Municipal Waste, Inter Arma, Imperial Order
Wednesday, May 23 at Wonderland
I love the little secrets in this town. Hidden parks like Scuffletown, a remarkably vacant b-ball court buried in Oregon Hill, a number of tiny places to duck in and get some of the best food around, and of course, a quietly promoted record release show for Municipal Waste’s new record, The Fatal Feast: Waste In Space.
I’m not the biggest Waste fan. You’ll rarely find them on my ipod. I think a lot of that has to do with their roots heavily steeped in punk music, of which I was a fan for about one year, until I found some really strange sounding metal bands. I’m not taking anything away from the genre at all--I think I just really like guitar solos and flowing hair. But you gotta give respect where respect is due. They are without a doubt the tightest Richmond band around right now. They’re hugely important in sparking this resurgence of thrash that we’ve seen over the last decade, and they have only gotten tighter with age. The Fatal Feast is one of the few albums that I purchased in the last few years. Sure, a lot of that probably has to do with wanting to support a band as important to Richmond as I find them, but I really enjoyed the title track when the video for it was released, so fuck it. There's a number of great tracks on the album and already two awesome videos to go along with it.
I spent a few months interning at a record label Municipal Waste used to be on (I won’t name names) and besides the mountain of Deicide CDs piled in the corner, there was row upon row of The Art of Partying discs that are probably going to collect dust for an eternity. I’m sure the band probably had to recoup the cost of printing all that bullshit, right? Who knows why they jumped ship to Nuclear Blast, but I’ve heard a number of horror stories about this particular label and it doesn’t surprise me in the least that the Waste is on a bigger label now.
Christ, this is supposed to be about the show. Anyways. Wonderland is fucking awesome. I don’t go there enough but it rules. A pretty divey place with horror show props and the like all over the walls, a tiny fucking stage and cigarette smoke filling the two rooms. I guess the non-smoking section is the men’s bathroom. I grudgingly turned away from an important Devils-Rangers playoff game to catch this show, but to my surprise the game is on two TV’s above the bar tonight. Go Devils.
Imperial Order is a fairly traditional heavy metal band, which I had no clue about. I knew the guitar player, Grant, from a few years back, and he’s a monster player with a very casual demeanor. The bassist, Crystal C., punches the bass surprisingly hard for having such tiny fingers, but she also makes up for the band’s lack of long hair. Throw that shit around more! Everyone else is pretty tight but their singer Yancy can be a maniac. In a good way! He kind of has a Sebastian Bachian voice, but more tailored for a NWOBHM sound, meaning he’s actually good. I noticed a lot of killer, yet subdued guitar harmonies, and in general a very respectable bunch of songs they put together. Nice to know there’s another classic metal band around in town.
Inter Arma fucking crushed. Par for the course for them, right? I’m a little mystified as to why they haven’t been snatched up by a bigger label yet. I’ve seen plenty of bands signed to Relapse or Earache or Southern Lord that don’t measure up with these guys. Inter Arma need not rely on dozens of full stacks to rip the crowd up--just well timed grooves, haunting guitar passages with psychotic sounding delay, a solid frontman, and a top ten drummer. These dudes pull off plenty of shit that will hook in the casual metal listener, but they’ll also put the musicians in the audience to the challenge. Seeing T.J. (drums) stray away from the beat of the song while the rest of the dudes keep the riff going for more measures that you can count and just pulling it all back in after a few minutes. That is the kind of shit that gets me going.
And then we have Municipal Waste. At a Waste show you can always count on getting knocked around. In fact, the first time I saw them live, I ended up in the hospital later that night. It had nothing to do with me being a bad ass and jumping off the second floor of Alleykatz into the mosh pit; I fell on my bike on my way home. I usually leave that part out of the story though. But still, I’m sure a lot of eyes are blackened at these gigs. They were tight as usual, and tore through a solid set in an uncompromising fashion with short songs and minimal banter. Held by the rhythmic backbone that is Dave Witte, they crushed through a solid set with a handful of songs from the new album. I’m pretty sure they played "The Fatal Feast," "Repossession," and "You’re Cut Off," the latter being my favorite track from the new disc. The crowd was rowdy as usual and everyone seemed to have a good time. Waste shipped off to tour the states with Black Tusk and this show was a nice send off for them. Primed and ready!
Wonderland put on a really killer show. Thanks to Tony for getting me on the list, thanks to the bouncer for looking out for my camera, and fuck you for missing out.
As always, you can check out more pictures at hardrockrva.blogspot.com.