Saturday 30th August 2003
Club Splurt - Annerley, Brisbane
D-nine, Scrum, Lynchmada, Switchblade
Account
by Gaz - (5 ft 7 of pure chocolate love)
[his
words , not mine.......Chris]
By the time we had arrived back in Brisbane I think everyone was a little worse
for wear. My shoulder was shot to pieces, Benny's fingers were fucked, all four
vocalists voices were on the brink of oblivion and we all had livers that were
on their knees, screaming for mercy. To me this was more like a last gasp
Kamikaze mission than a gig. Annerley was a weird place for a metal gig,
it might have been just me, but there seemed to be more churches than houses.
Anyway on to Club Splurt, This joint had a really cool layout .It was like two
separate venues joined by a walkway/foyer type thing. There were twenty or so
bands playing across the two stages and it went for well over twelve hours.
It was an extremely long day and I didn't catch all of the bands, nor can I
remember the names of most of the ones I saw. This is pretty much how the day
unfolded.
Our
half of the crew stayed at the hotel and sunk piss until it was time for the
Blade to grace the stage. Switchblade gave their usual powerful performance,
although there was the odd moment here and there when I thought Sway's voice was
going to pack it in again. As a precaution he took that mighty big (or as some
would say, fuck off!!!) jar of honey onstage with him. They were received very
well and even had some frontal nudity at one point (some forty-odd year old
pelican got his pecker out and flashed it in the mosh!!!). Before long it was
their last song and Picco managed to knock one of his cymbals over. With my
retinas still burning from seeing another mans pee-pee, I had to run onstage and
pick it up and hold it in place for him until the end of the song. Trust me,
having your head five centimetres away from his drums while he's playing them
wasn't the most pleasant experience my eardrums have had. The next band I
managed to see in between beers was Soratuu. Apparently this was their final gig
ever. I wished I had of heard of them years ago, because they were mind-blowing.
They had a style that had a bit of everything, but the result was heavy as.
We were up next in the other room. Taking one step on the stage told me that it
was extremely unstable, I was scared of falling though it! It was more like a
trampoline than a stage. We all felt like shit, but somehow we managed to give
(I believe) our best performance of the tour. The set was a little different to
normal, all the slower stuff was weeded out which made it shorter, but much more
aggressive. We opened with "Slowest Suicide" and ended with
"Disgrace Looms". In between there was "Running from Life",
"No Life/Low Life", "Conform" and not to mention
"Propaganda" .We got a good crowd and a decent reaction. After the set
our gigging commitments for the tour were finally over!!!, which meant that it
was time to sit back, relax, watch some metal and have a beer or twenty!!!
The rest of the night is a bit of a (ahem...) blur. I spent the rest of the show
with Hill, Picco and a few others drinking like a muthafucka and wandering back
and forth between stages. There were a lot of different styles and some fucking
weird-ass costumes worn by some bands (eg: One dude was dressed as a
scarecrow!!! What kind of kinky shit is that?). There were a couple of standouts
that I can remember, Lynchmada played a solid set and D-nine, who are quite
possibly the craziest fuckers (on and offstage) that I’ve ever seen or met
tore the place apart.
Other stuff that went on during the night included Adz picking up, (see blonde chick in pics), and some brief fisticuffs, (more like handbags at ten paces.), during one of the later bands. Thinking of self-preservation for the next day’s trip, I stumbled home at about 1am. Hill (you mental-ass no sleep muthafucka!) and the rest went to the after party at Kent’s place until about 5 o'clock or so.
All in all I had a blast and this night was a fitting end to one unforgettable tour.
