of black metal called "Nel Segno del Marchio Nero" was released on 24th March 2019. Unfortunately, it is written only in Italian but, surely, into it there aren't the over-rehearsed sounds à la Lord of Chaos. If you want to buy my ebook, you can order it through the best Italian and International stores like Feltrinelli, IBS, Amazon and Google Books. Thank you in advance!

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Believe it or not, 21st September 2019 was so challenging for me that, in a way or another, I managed to be awake for 23 fukken hours! In fact, before the Go! Fest I had to go by train even in Anzio (a town in south of Rome) for the birthday party of a friend of mine. That's why I was able to be at CSOA Spartaco for the "Italian fastest festival" only starting from 9 pm, and this means that I missed to see the first 5 bands in the bill like the Dutch power violence unit Gewoon Fucking Raggen, the brutal/grindsters Inglorious Basterds and the primitive black/death metallers Thecodontion, that opened the fest. I hoped to see some of them but, incredibly, this time the organizers were so precise and punctual that (almost) every band played during their own scheduled time, so the fest started effectively the hostilities at 5 pm or something else, as anticipated by Pompeo (Taste the Floor/Verano's Dogs/Go! Fest organization) some days before. And as always, this fest has been a great occasion of fun and aggregation  since the venue was really full of people coming from the entire Italy as well from other European countries. Ooookay, but now so what? So, let's go to see what happened in the 9th edition of the Go! Fest!

The first band that I saw was the 6th in the bill and its name is Repulsione ("repulsion" in Italian), a devastating quartet founded in the now far 2003 and coming from Bologna (North Italy), a city famous in our national HC punk scene for a historic squat called XM24, that, unfortunately, was cleared out by the "democratic" forces (not by Salvini and his acolytes, mind you!) few months ago. Of Repulsione, I remember a very good performance in which they played with stunning intensity their raw grindcore influenced a lot by the death metal, in a style reminding me of bands like Assück or Terrorizer. Obviously, there were plenty of moshing heads during Repulsione, and among them there was also a friend of mine that, so happy to see me, pushed me into the pit...even though I already arrived at the venue haha! Thanks Diego! And I remember also that someone pulled out a balloon shaped like a pink flamingo (or something else). As you can see, the fest was already entered a dimension of total delirium!

Next were Horse Bast...NO, Horsebastard, without that fuckin' space between "horse" and "bastard"! I can say the following thing about them: ok, I am happily heterosexual but fuck that, I LOVE their drummer! He's fast at rarely insane levels, and he seem to be like a human Gatling such are his speed skills! Due to this and also to a crazy dynamicity, the power violence played by Horsebastard is so violent and chaotic to be sometimes into the obscene territories of noisecore. And the consequence of all this is that I was so amazed by them (and by the pace kept by the drummer, in particular) that I hadn't mosh a single moment during Horse Bast...HORSEBASTARD! Sure, if you want real power violence, the UK maniacs are unmatchable like few others, and you can't do anything about this matter of fact!

Some days ago I went to a yiddish music concert and I discovered that it's incredibly quite fast...but I think that few Israeli people are fast such as MooM! Their power violence is very interesting because of some very dissonant riffs, more hardcore punk-oriented sequences and even of sludgy influences. But what impressed more about them was their singer Sima, that had a totally "regular" look...but this didn't avoid to her to spit out a performance full of rage and cutt-throat screams! In addition, the drummer of MooM was ever-smiling while their bassplayer did some speeches in Italian (but is he Italian?). Ha, I advise you that Go! Fest was the first date of their European 9-day tour shared with Gewoon Fucking Raggen, so go to see live them if you have the opportunity to do it.

I have a confession: I went to Go! Fest #9 essentially for Asocial and Avskum, that were unmissable in every way for me (unless I couldn't find a beautiful girl in that birthday party hehe!) considering that they are two Swedish masters (respectively born in 1981 and in 1982) that belongs to the history of hardcore punk. Indeed, Asocial were the first of them on stage after MooM. And let me say that Asocial played so well that, at the end of their set, the attendants (included me) asked them one more song. Initially, the band was uncertain and, at a certain point, their guitarplayer left the stage, so their show seemed to be definitely over. Instead, he came back on the stage and Asocial played not one encore, not two encores but THREE encores, so you can imagine our immense enthusiasm! For the truth, I expected to listen to something taken from the very first period of Asocial when they were the true pioneers of grindcore but who cares? Asocial are awesome in every case!

