Pain is an excellent teacher. One thing you learn from years of metal and hardcore shows: There are people in this world who want to hurt you. You know the type. Usually big, usually dim. Pleasure is derived from the systematic punishment of the weak. Unfortunately—but understandably—violent music occasionally goes hand in hand with actual violence.
If there’s one good thing that comes from an especially vicious show, it’s the thrill of living to tell about it. Call it the crucible effect: Pain hammers you into shape, you toughen up a little for next time, and hey, you’ve got a story about the time you almost died.
These are the 3 most terrifying shows I can remember. The criteria for inclusion: genuine fear for life and limb. I’ve seen Devildriver against my will (don’t recommend it), chipped teeth at the hands (make that feet) of Jacob Bannon, seen kids tossed off balconies, and survived a few wall-of-death scenarios in my day; those almost made the cut. This list skews towards hardcore because I’m from New England, we had a lot of hardcore shows, and dudes at hardcore shows like to stomp weaklings like me. Such is life.
. . .
3. Terror + Ramallah – Boston, Massachusetts – 2003
Boston shows are legendary for a reason: they turn mean quick. Must be something in the water.
The room was packed. Terror (featuring Scott Vogel of Buried Alive, and Todd Jones years before he’d form Nails) and Ramallah (Rob Lind of Blood for Blood) were new to the scene, but carried weight from their previous bands. Anticipation was high. Within the first seconds of Ramallah’s set, it felt like a tornado hit. A couple knuckle-draggers decided to reinterpret the meaning of a circle pit: rather than dancing or even acknowledging the music, they circled the room punching every third bystander in the face. I thought it was a joke, until they came my way. Fear struck like lightning. The crowd tried to move as one, meaning no one could move. One poor sap got slugged in the face and fell over a merch table—the rest of us knocked over the remaining tables in an attempt to get the hell out of harm’s way.
Picture this: a handful of thugs pounding faces vs. a room full of terrified strangers trying to hide behind one another. The brutes adapted fast, changing tactics to better obliterate any chance of enjoying the show. Working in teams, repurposing leap-frog for nefarious means, one dude would run towards the crowd where a waiting buddy gave him a boost, allowing him to reach over the front row and punch someone who’s hiding three rows back. The horrible, (possibly intended) consequence: an unusual amount of girls got clocked.
Being a DIY show in the back of a church, there was no security. The beatings just went on. Once I found myself on the far side of a merch table, I stayed put. The not-insignificant pain of others quashed any notions of bravery. Sometimes survival outweighs heroism.
Ramallah wrapped it up and Terror took the stage to a less memorable but no-less-effective dose of crowd brutality. Terror, for those unfamiliar, like to walk a delicate line between “crowd energy” and “fucking shit up”. There’s a brilliant website devoted to frontman Scott Vogel’s eminently quotable stage banter—”Maximum output! Activate the Pit!” He’s famously obsessed with stage-dives. One of my favorite quotes: “Fuck this place up, positive aggression, if someone falls pick them up. Positive Aggression. And more stage-dives!”
This crowd, sick of being terrorized (rimshot) by the few, was ready to unleash all sorts of positive aggression by the time Terror came on. Floor-punching, fistfights, and yes, stage-dives galore poured out like a flood—the place practically exploded. By that point I well knew my place: in the corner, observing. Better to live to write about it.
. . .
Terror – “Keep Your Mouth Shut”
. . .
2. Merauder – Springfield, Massachusetts – 2000
Brutality doesn’t require a crowd. When Merauder hit Springfield in the year 2000, they barely drew 20 people. In those days my friends and I would hit up anything with a flyer regardless of the bands, anything to escape rural hell for a few hours.
Early in the evening, the energy of that empty room shifted dramatically with the arrival of two dudes: instantly identifiable by the way they carried themselves, dripping contempt and creatine—they were in a crew. It wasn’t uncommon to run into FSU at Worcester or Boston shows; further west and closer to Connecticut we’d brush up against SDS guys. Neither were fun but both were known commodities, harmless enough if you kept your distance. These guys were something else.
Opening act 100 Demons took the stage; the smaller of the two thugs circled the empty pit, preening his tail feathers while his significantly larger buddy hung back. Buried Alive came on and it started to heat up. Jr. got excited and started shoving strangers; Big Man decided to take off his shirt. And there it was, across his back in massive Old English: CLEVELAND COURAGE CREW. Fuck. 6-foot-5-inches of sculpted physique, bent on wrecking the lot of us. (As hardcore “gangs” go, the Cleveland-based Courage Crew aren’t especially potent compared to FSU or DMS; but on the micro level they’re probably more apt to beat your ass for no reason).
Within seconds it turned into an interactive tag-team circus act: Big Man hurled Jr. into the crowd like a lobbed bowling ball, then swung him bodily like a fleshy ax chopping down terrified trees. It was every bit as absurd as that sounds—only terrifying. Other, lesser tough guys shrank to the corners of the room, discovering a new perk to playing wallflower: survival. My 19-year-old self—125 lbs of bone and insecurity—retreated in a rush of don’t-fucking-hurt-me panic.
