With a belly full of beer and chili, Nathaniel Shannon and I head out to House of Vans skate park in Brooklyn for what turned out to be a pretty awesome night of free beer, metal and skateboarding. Right off the bat, I have to give credit to whomever put this show together. The idea of having two of Brooklyn’s fiercest metal bands assemble to decimate a crowd while a skateboard demonstration was going on in the next room was a brilliant one. The crowd itself was a decent mix of hessians looking to throw up horns and young skater kids who might not have had any idea of what they were getting themselves into. The entire event had a great energy about it, as I think both bands and people who came to skate were looking forward to the event. Overall, everyone was into it, and the bands might even have managed to convert some of the younger kids over into the metal sub-culture. As a side note, if the parents of that little kid who was tearing the pool bowl up are reading this, kudos to you for raising such a sweet little beast.
Photos: Nathaniel Shannon
Honestly, I’ve known about Trenchgrinder for a while now. Even though I had checked them out online, they never really stuck with me for whatever reason. Maybe I was distracted by something else or just really involved with another band or album at the time. That being said, I made a drastic mistake, which was corrected by my ears being blown out when they started playing. Sometimes it just takes seeing a band in the live setting to fully get what they’re about, and this was one of those cases. Chalk full of death metal, grind and crust-filled guitar work, with some heavy, heavy fucking breakdowns which were thrown out at the crowd like used condoms, Trenchgrinder absolutely strangled me with their live display and had me insanely impressed with their overall delivery. When lead singer Owen mumbled into the microphone “I’m out of beer, this is our last song,” I knew that somewhere beyond the stars, the gods of crust-metal were pleased with Trenchgrinder’s offering.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen the Mutant Supremacy crew tear it up at a show. Since day one, they’ve always been a band that I’ve enjoyed seeing and covering for CVLT Nation. The impression that really struck me after their first song closed out was with lead guitar player Curt Johnson’s acclimation to being the main singer after losing a founding member sometime ago. From the last time I saw them in November to this show, he has really stepped up to the challenge and seems more comfortable with it now. It’s also worth mentioning that this dude now looks like a war-metal version of Blanka from the Street Fighter games. Just sayin’. This is one of those projects that keeps trucking along, regardless of any setbacks that they might have encountered over their existence. After Mutant’s last tour of the west coast, their van was broken into and a ton of gear was stolen, which is a pretty demoralizing event for any band. So it was good to see them sporting new equipment and smiles while they lashed out with their vile, beer-soaked brand of Death Metal.