And now it's the turn of Avskum that, substantially, plays in a very similar style to Asocial. In simple words, there was another non-stop massacre in the sign of a crust punk/D-beat in the most traditional Swedish way with many Discharge influences. If I am not mistaken, there were plenty of attendants for Asocial, but there were even more of them for Avskum, and this is very fukken amazing!

After a handful of D-beat slaughter, there was finally a welcome return in more metallic territories thanks to Coffin Birth. They are young in the sense that they were born in 2018 but, due to their experience, they wasted no time to release their first production in the shape not of an EP but of a debut full-lenght album called "Serpent Insignias" (Time to Kill Records, 2018). Before I said "due to their experience" because they are an all-star band consisting of members coming from notable Italian death metal acts such as Hour of Penance, Fleshgod Apocalypse and Antropofagus while their singer Roberto Calleja belongs to Beheaded, the main death metal combo from Malta. Needless to say, they did a remarkable show in which they destroyed our ears with a mega-classic Swedish death metal à la Entombed/Dismember with that chainsaw guitar HM2 pedal sound that I like a lot since an immemorable time. Of their exhibition, I remember that I was the only maniac to mosh through HC dances (even though we were in front of a death metal band hehe!) and that also this time I dived from the stage (in the reality, that night I dived and surfed many times like never before haha!).

The following band, Drömspell, is very young, too, but also they contains members coming from different acts like xKatexMoshx (I remember a totally crazy gig of them at Malatempora 6 years ago circa!), Movement, Tsubo, Vermenara (if I say correctly, I was at their first gig aeons ago!), and NOFU, so we aren't talking about apprentices. Unfortunately, their show was initially ruined for many minutes by issues with the bass, so we had to wait for a while to see properly them in action. Anyway, during their forced break, I screamed to the drummer, since he was playing alone some rhythms, to play in a reggaeton style...and he DID IT! Great! After finally fixing their problems, they played very good showing a crust punk/D-beat à la Anti-Cimex with many (thrash) metallic tunes and nice guitar solos. I saw them always this year in the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Torre Maura Occupata squat but I confirm that they engaged better the attendants during the Go! Fest. Well done!

It was beautiful realizing that, also at the 3 am circa, there were still many people in the venue to see the last (but not least!) band in the bill: Ira, that some weeks ago supported, as you know, Circle One in an ultra-intense gig. Incredibly, after a break with Drömspell, I found my last forces to mosh also in front of Ira that, as usual, played with an energetic and juvenile intensity. But I didn't see their entire show because I had to leave the venue so to go home after an endless day. Anyway, by reading the live report written by Matteo Pizzuti (The Ammonoids) on Unknownmusic.com, it seems that, after a while, the exhibition of Ira became totally crazy also because they covered songs such as "Seek and Destroy" of Metallica, and it isn't a case if Ira have recently labelled this one as their "better and worst gig ever" haha! Fuck, I had to stay 'till the very end!

In conclusion, this new edition, that included also bands like The Seeker and Double Me, has been really outstanding but we had to expect this success since, this time, the entrance was of 10 € while last year it was only of 7 €. Only through this detail you can understand that this fest is becoming bigger every year and rumour has it that its next edition will feature even 20 bands! Be this rumour true or false, I ask to the organizers to feature in the 10th edition some pure noisecore bands such as Sedem Minut Trachu...also to make the fest in a more deafening way hehe! Said all this shit, that night has been also an occasion to meet again with some friends like Pavel and Domes of Crisis Benoit, or to meet finally live people like Arturo, that runs a heavy metal program through CRT Radio with which he talked very well about my book. At this point, I am very happy to being awake so much for the Go! Fest, that was so full of old and new friends to be a real big party in the sign of the (anti)music!