With Merauder came true punishment. Picture Hatebreed with some Biohazard swagger, and you’re not far from Merauder (and they pull it off fairly well). Their songs are written for this express purpose: kicking ass. You know Van Damme’s signature spin-kick? Big Man had the move down pat, taking aim at faces and kicking them the fuck in, repeatedly. As Merauder dropped mosh riffs this dude circled a quickly emptying room, kicking the shit out of everyone. It was a free-for-all. People were tripping over each other to get away while Jr. ran through the crowd, shoving the escapees back into the pit. In my panic I lost track of the action, took a kick to the ribs. Knocked on my ass, but at least temporarily away from further harm. Pain was overwhelmed by shock as I watched this dude do a fucking cartwheel across the pit, launching into the crowd feet first.
The show ended a few minutes later—the brutal twosome was all smiles and back slaps: a night’s work well done. Merauder looked impressed—small crowd, big violence—not bad, right? I survived with no bones broken, just a hell of a boot-shaped bruise and a half-formed notion that life really is pain.
. . .
Merauder – “Life is Pain”
. . .
1. Slayer – San Bernardino, California – 2009
Hardcore shows are physically intimidating, sure. You might break something, or die, or wish you had died. But only a metal show can get truly apocalyptic. Horror on the cosmic level requires a horrific soundtrack, not just tough posturing. Leave it to Slayer to deliver the pain and fear like no other.
I envy all of you who got to see Slayer in your youth. This was my one and only Slayer show thus far, and the show itself was a blast (musically speaking; the rest of Mayhem fest not so much, but that’s a tale for another day). You all know Slayer and what they do to a crowd. If hardcore demands the mosh, Slayer demands blood. Call it a blood ritual: they deliver the goods, and the audience punches, kicks, and headbangs until everything within reach is bleeding. At least that’s how I imagine the pit, not that I could see it from my lofty perch on the back lawn far, far from the actual arena. I have limited experience with arena shows, so when I found myself in the dead center of the lawn, about 1000 feet from the stage, looking down on the nosebleed seats, I felt my first uncomfortable realization of the night: this might not be the best place to be.
Night fell by the time Slayer took stage. The main arena was reasonably lit, but the only lights on the lawn were spread hundreds of feet apart, barely illuminating a 50-foot circle in a sea of black. The darker it got the harder it was to make out the faces of the surrounding concertgoers—things quickly took a turn for the strange. By the time it was fully dark the lawn could have been a thousand miles from sanity, never mind civilization. Anonymity meant you could do whatever you want, anything to anybody.
In between songs, as the applause died, distant screams echoed across the back lawn. Maybe it was excitement, but it didn’t sound like it. A few newly liberated troglodytes decided to start a fire. Fuel? People had been dropping plastic cups, wrappers, and other human waste for hours—might as well burn that! Like most idiotic notions, the idea quickly spread: trash-fires raged across the lawn; clouds of smoke made the already thick shadows impenetrable. Suffocating on the stench of burning plastic might seem like an apt backdrop for apocalyptic thrash, but I don’t recommend it. But fire is merely a chemical process; it doesn’t mean anything until it threatens to burn something that matters, like your hair. When the degenerate mutants started shoving people directly into the fire it got pretty fucking scary.
Imagine a moshpit on a steep, slanted lawn. The air is pure smoke; you can’t see much of anything besides scattered fires and somewhere in the distance, Slayer. Not that it’s safe to turn around and watch Slayer. Populate the pit with the lowest of the lowbrow—think of the videos of dudes yelling “SLAY-YUR!”—you’re surrounded and they’re pushing, punching, fighting, trying to leap their own fires, trying to throw you into their fires: It’s hell on earth. Girls got groped in the dark; dudes picked up chunks of burning plastic with sticks and flung them into passing crowds. Worst of all, there was no escape. Security stuck to the safety of the well-lit concrete; the only way out was at either end of the massive venue, which meant a trek through the wasteland at the center.
Survival requires adaptation: My first attempt was to press to the front, ideally escaping the worst of the flames and moshing. No such luck: the smoke was pouring forward for some reason; Mother Nature smoked us out. The need for oxygen sadly outweighs the need to avoid physical pain at the hands of mutants, so took a new approach: head-on through the pit. After a few minor brushes with death I found an odd pocket of quiet, in between several fires, away from assholes. “Safety attained!” I thought, until a fireball of molten trash whizzed by my face. My second uncomfortable realization: Safety is an illusion, death can find you anywhere, and the cruelty of strangers in the dark knows no bounds. I moved away just as some mindless destroyer of happiness lit a new fire a few feet from my hiding place.
When Slayer finished, the moshing let up (mostly). I quickly made for the exit. Marilyn Manson was about to play—if I’m going to risk apocalyptic death to hear some tunes it had fucking better be Slayer. Ultimately I learned two things from Mayhem Fest: A large crowd + absolute darkness = uncivilization: humans acting inhuman. And, that seeing Slayer live is worth risking death.
. . .
Slayer – “Hell Awaits”
. . .
. . .
Ever seen a madball unleashed in the pit? Ever lived through a pigpile at a Slapshot show? I can only imagine some of you have seen far more terrifying shit than I have: what’s your best (or worst) war story?
. . .
In 2004 Lambgoat.com sent me to Hellfest in New Jersey. I was 19 at the time. It was supposed to be Bad Luck 13 Riot Extravaganza’s last show. And they were one of the closing bands for the fest, too. I mean . . . what were people really expecting? I bet they weren’t expecting to have a full set of bleachers flipped and pushed through the venue like some giant plough. I also watched kids throw flourescent lightbulbs like javelins into the crowd. A skateboard got hit in the face by a flying metal chair that had been hurled at least 100 feet from where the skateboarded stood in the skatepark section of the venue.
