Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Velden am Wörthersee / Bluesiana Rock Cafe / Austria
Concert date: December 10, 2017
Attendance: 60
Ticket price: €37.00 (presale) / €42.00 (day of show)
Beasto Blanco are a kick-ass hard rock “family” fatefully tied to Alice Cooper, since two members of their lineup are Cooper’s longtime bassist Chuck Garric and, believe it or not, Cooper’s daughter Calico Cooper. The band is back in Europe on a new tour supporting their second studio album, »Beasto Blanco«, released in 2016, and the lineup is rounded out by co-founder and lead guitarist Chris “Brother” Latham (Paper Back Hero), bassist Jan LeGrow and drummer Tim Husung. We saw Chuck Garric in a completely different role than the one he has in Beasto Blanco, just recently on stage with his first employer, when he played with Alice Cooper at Vienna’s Stadthalle on November 27, 2017.
Beasto Blanco supposedly »razed« Bluesiana to the ground on their first European tour two years ago, and now Garric and the gang decided to repeat the “exercise”. We couldn’t make that first show because of hellishly bad weather, and this time we barely pulled it off, since it had been snowing, raining and blowing like the devil all day again. Getting to the other side of the Alps in conditions like that is no walk in the park.
Anyway, the night was opened by the up-and-coming Swiss thrash metal revival trio Bloodlust. They’re a seriously fired-up, red-hot, tightly drilled band, in excellent form both vocally and instrumentally. Only one thing bugged me: they’re generic. Close your eyes and you’d think you were listening to a Slayer cover band. The finale confirmed their love for the thrash legends when the lads tore into the Slayer classics Reign in Blood and Angel of Death. Confident, nice, but nothing special. Except for the crowd, who probably can’t remember ever seeing a band in Bluesiana with even a whiff of thrash metal about them. People greeted the set with enthusiasm, even though in the opening shock everyone very carefully »jumped back« a smidge. One step to the side, but they all happily survived the unexpected “bleeding” from the ears.
Beasto Blanco, as expected, brought a proper debauched party to the stage. The intro already hinted at it, with Garric, this time as lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist, showing up dressed as Santa, alongside a scantily clad Calico, who literally devoured the room with pale-blue »Manson-style« contact lenses in her eyes. The band wrecked and smashed everything around them. In an extraordinary mix of cheeky, colorful stage theater, with nonstop shimmying and even a faint glam whiff, and in all their hard rock eruptiveness, there’s a ragged, garage-exhausted helping of punk. The band can even groove with an edge, then blow things up metal-style, and an alluring dose of bluesy eroticism runs through it all. Amid all the excellent, flawlessly brilliant playing, with the superb guitarist Chris Latham even treating himself to a theremin in one of the numbers, Garric naturally reigned in the center with his raspy, piercing and cheekily impudent vocals. Chuck kept flashing those darting eyes and won the crowd over so quickly that they were soon eating out of his hand. With help from the magnetic, bewitching filly Calico, who kept the »blood and panic« going on stage the whole time, his job was made a lot easier. We got a bagful of cheeky quips and jokes, silliness and cheeky banter with the audience! On top of that, the razor-tight, precise performance, a reflection of the musicians’ great professionalism and proof of their vast experience, took us on a walk through the original material from both studio albums, and for the big finale the band cranked Bluesiana up to a boil with a cover of Cooper’s Feed My Frankenstein! Unforgettable and top-notch! As always, only in Bluesiana!
I hope Beasto Blanco come back to Bluesiana. They’re simply so good that you can’t get enough of listening to them or watching them.
words: .Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Nataša Pišljar & Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist
BEASTO BLANCO:
!. Intro
2. Beasto Blanco
3. Burried Angels
4. Freak
5. Motor Queen
6. Drum solo
7. Machine Girl
8. Grind
9. Death Rattle
10. Damnation
11. Live Fast Die Loud
12. I Rise
13. Honey
14. We Got This
15. Beg To Differ
16. No More Man
—encore—
17. Feed My Frankenstein
18. Breakdown
BLOODLUST:
1. Intro
2. Hammer On Your Face
3. El Diablo
4. Zombie Attack
5. I Am Evil
6. Legion From Hell
7. 57 Minutes To Die
8. Lord of Destruction
9. Give Me the Whiskey
10. You Will Die Again
11. The Undertaker
13. Demolition
—encore—
14. Raining Blood / Angel of Death
Photo Gallery
