This is the greeeeatest moment in my liiiAAAAAGGGHHHHH MY SPINE!

I recently moved house and was going through some old boxes when I found some ticket stubs that over the years were at various times proudly affixed to my wall with Bluetack. They’re from two gigs played over a weekend in October 1997, when I was 15 or 16.

I was devoutly into metal at the time and I just loved going to gigs and jumping around to heavy music. Being underage, my choice of venues was severely limited, so every Thursday I’d religiously scan the entertainment pages in The Age newspaper and also watch Recovery on Saturday mornings on ABC TV with Dylan Lewis (who was something of a douche) in the hope of catching a three-minute segment called All Things All Ages or some such. It was often a futile pursuit as there were very few all-ages gigs and even fewer all-ages metal gigs, which is how I ended up at a Millencolin gig.

I was young and didn't know any better.

I’m being a tad sarcastic when I say I’m not much of a fan of Swedish pop punk. In fact, my knowledge of this band is limited to one track on an obscure punk compilation. But it was an all-ages gig and a mate had invited me to come so why the hell not. It’s what you do when you’re 15.

From memory there wasn't much worth repeating from the gig. The Living End were one of the supports and were still vaguely cool back then — while writing this update I worked out that this gig was played just one month after the release of the Second Solution / Prisoner of Society EP. Apparently (and by apparently I mean Wikipedia told me) this release became the highest selling Australian single from the ’90s.

The HiFi Bar, as it had recently been renamed, was kind of dark and I recall gleefully leaping into what passed as a circle pit and promptly getting smashed in the head. I pulled out and didn’t jump back in. Also, my mate got into an argument with someone who had supposedly stuck a lit firelighter at him. Or something…

As I said, I really loved jumping around and going nuts to heavy music. Secretly I’d have liked to talk to girls even more but I was way, way, way too shy for that.

BEST LINE-UP EVER

Look at this stub and tell me that isn’t a totally killer line-up.

Where were you on this glorious day?

Headlining were Canadian metallers Strapping Young Lad when they had just started getting really big after the release of the City album.

Supporting were two superb Aussie bands: Canberra’s psychedelic metal warriors Alchemist, who had recently released Spiritech (one of my favourite albums of all time and a criminally underrated masterpiece); and ‘hatecore’ purveyors Damaged, a band that was notorious for Matt Skitz’s drumming and destroying venues and fans (literally and metaphorically). And they were playing an all-ages gig. Which I was attending!

Unfortunately Damaged pulled the plug at the last moment and were replaced by Segression. They played an ok sort of mix of groove metal with some nu-metal thrown in for good measure but I’ll never forget this band name because I once knew a girl whose first words to me were: “Do you know Segression? I’m going to fuck the drummer.” True story. The first words I mean. I doubt she proceeded with her intended plan.

If I may digress for a moment, I’d also like to point out that this was in the days of pre-fast internet and so radio, particularly community radio, played an important role in spreading the gospel of metal. All these bands were played on at least three separate radio shows each week, which I’d listen to religiously. My long-gone favourite was Demon Night from 10-12 on Wednesday nights on 106.7 PBS FM — seriously, it was the best show EVER! The Hard Report ran on 102.7 RRR FM on Sunday nights from 10-2 and was responsible for my chronic tiredness at school on Monday mornings. And then there was Three Hours Of Power, played nationally on Triple J every Tuesday night from 10-1. My formative metal years were shaped by community radio. I loved the humbleness of these programs, how dead air was a regular occurrence when the announcer (usually the only person in the building by that time of night) ducked into the toilet and the track mysteriously finished early. Or how the promo cart would hurriedly be faded out half-way because it was the wrong one, or a phone would start ringing in the middle of an interview. Radio really meant something back then — and to make matters even better I’d generally make back the cost of my RRR and PBS subscriptions from the free prizes I’d win.

Forgive me, I was merely enjoying the nostalgia…

We showed up half-way through Segression’s set and found the somewhat sedate crowd doing what early crowds (and particularly alcohol-free crowds) do this early in the afternoon, which is not much. But you know, they had that polite and appreciative applause between songs, a sound most support bands are only too familiar with.