I’ve searched the internet high and low but can’t find my wrap-up of the fest anywhere on Lambgoat. They must’ve deleted it. After all it was eight years ago now. Holy shit.
Anyway, here’s some footage from aforementioned show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLJTm1GWVt8
Oh shit, that band was legendary for destruction. I remember stories of barbwire wrapped baseball bats and really evil shit, though I half assumed it was just scary mythology propagated by the band themselves. That video looks insane.
a bunch of my buddies went to that show and said it was pretty fucking frightening how ridiculous it got so quickly. the funny part is I think Fear Factory was supposed to play after them but the rest of the show got canceled due to the shit show that ensued.
Wow, I’ve never experienced or heard anything like these anecdotes.
Me neither. Seems like an American thing. Here in the Netherlands the kind of thugs from the article are football hooligans and they don’t listen to metal or hardcore (the guitar band version), but to hardstyle and hardcore (the electronic version) techno.
The scariest crowd I was in, was when The Beastie Boys had just released Hello Nasty and everybody at the Lowlands festival wanted to see them, instead of spreading out over the 10 or so stages. That could have easily gone seriously wrong, but in the end I think just a few people fainted.
Hoping you’re right and this level of psychopathy is just an American thing – hoping Wacken, Bloodstock et al. aren’t like this. I love metal, but I’m damned if I’m going to get my face kicked in by macho idiots.
Can’t say for Wacken as I’ve not been, but Bloodstock is the friendliest fest I’ve ever been to. There are pits for those who want to indulge in a little consensual mutual destruction, but they’re very easy to avoid, and you can very easily watch bands in peace.
Bloodstock is full of people bringing their kids, more so than ant other festival I’ve attended, and it’s small enough that you don’t quite get the levels of fuckery you’d find at, say, Reading or Download.
I promise I’m not being paid by BOA to say all these nice things about it – I wish! It really is just a wonderful and special festival, though.
I was at a few metal shows during my years in the US and they were by far more violent than any of the countless metal/punk/hardcore shows I was at in Germany.
There is a big difference between risking a bloody nose or black eye from joining the fray and getting beat up on purpose by some thug.
While hardcore shows can get physical, they tend to be so in a friendly way – as in giving a hand to anybody going down in the pit – almost all metal shows I was at, including several big Slayer shows in the late 80s/early 90s, were remarkably peaceful.
But I’ve never witnessed anything like those shows you described!
Wow, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this. Thanks for a compelling and entertaining post!
I typically hate the type of hardcore shows listed above because I hate tough guys. They’re hilarious in one aspect and stupidly dangerous in another. it’s like these dudes go to these shows because they think beating the shit out of people gets them some award or something. I have no issue if you want to go and get rid of your testosterone at a show like this, but leave people out of it who want to stay out of it. I have one eye that has half vision from a damaged retina that only could be half repaired. I don’t need punched in the good eye.
But I went to a fest that I was covering, and I did NOT really want to be there. here was a band playing outside, and these two assholes kept throwing themselves bodily at the crowd, that contained a lot of teen girls and people who just wanted to watch the band from a distance. Not to mention, these guys came awfully close to damaging the band’s equipment more than once and also nearly knocked a very expensive camera from a magazine photographer’s hands.
Anyway, the one kid threw himself into me once when I wasn’t looking. of course. When I saw him coming for me again, I pretended not to notice, and as he was in mid air, caught him in a Von Erich claw around the face and, as delicately as I could, placed him back-first against the ground. Again, I’m not a tough guy and I have no interest in fighting someone at a show. So I just put a finger in his chest and told him to leave me alone. So his friend came up and, from behind, punched me in the side of the head. When I turned around, he called me a pussy. I just had to laugh at it because, seriously, I get hit from behind twice and I’m the pussy? I just left. It wasn’t worth it. The band wasn’t that good, and these guys weren’t worth my time.
This is why at shows, I seek the bar and just take a seat. I’m not ashamed of being the guy who just wants to watch and not get assaulted.
The most frightened I have ever been at a show was actually THIS show–
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntnxrML1nZg
I love that band, because they honestly terrify me. The video I linked to does not show half of the crazy shit I saw at that show. Fireworks being shot into the crowd, watermelons being thrown into the crowd and onto people’s heads. The police entering in riot gear and failing to control the crowd. the entire time huge Flint crew boys were going hard, and dancing harder. At one point the power was cut to King’s vocals and guitars–they kept playing. The vocalist, David, was arrested at the end of the show for inciting a riot.
first poster got it right… Bad Luck 13 Riot Extravaganza! You should a real chance of going home in an cast!
STOOD a real chance I should have said
Before I even read this article, I thought Merauder had to be on the list.
Aaron: Though I wasn’t at either of the two hardcore shows you described, I saw SO MUCH SHIT like that happen at DIY hardcore shows as a teenager. Ruined that style of hardcore for me forever. I can only imagine how much worse it was in MA. During Ghoul’s set at MDF this year, one of the guys started heckling the crowd for moshing: “Moshing? Come on, seriously? What is this, Boston?”
Doomed To Repeat: I totally remember that Hellfest writeup! I was 16 when I read it, which means I was young/dumb enough to wish I’d been there.
