The Whiskey June 29 2006 |
Ahh yes, the Whiskey, a great sounding venue, but the security guards are way to uptight, and for the last several years, shows here seem to just be dead. Fortunately for Gatekeeper this was not the case. Gatekeeper are 4 young lads from San Pedro who play a techy-grind - similar to Decapitated...but tonight Gatekeeper became Beachkeeper...as I entered the club, a sea of beach balls and inflatable Shamu's filled the air, Beachkeeper commanded the stage like aural surfers, (with all the members wearing swim trunks, scuba flippers and grass skirts) This visual tactic caused most of the androgynous hardcore kids to stop comparing hair and eyeliner notes, and take notice of one of the most up and coming bands in L.A. At one point during their set, lead screamer Jake invited the entire crowd on stage to "party" with them, soon enough - the stage was filled with enough people to cause the security to "get worried' and start aggressively escorting kids off stage....this did not detour Gatekeeper though, they continued their aural assault, finishing their set by having all the lights turned off for a song that inspires people to wear spiked armor, burn churches, go to mommy's make up kit for that all important fresh corpse look, and wield swords of various sizes - all hail black metal - with a side of surf, they ended their set with the crowd favorite "Coathanger"... |
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| Up next was - I believe, was Job For A Cowboy.....of which I missed most of their....I saw them back in February as part of the L.A. Murderfest...and they were very impressive, looking very comfortable on stage and delivering a razor sharp set...sorry I missed your set, but I was dealing with a business issue. Animosity (from San Francisco) was next to fill the stage with their cacophonous debris, their music, which can be described as progressive hardcore, with a lot of metal over tones, they really impressed me with their level of professionalism on stage, they sounded amazing, tight as a corpses lips, and clear as cigar burn to the eye. Their singer stomped around the stage like a wild Indian doing a war dance. Oh yea. They were using samples of electronic music in between songs, which, to me, was really cool, seeing as all night long you have people unintelligibly screaming at you backed up by some wall of noise, it breaks up monotony allot. |
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Misery Index from Baltimore MD made their way to the stage, with an extra guitarist in tow. Last time I saw them was the 2nd L.A. Murder Fest back in 2005 - they played as a 3 piece, and were sick as fuck, and tonight was no exception. I believe they have a new drummer with them as well, who hit really fucking hard and was dead on with his blast beats all night. There was no bullshit rants going on in between songs, no attitudes, just pure volume and death metal like it should be, tight, fast and just on the verge of losing control. I kept thinking that they reminded me of a death metal version of Mastodon, I could be way off on that, but it's my opinion and my review, so shut the fuck up. |
| Now it was time for the main attraction, Cattle Decapitation hit the stage fast and furious. They have a new drummer with them, an 18 year old prodigy named J.R. Daniels, aka "Sticky Fingers" aka "Jr.". They played a good amount of new material from their forth coming album on Metal Blade Records, "Karma Bloody Karma".... and let me tell you, the new material is insanely fast, making most of the so called "metalcore" that we can't get away from these days, seem like "Mary Had A Little Lamb". Cattle D played a number of tunes from the split 7" with Caninus, as well as Testicular Manslaughter from "To Serve Man", and a few from "Humanure". Josh was doing some freaky fretboard finger work while Troy destroyed our ear drums with his bulldozer bass tones. Travis moves about the stage like some possessed reverend, preaching his sermon of veggie gorecore and bleak outlook on humanity as whole. I kept my eyes on JR, as I was curious as to how he would hold up playing with these SoCal road hogs. JR's got some quick feet and even fast hands, but in my opinion, he needs to hit a little harder.... No wait, allot harder, maybe he could take a lesson or 2 from Misery Index's drummer. They ended their set with "The Decapitation of Cattle" a 2 second ditty that doesn’t give you enough time to process what just happened.... They followed that up with the "Recapitation of Cattle" a .23 second song that makes it's precursor seem like an eternity. |  |
| Review by Fetus random art by Tom Denney More Reviews |
At this point, it was about 1:15 am, my glass of Cognac had worn off, and I needed to head back to the womb and chew on some umbilical jerky....until next time.
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