Alchemist was next up, and it was an experience which to this day I can only describe as mesmerizing. My theory is that Alchemist live in 1997 was — like all good things in life when you’re young — simply better when you first began experiencing it. MAD magazine? Heavy metal? Sex? These thing and so many more were always at their most awesomest and exciting when you discovered them for the first time.

I wish I could travel back in time and re-live that 45 or so minutes of watching them play live. One moment the crowd was going off to these huge, rhythmic, thick riffs and then it all went a little… tripped out… as the headbanging gave way to quiet interludes of synthy, fascinating, rich sounds interspersed with samples and effects in the background. And then back to the rhythmic headbanging.

Maybe my memory has been contaminated by my fondness of the event, but I could swear that the moshpit was swaying to the breakdown in Chinese Whispers (switch off your anti-stupid shield for a second and read the comments in that YouTube video).

And finally… Strapping Young Lad. If you like metal then hopefully this band needs little introduction. I’d owned the City album for a few weeks and had a particular fondness for the tune Detox, which also got a lot of radio play. In fact, repeated listens of this this tune on radio was what got me into this band. As I said, radio meant something back then.

But believe it or not, I’m not the biggest Strapping fan. I dig it and have all sorts of angsty nostalgic feelings form that time but personally I just don’t rate them up there with the likes of Iron Maiden. But boy, what a performance. Front-man Devin Townsend is the epitome of a showman and the awesomeness all started before anyone even played a riff. The entire crowd was kind of WTF-ed as he walked on stage and started miming to this weirdly melodic introduction, kind of like this one.

Anyway, Devin comes on stage and people are sort of looking at him weirdly with this odd sense of expectation as he does this routine. And then… it began. Oh dear Lord, did it begin. And keep going.

A veritable wall of white hot, crazy noise, with a rapidly balding long-haired Canadian dude doing his best to make everyone go utterly apeshit. Industrial strength, white-blue searing heavy metal of the utmost intensity.

One thing from this gig that I will never forget is my first and last ever stage dive. There was some surfing and diving going on and being young and energetic and extremely sweaty I figured it’d be a neat idea. Towards the end of the gig I finally managed to fight my way around to the front, climb on stage, look down at the crowd and think as I sailed through the air that oh man, this is the greeeeatest moment in my liiiAAAAAGGGHHHHH MY SPINE!!!!!!

Turns out the crowd caught my spread out arms; my knees, however, smashed straight into the concrete floor. I can still remember the snapping sensation in my back. So that was the last time I ever stagedived.

What an era, eh? Getting your head smashed in a circle pit. Almost breaking your spine after leaping from the stage. Kids going from zero to apeshit by the power of great music without any alcohol. Back then you wore your mosh-induced injuries as a badge of honour.

But here’s the best part.

This Strapping Young Lad gig which I TOTALLY ATTENDED was IMMORTALISED in the form of a LIVE ALBUM. That’s right, people. This gig was recorded and later released as No Sleep ’Till Bedtime i.e Live In Australia. And I was THERE dammit.

I SAID I WAS THERE!!!

I’d like to think that if you throw on a decent pair of headphones and carefully listen to this album you’ll hear, buried somewhere in the crowd noise, the soft cracking sound of a 15-year-old boy’s knees colliding with a concrete floor.

Heavy metal and Eurovision rarely get along

I occasionally like to write Top 7 music lists that consist of artists and tunes that I’ve recently played on high rotation. You should so totally read it and comment because it’s like totally awesome.

7) Strapping Young Lad – The New Black
Canadians SYL put the heavy in heavy metal. They occupy a special place in my heart following their 1997 all ages gig at Melbourne’s Hi-Fi Bar, which ranks as one of my favourite gigs. It got even more awesomer when that gig, as well as the “piss heads” over-18 gig on the night before, was turned into a live EP. I’m sure if you listen closely to the crowd noises you’ll hear a muffled voice shouting “Oooooooooooooooh yeeeeeaaaaahhhhhh aaaaggggggg my back!” as I attempted my first and last ever stage dive.