Syracuse Hellfest 2000 almost made this list. When the first day got shut down before it could start, riot cops penned everyone into a giant parking lot and kept us there for about 8 hours, directly under the sun in the middle of July. The following two days saw an outpouring of a lot of that pent up frustration, made all the worse by some serious sunburns!
I remember during Turmoil’s set (their “final” show of that era), something horrible happened to the soundboard. I think someone dumped water into it. Dudes were doing backflips off the PA towers, everyone was on the stage at once, someone was lighting firecrackers–it was pretty fucking crazy.
Here’s a clip from Converge’s set, which wasn’t especially scary, but it was fun as hell:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r84o1ec-GTs
Those FSU guys are ASS. HOLES. Boston bands used to come up to a club in the middle of Maine in the early/mid 90’s and the FSU guys would follow, swinging fists and baseball bats. I remember spending one night with my friends in the Emergency Room because of those guys.
Judas Priest on ‘Defenders of the Faith’ tour Madison Square Garden, i’m 14 and people are going crazy, ripping out the seats, throwing them at stage, etc. It was, at the time, the craziest thing i’d ever seen. And I thought I was going to get killed. Ha ha.
Very entertaining and terrifying post. Luckily for me I haven’t been to any shows that have been quite this bad! I went to hardcore / power violence shows as a teen in the ’90s, but on the west coast they just weren’t as insane as the ones you’re describing. I’ve been a full metalhead since then, and I’ve seen a lot of crazy drunks and cokeheads at shows, but it seems that their damage can be contained. I’ve been to a couple of Maryland Deathfests, and by the end of the day, the crowd gets pretty drunk and sunbaked and out of control for pretty much every band on stage, but even then it is easy to avoid getting crushed, and it can be fun to join the craziness.
In a completely different sense, though, I think that Portal’s night-closing set at the 2010 MDF was the most terrifying show I’ve seen, not because of the pit, but rather just what happened on stage — I had no idea that it would be so unsettling to witness live a bunch of masked men play that music. The lighting was very understated, mostly just a few blue lights behind the stage, the drummer was always in the darkness, and the band were really just shapes moving on stage — I think it is the closest one can come to seeing music played by ghosts. It was very affecting. Didn’t fear for my physical safety, but I thought that my soul might get sucked into Hell.
Woodstock ‘99
I first saw Slayer and Motorhead in 1988 in Cleveland when I was 16 years old. I didn’t see anything like the stories shared here, but I thought my life was in danger the whole time, too scared to even go near the floor. I was pretty terrified at Danzig the next year too (also Cleveland), I was close to the stage and was getting knocked around. Thankfully a large friendly man next to me helped to shield me throughout the show!
The late 80s/early 90s Boston shows were typically pretty scary. I starte playing in hardbore bands in the early 90s and it was pretty much given that FSU would show up. When the Channel was still around they actually flipped over Sacred Reich’s bus. There’s the infamous FSU instigated riot at a Shelter/108 show I was at; about 15 FSU guys vs pretty much the whole crowd, shit was getting pretty out of control before the actual fighting started, Ray of Shelter tried to calm the crowd down and asked everyone to sit down, everyone did except the FSU guys…they basically told Ray to go fuck himself; can’t remember how th fighting started but FSU was having a tough time until a closet full of hockey sticks was discovered and they started wielding those. Another show that scared the shit out of me was at The Rat with Madball and Crown of Thorns, don’t remember any specifics other than trying to get as far away from the floor as possible. Those days definitely ruined hardcore of a lot of us, the crowd getting randomly attached was common place. A friend not even dancing had hit jaw shattered and wired shut from a random dude just hauling off and knocking him out.
Those are the kinds of shows I used to hear about in Boston… the Rat and the Channel both closed before I got there. The Middle East saw its fair share of cracked skulls, but not usually to that degree (except the girl who broke her neck there, possibly).
What is it about Boston, man?
Great city and people but the five percent of knuckleheads are really bad knuckleheads.
Case in point: even if you despite LeBron James there is no reason to throw beer on him after the Celtics loss last night: http://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-lebron-james-miami-heat-20120608,0,7225173.story
Terribly poor taste even if you don’t consider the racial overtones.
I remember walking home from the T (boston-speak for the subway) after the Patriots won for the first time in forever. Had to make my way past Lansdowne Street, where the denizens of sports bars were just beginning to spill out into the streets and generally destroy everything in sight. That was the only time in my life that I’ve seen cars being flipped over. WE WON, YET WE DESTROY THE BELONGINGS OF YOUR OWN PEOPLE?!
I wonder if that will happen here in LA if (when) the Kings win in a few days…
I remember leaving a Rollins Band/Therapy? show on Lansdowne just as a Red Sox game was letting out, and I saw somebody drop their half-eaten hot dog on the sidewalk, then pick it up and keep eating it. I’d lived in Boston for maybe a week at that point.
I didn’t go to too many hardcore shows in Boston precisely because of the violence. Local 187 had just closed down because of FSU when I moved there, and honestly, that style of hardcore never really appealed to me that much. The three scariest shows I went to weren’t all that scary by comparison, but two were hardcore shows in Oklahoma – Cryptic Slaughter at a sketchy biker-patronized strip club a few blocks from my house in Oklahoma City, and N.O.T.A. at a cafe in Norman, where the cops got called to shut it down halfway through N.O.T.A.’s set. The third was, of all bands, the Pixies. It was at a 400-capacity club, with about 600 people in it. It was such a crush that I got lifted completely off the floor a few times.
dude, New England in general breeds these fucks, back in the day ,even in the south shore of MA we had to deal with White Irish Crew meatheads coming in and fuckin shit up.They would never fight anyone one on one but 30 on one was common place. fuckin ret-AH-ded roid boys.
