Resistant Culture - Sacred Fire tour diary, pt. 1

Tour diaries are travel writing, one of my favorite kinds of writing to read. If I could, I would travel endlessly. Instead, like many of us, I am currently travel-deprived for various reasons. So instead I armchair travel through reads like author Pico Iyer and The New York Times‘ Frugal Traveler blog. The Frugal Traveler recently journeyed from São Paulo to New York City on a budget of $500/week for 13 weeks. That’s no mean feat, but I bet many bands who tour the United States could do just as well. They’d probably also have better stories, or at least a better soundtrack. Bands who tour the US underground see sights no guidebook would touch. In this initial tour diary, Native American crust grinders Resistant Culture present a unique perspective on America. For a different one, see Wolvserpent’s tour diary, the next installment of which will appear here in a few hours. – C.L.

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RESISTANT CULTURE
SACRED FIRE U.S. TOUR 2010
WEEK 1

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Friday Oct 1st
Satyricon
Portland, OR

We arrived in Portland the day before the show and hung out with an old friend who took us to Multnomah Falls. It’s a 620-foot-drop waterfall overlooking the Columbia River. After some photo ops, we took a hike up the trail and deeply enjoyed not only the breath-taking visuals but the breath-cleaning air. As most of us are L.A. residents, the breaths of fresh air were quite revitalizing.

As the sun set, we decided to head back to town, where we picked up some awesome authentic Mexican food sold from a small camper trailer. It was a surprise to see fully permitted food vendors in vintage campers. But apparently it’s a wildly hip phenomenon in the Portland area, and there’s even a sort of mini-roach coach trailer park where you can feast on a vast array of cuisine.

We were impressed and inspired to know this, as these seem to be very appropriate technologies as repurposed, low cost, low tech, small scale devices designed to serve local human needs. It felt very trans-apocalyptic, seeing what looked like a futurisitic gypsy trailer serving some of the best burritos we’d ever tasted.

Later several of us went downtown to a goth club to enjoy another part of the dark music spectrum.

We had breakfast at the Tin Shed. The food was delicious, they played good goth music, and even had a menu for dogs!

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Multnomah Falls

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The night of the show, we had our first run of the whole merch/gear setup drill. Everything went smoothly, nothing was left behind, and everything seemed to be well-planned.

Our seasoned merch roadie Mandy worked her magic to proudly display our many shirt, patch, backpatch, and pin designs along with our CDs and vinyl.

Ben’s mid-sized death-metal trap kit necessitated the obligatory briefing on which parts to screw off the rack clamps, the stacking order of the cymbals, etc. so that other band and crew members could help cut down with the otherwise 30 minute set up/tear down time of the kit.

It was our first set with our fill-in bass player Vern from Minneapolis, MN and our bro Shawn who joined us to help on the crew, but, more importantly, to help with Native drumming and singing on our tribal intro song “Land Keeper”.

With little practice all together before leaving L.A., we were happy to hear and feel all the parts snap together and click musically. It felt like our unit was strong and well-selected for this journey.

All the opening bands rocked: Fugue, Adelitas, Order of the Vultures, and Nux Vomica.

We were sad to hear that Satyricon would be having its last show at the end of the month, but luckily Jeff who booked our show there said they’d be moving to a bigger location and continuing the legacy. We look forward to working with him again at their new spot.

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“Land Keeper” (live)

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Saturday Oct 2nd
The Morgue
Seattle, WA

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For us, Seattle is always an awesome place to be. We love its ocean and trees. For some reason, it feels like home.

It was a pleasure to play at this well-run DIY venue. It had a lot of character and characters running around, and seemed to serve both the DIY punk/crust and the underground black metal communities well.

There were as many inches of hair as cone studs, which usually means a good night for Resistant Culture. It was a well-attended show with lots of love, anger, and spirit exchanged between the band and the crowd.

Thanks to all the awesome opening bands:

Scorched Earth
Streetwalker
Shaded Enmity
Drakul
Forest of Grey
Nekro Morphosis

The next day we took a ferry ride to one of the islands and on the way back also visited the Tenzing Momo herbal shop at the Pike St. Market for some of our needed supplies.

