Concert Reviews: Welcome To Lansing on Grindcore Night, Part 1

Fri, Feb. 26, 2010

We all get to Mac's Bar at around 8:00. There is a large group of us. The place begins to fill up before drums have even been placed on the stage. Tons of longhairs, crusties and big tattooed macho-punks are milling all around along with us college punkers. Drinks are being served and House of 1000 Corpses is being played on the TV as New Day Rising blasts out of the house speakers. As always, Mac's is filled with smoke, and I bum a cigarette off of Rachael. I'm feeling pretty good. We all talk about random shit for as long as it takes for the bands to set up. I hang out with Matt and David and talk about how fucking awesome Void, Husker Du and Killdozer are. I order a gin and tonic and drink up during this time. It tastes good.

The first band is an unremarkable, bog-standard metal band. There are hundreds of these bands across the U.S. They're competent and play reasonably well for metal, but it's nothing at all special. I headbang a little but it's obvious no one's really feeling it. At this point it may as well be Friday night in your local metalhead's basement, and not much of a Friday night at that. There is one man who is bearded, wearing a Steelers cap and a blue-and-white shirt. He is a really big dude with a sloppy and somewhat frightening grin on his face. He is absolutely obliterated drunk. "FUCK YEAH YOU GUYS, I'M DRINKING!!! AND IT FEELS FUCKING GREAT!!!" He does slow dance moves to the standard metal band and laughs. People are getting a little wary. He seems to have the aura about him of a man who is having a good time so wholeheartedly that the slightest provocation would make him go off in a terrifying rage, presumably collecting all of our heads as bowling balls after massacring the entire bar. The first band ends and takes forever to get their stuff off the stage.

The second band comes on.

(If you want to experience this band for yourself - which you should, if only to get an idea of what we saw - then listen to it here: http://www.myspace.com/dagonmetal. Don't say I didn't warn you. You should hear it before I give anything away. Really. Trust me on this one.)

Ok, you've listened? Good. Continue reading.
























There are danger signs immediately. The bassist warms up by doing Eddie van Halen tapping on his six-string Ibanez, and the kick drum is boosted to levels that make it sound like someone clubbing a seal in rhythm through a PA system. The guitarists start firing up their PRS (left guitar) and Jackson (right guitar) through their stacks. Dweedleweedleleooooooo.

Oh boy. We all look at each other and wonder what's going to happen.

"HELLO LANSING!!! ARE YOU READY TO ROCK!!!"

Oh God.

Halfway through the first song we are all laughing so hard and so loud that we are bending over wheezing. The shit is every metal cliché you could ever imagine tossed into a blender and hosed into your face. The drummer is shrieking like an angry cat in heat and the bassist growls like an EVIL DEMON OF PURE UNADULTERATED METAL or sings certain key lines in a horribly cheesy Dio falsetto scream. The guitarists play ultra-processed shiny metal jigga-jigga chords or solo all over the fretboard for minutes. The song lengths are epic. It is so incredibly bad that no one knows what to think. The first song finally ends. The next one starts: "THIS SONG IS CALLED "OCEAN METAL!!!" It goes on like this and when the crowd finally figures out the band's concept and the joke during the third song, people start going nuts. This is like Dethklok without the props and more of a focus on technical wanking. It's so incredibly funny that everyone gets in on it - throwing devil horns all around and combining hands to make even bigger devil horns, grabbing at the sky as if they were playing Shakespeare in hell, playing air guitar and moshing. The moshing gets more and more intense. By the next to last song, nearly everyone is going nuts. "THIS SONG IS ABOUT THE CHILDREN OF POSEIDON!!!" The crowd starts really pushing each other around and the floor is already slippery from someone spilling beer. I lose my footing more than once but don't go down. At this point people have started to notice the Misfits fan.

The guy is huge. It's not just that he's big. It's that he towers over everyone else there. He's even bigger than the wasted bearded guy. He must weigh at least 300 pounds, and he has a big cutoff Misfits shirt on and a huge septum pierce. He is running around in a circle shoving the shit out of anyone in his way, using the standard HC-meathead mosh tactics. Everyone gets shoved by this guy at least once. He has a lot of strength and a lot of stamina. We're all beating the tobacco juice out of each other as the song ends.

"ENCORE! ENCORE! ENCORE! ENCORE!"

Dagon do one more song. "THIS SONG IS ABOUT CANNIBAL PIRATES!!!" The crowd goes insane. Elbows and punkers fly around everywhere along with enough full-body smashing and cross-checking to make the MSU hockey team proud. The Misfits fan wipes out twice on the filthy, beer-and-dirt-encrusted floor and gets back up to mix it up with everyone else. (Up the punks! YEEAHHHH! Fucking asshole.) This is a good energy level. It's safe to say no one expected that from this band. Now the crowd is fully warmed up for Magrudergrind, who were technically opening for Misery Index. But everyone had come for Magrudergrind. It was obvious.

It's a break at this point. I talk to a five-foot-tall punk with two little rattail dreads and a Charles Bronson shirt on. I bum another cigarette off his friend. I say I like Charles Bronson a lot. Any band whose entire discography of 80+ songs can get summed up on a disc that's just over 70 minutes is pretty awesome to me. He agrees and recommends I try and find Crossed Out.

Magrudergrind sets up. Vocalist, guitarist, drummer. No bassist. I wondered how much ass they could kick without a bassist. The guitarist's stack is huge, but is that really enough to deliver the needed punch for grindcore?

Everyone's gathered up at the front of the stage. We're all waiting for something to happen.

(Note: Published elsewhere online.)