2 good kids were playing street hockey (popular in Leomister MA) before the show, and were asked to leave their (our 2 hockey sticks) at the door. There were 3 FSU guys at that show beating up everyone. At at that show, a girl I was friends with was hit in the face with my hockey stick one of the FSU guys grabbed, and I felt horrible. When the riot police came, I ran up to the one guy not in a helmet (a captain or something) and he yanked me by my hoodie, asked me to point out the guy who hit the girl with “my hockey stick”, threw me into the front seat of his cop car, and raced around Harvard Square until I finally pointed him out trying to escape down the Harvard Square T stop. They arrested him, and charged him with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, and I was forced to testify against him for the state in court. I was a little (still am) vegan HC kid and such… I went to court. I was briefed by the ADA (who was young and inexperienced) about what to say when I was called to the stand. 2-3 hrs passed, and THEN 15 FSU guys walked into the court house, surrounded me, (there was no security or police) and told me this: If Rob gets convicted of assult and battery, he won’t be able to get into the army. If he can’t get into the Army, your friends won’t like it, and we won’t like it, but if he does, everything will be cool… Rob will be gone, and that is what your friends will like.” I remember it like it was yesterday because who doesn’t remember the 1st and only time they were wittness intimidated in a court house? So long story shorter… he got off because the ADA was stupid. On a weirder note- my girlfriend at the time ended up dating MOBY for a lot of years after that, who was also randomly beaten by FSU. There was a famous video of it floating around until MOBY’s lawyer (who is infinitely more scarry and powerful than FSU) managed to supress the video, and helped turn FSU into much less of a threat than it used to be. The PPD were in an episode of GANGLAND saying that they pretty much got a handle on them- and I’m sure they do. Not after FSU ruined all ages HC shows in Boston of course. There are a lot of versions of how that show went down… yours is very close, and I thank you for it because I’ve read and heard some other ones that are absoloutly lies and stupid.
The Cure.
I almost died from the aroma of hair gel and clove cigarettes.
*in wispy tone*
UMADBRO?
Wow, I’ve seen the usual tough guy shit at shows, but that’s crazy. Fuck all those bands for letting that senseless violence go on during their sets.
The Security and remainder of the crowd could not stop the violence, and you think the band could?
I know people like this–the Courage Crew has run around some of my haunts before–and believe me they do not care what the band thinks, says, or really plays. These people will find a reason to fuck shit up and if they can’t find one they will make one.
Come on, the band has some power. They could refuse to play if that shit starts happening, especially at smaller shows. Then maybe eventually the meatheads will stop showing up to their shows.
Personally I think these are the worse kind of people plaguing both metal & hardcore (though hardcore easily has it worse). Really, the only kind of scum lower than these sorts (maybe) are people who rip bands off, be it labels, shady promoters, or just plain petty gear thieves. Don’t get me wrong or anything, I’m not against moshing (or even dancing, really, as long as you don’t do it at metal shows), I love to mosh. But many seem to forget.. it’s good friendly violent fun.
No, I’m pretty sure the crews who show up and put innocent bystanders in the hospital are worse than dishonest businessmen and gear thieves.
truth
what is a band of 5 people going to do against a crew of juice heads?? jack shit.
I wanna pre-curse this post with letting you know that i’ve seen some of the scariest bands of the last 20 years. I’ve seen Marylin Manson, Morbid Angel, Slayer, Man is the Bastard, Brujeria, Cradle of Filth, Neurosis, Deicide, Hatebreed, Arab on Radar and Cannibal Corpse to name a few. But…
I still get flashbacks of being massively stoned for the first time at an arena concert. The year, 1996-abouts. the band, Ministry. I swear “just one fix” lasted for about 4 hours straight and although i looked forward to seeing them for months, the combination of being 15, alone, stoned out of my mind and in the midst of one of the hardest industrial band’s mosh pits this side of Skinny Puppy, left me in absolute strobe-light terror. it wasn’t the ferocity of the pit so much as my hymen busting at the legit power spectacle that was Ministry shows back then. The album “Psalm 69″ is still hard for me to get through today.
This experience is only superseded by the one and only time i will go to Cochella. After a draining day of heat, crowds and 7 dollar bottles of water, it was time to be ushered out of the fairgrounds around 1am. So we are slowly making our way to the one and only exit and start to realize we are among 20,000 other tired and fatigued concert goers who must make their way out of this one small exit gate too. As we neared the gate-wouldn’t you know it-it was closed. The brutish push to get people off the fairgrounds had not reached the gatekeepers. So, there we were. 22,000+ sweaty, aggravated strangers standing shoulder-to-shoulder against each other waiting for the gate to open. The crowd kept drawing larger, pushing us up against each other like a pissed of army of Orks against the walls of Helms Deep. No one could move. It was a sea of people, you could hardly breathe and everyone was pissed….for 30 minutes!!! Can you imagine being stuck in a pissed off, completely crowded subway car for a half hour without being able to breath, look anyone in the eye or fight your way out for 30 painful minutes all the while not knowing if the gates were gonna open at all and being shoved ever tighter by thousands of people at your back who all look like they will eat their way out if they had to. Needless to say, it was a living nightmare. and for that reason alone, i will never go to Cochella again and it has held the place as most terrifying concert moment i’ve had.
