02

Saturday 31st May , 2003

The Rock Ape - Canberra

Dark Order, Headmess, Vaticide, Tyburnjig, Scrum, Switchblade, Shatterwrath & Demonicus

Account by Chris Gardiner (guitars/vocals)

(Pics Below)

What a fuckin great weekend!! Last weekend Scrum, Switchblade and Tyburnjig terrorised the Quality Inn in Canberra. (Oh yeah, we played a gig too ). As part of the mildly successful Burning steel festival the aforementioned bands along with a few others, converged on the city of Canberra to support Headmess and Dark Order at The Rock Ape.

Quite a small place the rock ape. Not at all set up to hold an 8 or 9 band festival. Some comments thrown around by numerous people on the night were "We should have played the gig in my hotel room", or "take the wall out of my one bedroom apartment, and it's bigger than this place". A bit rough, I know. But to be fair the venue has real vibe about it. Metal posters of all sizes and origin adorn the walls. A silent Metallica vid was playing near the bar. It was plenty cosy too, with couches to lounge about on.

The room was definitely dwarfed by all the bands' gear as well. Without all the gear in there, there was plenty of room to hold maybe a 3 band line up. But no more than that. And beer was only $3! Usually small venues put their prices through the roof, so bravo to the rock ape for keeping them down. At the end of the day, I'd say that Scrum will definitely play there again. At least we'd like to. But next time, less bands, more mosh space! :)

Ok, well, the gig itself. I'm ashamed to say that personally, I didn't catch any bands that night except Switchblade. We loaded in as late as we could to avoid the venue being swamped in gear. And when we finished we loaded out straight away. Being out of town and all and ratshit after my drive down, I headed back to the hotel after we packed away all our gear.

That said, reports from several of my friends shed a positive picture of the show just before we got there and after we left. The crowd numbers swelled and shrank unpredictably, but all the bands played really well and did a good job of playing to a sometimes small crowd.

But onto the important part of the weekend. Just after the gig, the numbers in our hotel room began to swell. We piled up 4 cases of VB in 4 tiny fridges across 4 hotel rooms, and the party began. First there was our crew, then Switchblade show up with blondes, then the boys from Tyburnjig show up! The beer flowed freely, Switchblade stickers were applied to every possible surface, lots of chants (Shano!), rants and laughs. We had a great time, and we hope even more people can join us next time.

When Scrum go on the road next, we'll be organising one hell of a road trip. I'll post info about how to join us on the road for the next one, so stay tuned.

Until that day,

Scrum it up Canberra!

On Stage At The Rock Ape