It totally wasn't like this at all.

The tour was in support of SYL’s angst-ridden City album which I seem to recall kind of stormed out of nowhere with its vague wisps of industrial music and white hot intensity. It’s an album that somehow manages to sound immensely heavy without coming off as unnecessarily extreme or over the top for the sake of extremeness.

For whatever reason I kind of lost track of SYL and main man Devin Townsend’s bazillion other side projects after that but I must say I was delighted when I “re-discovered” him when I came across The New Black from 2006 in a JB Hi-Fi discount bin.

It may not have the cold neon blue teen angst that I’ll always associate with ‘City’ but it’s got the heavyness and some brilliant tongue in cheek moments to match. This is an intense album, that totally rocks out and which is made even more enjoyable by the fact that it doesn’t take itself painfully seriously. Check out tracks like You Suck and Far Beyond Metal to see what I mean.

6) Daft Punk – Homework
Released in 1996, this is a definitive moment in “French house” or “Euro disco” or “repetitive bleep noises” or whatever you want to call it. It had no bearing on anything I was into back then but it’s another JB Hi-Fi discount bin item that probably feels like it deserved a couple of listens.

I heard an unconfirmed story that Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter (whose surname sounds like a German precision hi-fi company) spent something like a week perfecting a three second hook for one song. Whether this is true or not, either way the result of this extraordinary production effort is a minimal, bleeping, grating and yet somehow insidiously catchy electronic album about which your mates and parents will say (to quote a friend here) “I could have made that.” But seriously, apart from the battle robot space costumes, you know that, deep down in your heart, you are but like a rat to the piper of Hamelin once confronted by the ridiculously catchy strains of ‘Da Funk’.

"Do you have any idea how hot it gets in this helmet!?"

5) Danzig – Dirty Black Summer
Former Misfits frontman turned blues metal master, Glenn Danzig, is like a hybrid between an undead Elvis Presley and Jim Morrison if he was more of a headbanger. His first three or four albums rocked but then he lost the plot a bit and started making dubious industrial music. Sadly he was never as good when he returned to rocking blues metal. That, and he also epitomises small-man syndrome and is something of a douche.

Nom nom nom.

‘Dirty Black Summer’ was the lead single from the ‘Danzig III: How The Gods Kill’ album. Glenn manages to appear shirtless in almost every promo photo for this album, and the one before that too, and the one before that too (hell, the previous album, ‘Danzig II: Lucifuge’, is my favourite of all time, even if the artwork is a close-up of an occult cross… resting on Glenn’s manly naked hairy chest.

Everybody knows black t-shirts absorb uncomfortable amounts of heat.

The music from the ‘Danzig III’ era has special significance for me because I remember it being played an awful lot by my older sister when I was like 11. I recently dug out ‘Dirty Black Summer’ after years in storage and after one play it all came flooding back… the seemingly unnecessary minute of silence at the start of the song… the rather memorable but eventually jarring lead riff… the black and white mid 90s video clip … and yes, he’s missing his shirt in this video too. In fact, he’s got his shirt on and off at the same time!


4) The Anti-Nowhere League – Best Of
Filthy, in your face bri’ish punk rockers who put the “cunt” into “you’re a dirty cuntfaced cuntfucking cuntfucker fucking cunt.” They’re best known for their 1981 song ‘So What’ which contained such fabulous lyrics as “I fucked a sheep / I fucked a goat / I rammed my cock right down its throat” and “I’ve had crabs / I’ve had lice / I’ve had the clap and that ain’t nice”. For some strange reason, English authorities, using harsh Obscene Publications laws, seized copies of this song after it came out in 1981.

What a nice bunch of chaps.