Luke! Been a long time, brother!
I haven’t thought enough about why that shit seems to happen a lot here, even at the beginning of hardcore’s development Boston was really responsible for bringing the jock mentality to it. There’s always been a strange mix of characters but I can’t really speak to it today as I haven’t been to a pure hardcore show in a long time.
I should qualify my statement of “ruining” hardcore though, I still have great memories of those times despite a lot of fucked up shit happening. At the very least it was fascinating to be connected to something you could identify as extremely abnormal.
I hope someone can chime in with a Hanatarash story. I’m too young to have experienced it myself.
Whoa, a bulldozer!? Molotov cocktails?!?
No way does that sound like fun. Funny in hindsight, maybe, but not fun to attend!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanatarash
Hanatarash is legendary!
Some of their more infamous shows included Eye cutting a dead cat in half with a machete, strapping a circular saw to his back and almost cutting his leg off, and most impressively driving a bulldozer through the backwall of the venue onto stage and then using it to hurl debris at the audience!
I have a little bit of footage here…
http://beatsandblood.blogspot.com/2008/09/pop-tatari-mayhem.html
Sometime in ‘96 ( it could of been earlier) I saw Buzzo*ven play in Nashville. I was just in high school. It was a packed, all ages show. I was close to the front of the stage but off to the side. I got a good look at what looked like a big bruise on the singer Kirk’s forehead. He had a bottle of Jack or something and downed the last bit then held the bottle out and brought it hard to his head. It shattered and the band roared into some song that I can’t remember because people just started running as glass went everywhere. Blood was poring from his head. I was terrified. I got against a side wall and let everyone run past me. I later hoped that that would happened more often at shows.
a buddy of mine can personally attest to the sleazeball “jump up and pop someone in the mouth three rows back from the edge of the pit” tactic. Got knocked out stone cold at an All Out War show in Newburgh, NY about 15 odd years ago. Dude the size of a refrigerator pushed a couple of folks aside and blasted him just about as damn hard as he could manage and KO’d him on the spot.
That bullshit ruined those shows for me too because there really wasn’t anything you could do about it. Those assholes always came in groups and they LOVED to fight so any thoughts of retaliating would be met with a lot of pain unless you were tough as nails yourself (and with several friends of similar fortitude).
I’ve never been to a truly scary show, but I’ve experienced some ‘moments.’ I saw Dillinger Escape Plan, the Bronx, Darkest Hour and Drowningman at the Ottobar years ago. The day before the show, my cousin had damn near knocked one of my front teeth out with a baseball. A trip to my dentist the morning of the show had my tooth restored to its rightful home, except that it was held in by dental glue and hope. My lips were the color of raw meat and badly lacerated inside and out, and I could tell my pulse by how many times a minute my jaw throbbed. The show wasn’t bad, but pits were breaking out randomly in the crowd, which I’ve never seen before. Made it out with my tooth, but not my dignity, intact.
Other bad show was a local punk show out in Nowhere, MD. While I was moshing, for some reason I kept getting knocked out of the pit and running into this giant dude. I’m like 5′8, and he was 6′4, and getting annoyed with me, like I was doing it on purpose. The 4th or 5th time I get knocked out of the pit, I landed ass first on his steel-toed boot. I was blind with pain, and he picks me up under the armpits and hurls me back into the pit. I catch a mohawk in the right eye, my glasses go flying. I stumbled out of the pit off to the side, and somebody shoved my glasses into my hands. I have no idea where the glasses went, how they found them, or how they knew those were my glasses. Or how they weren’t broken!
There used to be a club in Bodymore called Thunderdome. The venue was fine, but the area outside of it was Not Good. There was a chopshop across the street from the venue, and the locals would sit on their stoops, calling out insults and eyeing up the fans as they made their way to the venue. Never heard of anything happening, and that surprised me.
Seeing the Dillinger Escape Plan in Fredericksburg, VA in 2006 was pretty insane. A 10×10 foot hole ended up in the ceiling above the stage during their set and Dillinger was blowing fire into the exposed insulation and crap during Sunshine the Werewolf. Dillinger shows are always crazy.
MDF ’09’s Mayhem set is the only show I came close to dying. I was standing on the right hand side near the chain link fence separating the crowd from the VIP section. Halfway through the crowd starts swaying causing the crowd to crash into the fence. With me under them. I was lucky to only come out of it with minor bruises.
Another show that had the potential to going to complete hell is when Eyehategod played the Sonar in February of ‘11. Not too long into their set beer bottles started flying between the crowd and the band and next thing I know the whole pit floor is littered with broken glass. I spent the rest of the night catching people from falling on to the floor.
Other than that, I got the wind knocked out of me during Morbid Angel in ‘06 from a dude flying out of the pit and hitting me about three people deep and getting a concussion during Megadeth in ‘10 from an ill-formed pit.
Saw Slayer at Universal Amphitheatre, I wanna say 2004-05ish. It was right after Dimebag died, a lot of emotion going on among the hordes. The show was great, didn’t notice anything too out of the ordinary, the usual pit stuff but I was medium-nosebleed, not really a part of it. Anyway the show ended and everyone started leaving. The more passionate fans were running around, bellowing. As we exited the venue, the folks at Universal had re-routed the Slayer crowd to walk through the parking lot instead of the mall. The crowd collectively figured out (and they were none too pleased) that we weren’t wanted in the mall, perhaps for fear of something being broken.
