Nancy’s Metal Orgasm with Municipal Waste, Ratos de Porao, No Limits, Negligence and Thraw (2009)

Author: Rok Klemše

Venue: Izbruhov kulturni bazen, Kranj
Concert date: 20.07.2009
Attendance: 0

The rule of thumb is that summer club shows get dismal turnouts. Metalheads are either making the pilgrimage to the countless festivals across Europe or dunking their asses in the sea, so booking gigs in summer is a pretty risky business. All the more credit to Nancy for showing some balls (um… or something) and putting on a proper thrash/hardcore/crossover fest at Kranj’s Izbruhov bazen. An already scorching summer Tuesday got even hotter in Kranj thanks to Thraw, Negligence, No Limits, Ratos de Porao and Municipal Waste!

First up on stage should have been the coastal hardcore crew Žižolath, but they cancelled at the last minute, though they generously lent out their gear anyway. So the ice was broken (a summer oxymoron, press) by the Carinthian thrashers Thraw. It had been a good while since I’d managed to catch them, and I was really looking forward to getting smacked in the head by an honest riff, drum bombardment and top-notch thrash vocals again. Every time Thraw step on stage it’s like they melt into it – the Ožbej/Domen guitar duo riffs like their lives depend on it and wrecks everything in sight with their solos, proving they could easily slip into the shoes of the Testament duo Skolnick/Petersen. Your eyes easily get stuck on Bojan’s drumming wizardry, which looks like sped-up footage from a distance. And you can’t possibly miss Aleksander, since a vocalist who’s simultaneously this good and this bad is hard to find, not to mention the crazy banter between songs. Thraw more than successfully prepped the still pretty empty hall, which was slowly but steadily filling up, for the rest of the night.

The next band has also been hard to spot on stages lately, since Negligence are working on the long-awaited follow-up to one of the best Slovenian metal albums, Options of a Trapped Mind. You could really tell Negligence have been more absent than present on stage recently, because a decent crowd had already gathered in front of it. The band shows no sign of rust from their time away – the guitar lines flowed off Dyz’s and Jay’s fingers like butter, and I still can’t get over the virtuosity of those insanely well-thought-out riffs and meticulously crafted guitar duels, which even the biggest names in thrash metal wouldn’t be ashamed of. At live shows, Negligence’s crushing rhythm section comes through even more, especially the lively, dynamic drumming. Alex maybe overdid the “fuck you, mother fuckers” attitude a bit this time, but given the technical difficulties and somewhat worse sound, that’s still kind of understandable. Even so, the crowd completely took over the choruses of songs like Places of Dawn, War Machine and Legacy of Lies from Alex. To close, Negligence gave us two fresh tracks that will land on the new record, and judging by how promising they sounded, I can easily say the follow-up to Options of a Trapped Mind is one of the most anticipated albums of this year!

With the end of Negligence’s set we stepped into different musical territory for the night, as the elder statesmen of Slovenian hardcore, coastal champs No Limits, had already taken the stage. One of the oldest Slovenian bands, who’ve been raising hell on stages for a good 18 years, proved in a good 40 minutes that their long career hasn’t touched them one bit. You don’t get such an energetic, relaxed show from many younger bands – No Limits are born for the stage! Reigning over it all is the charismatic, likable frontman Enco, who smartly tied the songs together with socially critical and anti-political themes. No Limits took the Bazen back to the nineties, to the days when crossover ruled the world in the form of bands like D.R.I. and Suicidal Tendencies, and the nostalgia for the golden days of New York hardcore was easy to picture.

The exclusive guests, straight from Sao Paulo, Brazil, carried on in a similar spirit. Cellar rats crawled out of every hole in the pool and the legendary hardcore/crossover outfit Ratos de Porao hit the stage. The four-piece, led by the likable chubby guy Joao Gordo, has been wrecking concert stages for almost twenty years, and the band’s power is showing no signs of fading! Ratos de Porao delivered a fantastic, uncompromising blast that sent the Bazen into complete delirium. Mosh pits, stage dives and spilled beer filling the floor of the Bazen went on for a good hour. And without a break! The band didn’t leave any time to breathe either, tearing from song to song like it was a bet. Gordo barely opened his mouth between songs – there was no time for that – but the crowd below the stage still created proper apocalyptic chaos. The Brazilian rats obviously feed on pure energy, and fifty minutes flew by in a flash. For the finale came probably their best-known banger, Crucificados pelo sistema, which Sepultura also covered, and the rats headed back down to their cellar. Leaving the crowd happy and grinning from ear to ear!

The peak of the night was delivered by the young champions of crossover thrash, Municipal Waste from Richmond. Only with Municipal Waste did the gates of hell swing open for the completely packed Bazen. The guys gave the crowd no room to breathe, and the fantastic, unhinged frontman Tony Foresta kept ordering the crowd into relentless moshing and calling for circle pits. I couldn’t describe a Municipal Waste show any better than with the title of their third album – The Art of Partying. And with their gigs, these guys have taken the art of partying to the extreme. I doubt any other band puts on a show this fun, wild and bonkers. Especially when Tony demands a wall of death – like Moses parting the sea, the dudes split the hall into two halves. Meanwhile, someone up on stage was swaying away intoxicated, having waited in vain for the stage dive Tony had assigned him, with Tony remarking, “He chose that side!” Providing excellent support to Tony is guitarist Ryan Waste, who also keeps calling for wild moshing and, in passing, serves up dedications to Slayer (with the song Acid Sentence, which will be on the upcoming album Massive Aggressive) and Cliff Burton (Black Ice). Somewhere in the middle of the show, one of the punters dropped a nice little pile of puke right onto the stage, and Tony joked once more that a Municipal Waste show isn’t complete without puking on stage. Hehe! The guys hopped from song to song and played the 17-second epic anthem I Want to Kill the President twice. And the second time, they sped it up even more! And to close, of course, the obligatory Born to Party, whose final line describes an MW show better than anything – “Municipal Waste is gonna fuck you up!!!”

With Municipal Waste and the rest of the bands, we witnessed one of the best shows the Bazen in Kranj has ever seen. What made it happen was the great atmosphere, which took us back to the mid-nineties, when metalheads, hardcore kids and punks all got along at underground shows, the extremely well-chosen bands, and the excellent organization. And of course Nancy… “Nancy made us come!”

Photos: Robi Lipej

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