But apart from ‘So What’, which years later enjoyed further exposure thanks to Metallica covering it, The Anti-Nowhere League produced a stack of other rockin’ punk tracks with brilliant titles like 'I Hate People', 'Rocker' (“The clothes that I wear / are the colour of my hair / I’m a rocker”), and one of my favourites… 'Woman' a song that espouses the joys of marriage and companionship like nothing else. Seriously, listen to this heartfelt ballad. This is getting played at my wedding (yeah sorry about the lousy fan vid).



3) Lordi – Hard Rock Hallelulja (from the European song contest)
Everyone has a guilty pleasure and Eurovision song contest is one of the few I’ll admit to without killing you in your sleep later. Everyone knows this annual circus show as a celebration of outrageous campyness and awesomely bad pop schmaltz, but once in a blue moon, Eurovision produces something brilliant.
In 2006 it was Greece's turn to host Eurovision and poor old Finnland, which hadn’t won a top spot in like 800 years, had as its entrant an obscure band called Lordi.
But not just any band. Lordi was a waning hard rock /cheesier heavy metal outfit with a gravelly-voiced vocalist who, along with the rest of the band, took to the stage in absurd latex horror masks and ridiculous gridiron battle orc giant spiked shoulder pad monster costumes. Seriously, check out the video! You'd be hard pressed to imagine something more diametrically opposed to everything Eurovision had ever stood for, right down to lead singer “Mr Lordi” who wielded a battle axe for a microphone.
During the lead up to the finals, Lordi were ridiculed by horrified onlookers who feared that such a bizarre act would result in Finland not only losing (which was kind of expected at the time) but actually taking out the humiliating last spot. Greek religious figures demanded that Lordi be banned from the contest and there was even a goddamned personal appeal to the Finnish Prime Minister, urging him to intervene.
So what happened? Well not only did Lordi storm through the finals with a huge score, they ended up winning the contest… by the largest friggin’ margin ever recorded up until that point in the whole goddamn history of Eurovision!
Seriously, a bunch of guys in monster costumes singing about the Arockalypse – with, and I’d really like to emphasise this… a lead singer wielding a battle axe for a microphone – took out pole position in the same cheesy pop contest that had previously spawned Abba.

Now THIS is how you win Eurovision BIATCH. Suck my battle axe.

The Rock Gods were proud that day – especially when these costumed freaks accepted their flowers and trophies and inadvertently got monster dirt on the glitzy TV presenters who dared go in for a hug and kiss.



2) Beastie Boys – Intergalactic
Back in the 90s, community radio stations like 106.7 PBS FM were for many people a genuine (and often the only) source of alternative or underground music. A 56k internet dialup connection was fast, kids would chat on a thing called ICQ rather than Facebook or Gchat, and it would be several years before pedo bear reared his handsome face.
This Beastie Boys single was released at the latter part of this period, when as a pimply teenager I did my community service (the “good” kind where your school forces you to help old ladies or disabled children for two weeks) at PBS FM. My day began with a tour by one of the station managers, a hip hop enthusiast called Nick Tripp. He showed me around the building, demonstrated production techniques, and got me to help record a cart promo (i.e. 30 second pre-recorded announcements that would promote the station – this was before MP3s), for which he sampled part of this newly-released Beastie Boys single.
The coolest part, however, was when he pulled an LP from his record crate – I distinctly remember it consisted entirely of crackly spoken word recordings from the Salvation Army – and gave me a hands-on turntablism DJ demonstration.
Then a hot girl walked into the building and since she obviously needed the “grand tour” I was left for like an hour by myself, cutting between ‘Intergalactic’ by the Beastie Boys and helping the homeless at Christmas time. I wish I’d recorded it.

One half of the Beastie Boys.

I rediscovered this single last week when I paid $1.99 for it at an op shop. That’s cheaper than iTunes you know. So check this track out if you’ve never heard it, and try and tell me you don’t love that cheesy vocoder. Oh, and the video clip is loads of fun with its take on Japanese monster films.