There was a small stretch at the end where they *had* to let us through in order to reach the parking garage. It was maybe forty feet of mall area, and by the time myself and buddies got there, it had been destroyed. Trash cans ripped out of the ground, full sized palm trees tipped over and uprooted, giant pots smashed to bits. Surpisingly, no storefront windows had fallen prey, but everything else had been stampeded. The lesson: don’t dehumanize Slayer fans.
1.) NJ Bloodline, December AE, Shattered Realm, Sworn Enemy, ETown Concrete- Kennilworth NJ- 2001
This was to be NJBL’s final show and they wanted to go out with a massive bang. They had the bright idea of throwing out a few large sacks FULL of plastic ninja swords during their set. I’ve never seen a pit errupt like that before or since that night. Terrified crowds ran from the bloodshed and some huddled together in the dark corners of the jam packed room. Shit, I’ve still got my sword at home! Also during Shattered Realm’s set they decided to smash a computer with a sledge hammer. And Mario (RIP) of DecAE sang most of his set without a microphone. Fucking amazing show. All of this was contained to a small VFW hall. I believe there is video on YouTube but i’m far too lazy to look.
I’ve seen so many shows where I was like “Fuck, someone is going to damage me if I try to enjoy myself too much. Better stick to this here corner.”
I live in Norwood, MA which is right smack dab in the middle of Boston and Providence, RI off of 95. The local scene (if there even is one) is core centric, definitely. Pretty much 90% of locally run shows involve lots of silly hxc dancing and mosh-bro moments.
But the scariest show I’ve ever seen was most definitely the time I saw Car Bomb. I haven’t actually been to a lot of “scary” shows, but Car Bomb’s presence and the fact that I had never heard them before all came into play when the strobe lights kicked in and a sample of the rooster song from “Gummo” came on.
I grew up in Louisville, Ky, and the punk /hardcore shows there were for the most part either headlined by bands that were themselves obvious wusses (e.g., Endpoint, Sunspring) or arty types possibly fucked up on drugs (e.g., Crain, Evergreen). I vaguely remember a couple of skinhead assholes beating people with pool cues at a Kinghorse show at the Machine, but violence wasn’t really a big part of the scene culture (and I was scrawny weakling, so I would have noticed if it was).
I have witnessed some memorable band-initiated violence at shows though. I saw the singer from Six Finger Satellite jump into the crowd with his mic stand one time, (inadvertantly?) clocking a couple of show-goers in the head. Incidentally, that was the same show were said singer prefaced the song “Massive Cocaine Seizure” by explaining that it was a song about white powder. Some genius heckler yelled “white power!” and then proceeded to yell it again in between each song. That’s always stuck with me.
Another time, at one of the first Krazy Fests, the original singer from Dillinger Escape Plan was swinging his microphone by the cord. He lost control of it, it hit some poor girl in the head, and she had to be taken to the hospital. That was the same Krazy Fest were Today Is the Day played to a room full of punk /hardcore fans who obviously hated their set, which involved them banging on keyboards and screaming about Satan. That was funny (and Today Is the Day were great, though I appeared to be the only one who thought that). Exhibit A why Metal Archives is wrong about TITD not being a metal band.
Lesson I learned from those two experiences: Microphones are fucking dangerous.
Lesson I learned from reading this post and the reader comments: hardcore punk shows are magnets for violent imbeciles. I’ve been to tons of metal shows, and I can’t say I’ve ever feared for my life. I’ve even seen Slayer (twice), and the only people I feared for there were the opening bands. I was pretty sure the crowd was going to kill Unsane.
We probably went to a lot of the same shows in Louisville. Some of the Kinghorse and Endpoint shows in the early 90’s got a little apeshit.
Yeah, fond memories, though nothing compared to the kind of violence WJ describes in his post. Honestly, I remember more destruction of property than I do violence against people. There was that Jesus Lizard /Girls Against Boys /Mule show in the upstairs room of Louisville Gardens (1992? 1993?) where the promoter implored everyone not to smoke because the carpet would get burned and they would never be able to have shows there again. Perhaps needless to say, everyone smoked, the carpet was burned, and there was never a show held there again. Tame stuff compared to dudes from street gangs punching people in the face on purpose.
Exodus/Pantera/ (pre-funky) Suicidal Tendencies – Bren Center Irvine. Aug. 1990. Bunch of Suicidals in the center of the pit “directing traffic” with clotheslines elbows and neck tackles. no one seriously hurt (no ambulances?) but a lot of bloody faces and some chiclets on the floor. I remember ducking every time I saw someone in shorts and pulled up socks (venice style). Exodus crushed it. and Phil from Pantera had blond dreadlocks hahahahahaha.
