It took a little longer to get moving from work than I anticipated, but via clean roads and some hard hiking over the bridges, I managed to get in right about on my target time, and with enough latency to get a beer and unwind my back before the bands started. I'd as rather not show up this close, and covered in sweat, but the ability to push it, with the trip coming up, is definitely something to be cultivated.
Jack Burton vs David Lo Pan [5.5/7]
JBvDLP remains basically in the same place stylistically as they were on the last sample; fortunately, "again" and "more" is all any reasonable person needs to expect from them. I don't listen to enough grind or doom to have more accurate reference points for people who are dead dug into those scenes, but if the closest I can find is "Earth, if they were big Rotten Sound fans", that in itself should be sufficient recommendation. On this performance, they balanced the vitriol and the vibes to great effect, and if they're indeed going on a temporary break, as rumored, those who have missed them to this point just have that much longer to keep kicking themselves.
Erik gets cranked up.
Deathamphetamine [5.5/7]
The current version of Deathamphetamine continues to solidify; here, they mostly stayed within the techthrash-versus-hardcore sound they've been working lately, but they also reached back to the early, five-piece days of the band for a look back to the more melodic elements they had going at that time. It's going to be interesting to see how this works out going forward; that it's coming back indicates that the band still wants to have those elements in the mix as well, and mostly dropped them because they were having difficulty covering all the parts as a three-piece, but now feel that they've got the chops and arrangement skills to have that layer on top of the more straightforward attack they've been working lately.
Scott and a badly-backlit Marcus start things up.
Perhaps more impressive was that Scott and Marcus managed to blast through this set despite some serious GI issues. I bought the tape version of The Lost Album -- which does come with a download code, for those ambiguous about buying something they can't use just to support -- off Scott in the set break, and he was utterly and completely slate-wiped, but you'd never have known from the energy brought out on stage.
Fresh Kill [6/7]
I hadn't heard Fresh Kill before, but within seconds the buzz that they've been getting in the punk and grind echelons of the scene was eminently justified. With powerviolence bits bolted on like applique armor over a chassis of dense, hyperbaric grind chaos, Fresh Kill inherits not only from Anal Cunt (via members) but also just about everything in Boston punk going back to The Freeze. Their nuclear bulldozer attack smashed fuck out of everything in hitting distance -- if there wasn't a lot of motion on the stagefront, the pure violence being poured off of it more than compensated. I don't tend to go to a lot of punk or grind gigs, but Fresh Kill may yet go a distance towards getting that changed. Immensely killer.
Fresh Kill banter around at/cuss out each other and the audience before getting in gear.
After the band (and/or the city council via curfews) decided we'd had enough, I hung about for a bit, picked up JBvDLP's record, and eventually decided that I'd made a mistake not getting Fresh Kill's patch earlier -- no recordings yet, but high-quality embroidered patches (probably due to Bobby, whose kutte is entering at least its sixth consecutive year of being better than mine) are always due support -- but would likely get a chance to fix that in the near future. I headed out, and despite work constraints managed to get this turned around in a reasonable fashion. Missing Autolatry and Fires of Old for this hurt a little, but I'll be back in Worcester for Dark Passenger -- and still roving to pick stuff up for export in the interim.
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