1) Destroyer 666 – Unchain The Wolves
Unchain The Wolves by Destroyer 666 is one of my top five favourite releases of all time that I’m currently reliving after I thought I’d lost my copy when in fact I’d leant it to a mate (for like four years). Which just proves that re-discovering CDs you thought you’d lost is just like buying it new, but even more awesomer because there’s no risk of unexpected disappointment.
Destroyer 666 are Australia’s most successful extreme metal export, playing a growly brand of ‘blackened thrash’ as it’s called that has evolved over several albums. They recently toured Australia after a 10 year absence and they retain a global following, much of it derived from the 1997 release of Unchain The Wolves.
I had the incredible privilege of seeing Destroyer when I was 15 (at an 18+ gig), at a time when I knew every word and every riff from this album – backwards.
This came about after main man Keith Warslut – yes, that really is his stage name – and a bloke from a supporting band were guests on a community radio heavy metal show called The Hard Report, hosted on RRR 102.7FM. They were nominally there to promote the imminent gig but effectively spent their air time talking shit and swearing liberally. I recorded this interview on tape and the most "memorable" moment was when the announcer, clearly trying to keep his cool in the presence of these two (possibly drunk) headbangers, asked Keith what the wolf on the album cover symbolised to him. Snapping out of the stupor, he cooly replied that it represented “Strength and independence. Spirit of the white man” (more on this below) – which was promptly followed by an agonizing pause, before the announcer nervously laughed that he wasn’t quite sure what was meant by that.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, they gave away two free passes on the show, but only if you called in and told them the full name and nickname of the lead singer from an obscure thrash metal band from the eighties. Now as I’ve mentioned previously, before there was the internet, people didn’t look it up on Wikipedia and pretend to have the answer. Phone-in contests were generally based on, like, general knowledge, but because I owned a thing called the ‘Encyclopedia Of Rock And Metal’ I managed to phone in and get it right. Of course, I was technically not allowed to go because it was an 18+ gig, but then the most awesome thing imaginable happened (at least when you’re a pimply hadbanging 15-year old who doesn’t know his arse from his elbow) – Keith’s mate said on air: “I’ll get him in, I’ll pretend he’s my roadie.”
So I went to the gig, sat in a corner when bands weren't playing, and to this day I can’t recall ever suffering from a more severe case of extreme headbanging-induced whiplash. No shit, I couldn’t hold my head up for three days.
But this brings me to another point about this band, and that is that, for all their music awesomeness and thrashing headbanging glory, they also appear to be major douche bags. This is evident in, for example, the hand-written letters that I received from Keith after I’d written to the band, heavy metal fan club style. I’ve still got them somewhere, and while it was totally awesome to get personal correspondence, the bit where he mentions the virtues of the white man or how Pauline Hanson is a “media heretic” were a little bit dubious. The music is also filled with thinly veiled lyrical references to “certain” beliefs which at one time attracted the ire of Jewish groups. There’s even an apocryphal tale of Keith allegedly getting seven shades of shit kicked out of him, or so the story goes, after he allegedly approached an American death metal band and apparently asked why they’ve got "a nigger playing with them". Members of Destroyer have also recorded music or otherwise been associated with bands that are less guarded about their political beliefs. Vomitor was one of them, which they brought with them on their 2010 Australian tour. I like to consider myself fairly open-minded about extreme music, and in many years of seeing live bands I’ve never really understood why people throw bottles at bands. Then I saw Vomitor and I finally understood what brought on this urge. And so on and so on.
Incidentally, Richard Wagner, who gets regular air time on tweed jacket-wearing classical music radio stations, was rabidly anti-Semitic, which just goes to show that while you may think that some music is awesome, you may not necessarily think the same about the people making it.

Wagner was a dick.

Unchain The Wolves came out in the same year that Strapping Young Lad played Melbourne. Aside from the dubious lyrics and the sheer dumbassery of its creators at the time, it is in my view, the most perfect album in this genre that I’ve ever heard. It has the intensity, it has the epicness, and it's got the balance right. It's an irresistible album that needs to be heard in full to be fully appreciated, and which urges you to listen to it again and again and again. Check it out.