Thanks to Dallas for hooking up the show and Lonny for hosting us at The Morgue!

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Photo by Dan Klimke

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Tuesday Oct 5th
Trea
Rapid City, SD

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On the way to Rapid City on Crow Nation lands, we encountered a museum of the Battle of Little Bighorn, complete with opposing Chief Sitting Bull and General Custer statues.

Later, after a bit of van trouble causing us to get a 200-mile tow directly to the venue, we made it just in time for our set. (We strongly recommend touring with at least one AAA Premium Membership!)

We rocked the house for our favorite type of crowd, the kind where there is no division, little to no elitism, and just a collective sense of joy that there’s something awesome to do for a small town scene. The metallers, punks, goths, and all manner of true freaks and geeks were present. Though a smaller head count then the bigger cities, the amount of love and support we received while playing and after the show at the merch table reminded us that you can never judge a tour stop by its population size. It was well worth going the extra mile to play in Rapid City. We recommend it to any up and coming and established underground punk/crust/grind/metal act.

Jerry Hatrick is the go-to guy. He booked the show, hooked us up with his eggplant parmesan specialty, a great place to stay, a half day’s worth of volunteer auto-mechanic work along with a hookup with a local shop – and if that wasn’t enough, he jumped in the van as a tour guide bringing us to the Crazy Horse Memorial. It’s the largest stone sculpture project in the world that will ultimately depict the classic image of Crazy Horse charging into battle atop his horse with his arm outstretched pointing forward.

So far just the face has been sculpted. Over the next decades, the rest of the project will advance to carve out the entire model.

We took a bus tour of the site and made a spiritual offering to the land, the monument, and the people making this happen.

We then ventured into this giant complex of museum halls filled with Native Americana spanning the far reaches of the North American continent.

We wish we could have caught the sets of the opening bands, but we only got to see the last few minutes of the band right before us, and they tore it up!

We wish to thank:
The Parasites
Pandemic
Scarecrow Rebellion

After making sure Jerry was stocked up with as many personal merch items as he could want, we headed out and all felt deeply moved by the experience of Rapid City.

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Photo by jimbowen0306

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Thursday Oct 7th
The Rathole
Minneapolis, MN

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One of our favorite tour stops is Minneapolis. We’ve had great times there over the years and built strong bonds with local, dedicated members of the underground community both young and old.

It’s considered to be the original mecca of the crust subculture in the U.S. We’re told it’s ebbed and flowed over the years, but it seems to have a strong scene again now.

Classic bands like Misery and Assrash are back in action, and new crust bands upholding the tradition of roots crust such as Cognitive Dissonance are adding to the legacy.

We rolled into town early in the morning and were greeted with smiles and refreshments from our friends Gary and Kalleah, their housemates, and Dolche their English bulldog/pit bull.

Later our bro Eddie came with a load of delicious homemade chili.

As promised and expected, the show was packed with anarcho-crusties and metallers of all ages. A few Native metaller brothers from the area brought us wild harvested rice and pizza. It was an honor to receive these gifts.

The first band Varix was a classic punk-style all-female act delivering powerful, percussive songs filled with a strong, rebellious attitude. Before us was Cognitive Dissonance, who cross over crust and trash and get people convulsing with their claws up to driving trash beats, piercing riffs, and intricate breakdowns with flurried tom work.

“Runaway” (from All One Struggle, buy here)
[audio: RESISTANTCULTURE_RUNAWAY.mp3]

When it was our turn to go on, the rowdy crowd was blissfully hammered and pulsed and waved in unison to the blast and d-beats. The sense of oneness between the band and the crowd was deeply moving – though at times too moving, to the point of almost getting knocked over and getting burned by cigarettes.

Overall the first week was a lot of fun, very successful, and a relatively smooth transition back into the road life. After some acclimation to the mission, everyone’s having a great time, and all systems are in a groove.

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RESISTANT CULTURE – SACRED FIRE US TOUR 2010
Remaining dates

10/29 Gilman – Berkeley, CA
11/6 Common Ground – Riverside, CA

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