Pantera, Far Beyond Tour,Austin, TX. it was like going to war.literally a 15 -20 man fronted pit directly in front of the stage with 2 smaller but evil fuckin pits flanking the main pit. one of the satellite pits got bigger and bigger until it merged with the main pit, and by merge I mean went to war with. This then morphed into the one and only ‘figure 8″ pit I have ever been in or seen. This thing was so big you could actually get a good run going before you hit the absolute shit storm in the middle where the 8 converged. I would just run at it as hard as I could and cover by eyes and my balls’n junk and try o jump through it.sometimes i made it, sometimes I didn’t .It got genuinely fuckin scary at times , the sheer mass of the pit was overwhelming . A lot of the San Antonio fans came to that show , you could identify them as they were the ones that were punching you in the face as you moshed beside them, it was just their style.
haha yea SA lifestyle = your deathstyle for real. proud to say we’re the only town i know that fucked up both the Sex Pistols and GG Allin. that is an awesome war story, must work on schematics for engineering circle 8 pit at upcoming Hatebreed show
going to Deathmetal shows alone in the 90’s could sometimes get a little precarious. Some people would just go to the shows to fuck people up and if they saw you crew-less they totally singled you out. That happened to me at Carcass when they toured Necroticism back in the 1800s. It was the first time I had seen them and that album was my favorite there was no way I wouldn’t be in the pit for every damn song even if i was going to get beat down. Most of the show went fine until I notice 4 dudes were continuously hitting me from the side of the pit and would only jump in to hit me and me alone, it was when they started throwing elbows when I had had enough.I came around and just lunged at them with all elbows making contact with faces and heads , then kept going, I knew next time around they were gonna come at me hard. I pretended to be oblivious as I made my pass around the pit when I got close to them I looked away but kept them in my peripheral, I saw homeboy about to throw another fuckin elbow and stopped dead in my tracks, he lunges expecting my face but only got air as I stepped in leg in front of him and slammed both of my arms on his back planting his face on the shitty club floor. They left me alone after that…but I wasnt always that lucky.
Dying Fetus , when they still looked like kids played a shitty beer garden some Houston asshole rented in Austin for his shitty birthday party, apparently his friends were Nazis and basically pulled an FSU , fucking people up and owning the pit , I got in there figuring , fuck it , Im white and shit they wont fuck with me, wrong, ass stomped , I look at my friends who all look at me like ” dude, you’re on your own” . I go sit down.
crazy thing is little kids were in that pit , having fun and I swear to you a nun from the attached restaurant actually came over to see what all the racket was and actually got in there.. and old ass nun and she was doing her version of moshing which was basically acting like a gorilla, she even got knocked down , but the friendly Nazis were quick to help her…such nice boys…shit bags.
this has been my fav IO piece so far. awesome!
The couple of shows I went to in Gallup,NM in the late 80’s early 90’s were probably the scariest/ most fucked up I’ve attended. One was Napalm Death and the other was Sepultura. Gallup is part of the Navajo reservation and there are some huge drunken Indians. They beat the shit out of each other and anybody else stupid enough to get in the pit. After each show the first 50 feet in front of the stage was nothing but hunks of hair and pools of blood. Not exaggerating in the least.
jesus that is terrifying and wholly believable
Slayer Reign in Blood tour Chicago Aragon Ballroom. Skinheads were pummeling people moshing with the fold up chairs (like in wrestling)People also were piling the chairs and moshing around them and then kids would slam into someone on purpose sending them falling into the pile of chairs. The bathroom mirrors and sinks were red with blood and someone wrote slayer in blood on the mirror. It was insane and yet my 17 year old suburban mind was also all about it. A close second would be Atari Teenage Riot At the Metro Chicago 2 AM (!) show. Yep 2 in the morning moshing with insane electro death ravers.
A band I was in played at FDR in Philly back in ‘03. We showed up right as the band before us was just finishing their set. They backed up a van and unloaded tv’s, computers, those long fluorescent bulbs, basically anything with glass and destroyed it all. By the time we went on there was a half inch of broken glass where we set up and debris everywhere. I was hit with 3 full cans of beer during our set and I guess it’s customary to have bottle rockets shot at you when you play there. I was worried that we weren’t tough enough but everyone was into us and couldn’t believe that we played after all that happened earlier.
It was also hilarious when we were breaking down the our gear there had to be at least 30 empty bullet cases laying on the ground. I love philly.
late to this post but I got a few stories to share:
Napalm Death at a tiny club in Montreal circa 2002. Place held maybe 200 people but was way oversold and a huge pit just exploded out the gate. I remember climbing over the bar in the back (the bartender had vacated immediately) to keep some furniture between myself and the mayhem.
Albany, NY had a pretty sizable hardcore and death metal scene in the mid-90’s and whenever NY or Boston bands came, their crews came too and the QE2 was tiny and had a railing between the stage and the crowd so the band was safely ensconced but the railing wrapped around the sides so if you were in the crowd, there was no room to move unless you were right by the door. In my experience, hardcore “unity” tends to mean ganging up on the little guy so I was always careful to make my skinny self inconspicuous. That said, there was a ton of knuckle-dragging, windmilling assholes looking to wreck shit. They sometimes put little thugs on their shoulders and then use them as a windmilling battering ram. Death metal shows weren’t as bad. No one was out to obviously hurt you but the atmosphere was still intense. Dudes would stage-dive off the railing and I saw more than one just splat on the concrete and break themselves.
Fights often occurred between crews outside on Central Ave and I definitely saw bats and madballs but again I made sure to get the fuck outta there whenever that shit went on.
Buzzov*en, 93 I think at the old 930 club in DC. This dude in the crowd was fucking with the bass player, who beat him over the head with his bass, then jumped in the crowd and pulled a knife from his boot. I have no doubt that if security hadn’t gotten to him it would have been bad. That band was evil back then.Eyehategod in that time frame were the same way. Genuinely dangerous shows, you never knew what was going to happen. And of course Anal Cunt. Seth was an animal.