NOXIOUS COITUS, THE MAGPYES, ANAL PENETRATION, ANAL WHORE & IGNORANT CUNT
LEEDS SUBCULTURE - 04/04/09
With ‘An Afternoon of Grind, Gore, Pole Dancing & Tea’ being a bit of a gobful, I decided this was to be unofficially renamed the much snappier ‘Analfest’ for fairly obvious reasons. I must say I am not used to getting to gig venues at 2PM, at least not without the intention of getting in a full day of drinking before crawling home 9 hours later, though it makes a nice change not worrying about dashing off for the last train. It seems the abundance of band members (sarcasm is sooo not the lowest form of wit!) means there isn’t enough room on stage for the Ignorant Cunt to fit, opting to mingle with the moshers instead. This self-proclaimed mouthpiece for the “Anti Haircut Movement” could be considered quite the hypocrite, that is assuming you’d consider the mullet to be a legitimate haircut, although ‘Fringekiller’ certainly gets right to the crux of the matter and it’s just a shame there are no emo muppets about (I wonder why?) to take our aggression out upon. With little more than a pre-programmed laptop for accompaniment the emphasis was on the Berzerker-speed hyperblasts and while the menacing electronica sounds particularly had me intrigued, at times the midi-fied falsity was a little off-putting.
Now, the feminist in me should really be outraged by Anal Whore (take a look at the album cover and you’ll see why), yet my sick sense of humour managed to silence her; most probably with a ball gag, leaving me in peace to enjoy the show. Yes, there’s certainly a theme detected through this guys set (and by now I’m beginning to wonder if bands went out of fashion at the same time as the mullet); with songs like ‘Cleaning Bitches Out For A Living,’ ‘Absolute Obedience,’ and ‘Tortured to Death in my Private Execution Chamber’ I feel rather like I’m being tied down and forced to watch a sick and twisted pornographic snuff movie. Guitars strike with the brutality of a ‘Psychedelic Rape Machine,’ not that I’m familiar with such a thing, but it sounds formidable at least, and the short blasts of brutality are interspersed with spoken word samples adding a dash of colour into the mix. Like a man possessed, I am greeted with the proclamation that my ‘Mother Sucks Cocks In Hell;’ the message of which I shall be sure to pass on to her later (or not). With songs about eating shit, drinking piss, vomiting it up and eating it all up again, I think the crowd sussed out that it could all get rather gooey down the front and unwilling to take the risk, recoiled to the rear of the room. With the music gradually being drowned out by loud talking, I think the joke was lost on this crowd.
The crowds attention may have wandered, but it soon returned as the pole dancers stepped on the tiles to shake their money-makers (well, the blokes returned at least!). These ladies may be scantily clad, but their performance hardly seems sleazy at all, and (apart from maybe the strip bar up the road) there are no £10 bills being shoved down g-strings around here! In heels so vertiginous they’d send the average woman tumbling, these lissom ladies have moves that would shame some gymnasts and put on a display that is most impressive.
The crowd now revitalised, Anal Penetration take the stage as the first duo of the day! For me, these were a bit of a let down after the super anal bros that went before them, though the crowd reaction would tell a different story. There’s no intros, no fucking around just pure full on brutality that penetrates the skull (thankfully not the nether regions) just enough to aggravate my existing headache (bloody lurgies! Ugh!) Sadly this was all a bit too two-dimensional for my liking and decided to get some air and respite from the unholy racket. I had to let out a chortle at a guy air drumming on the merch table; perhaps that drum machine could be replaced, eh?
Not originally billed on the posters, local outfit The Magpyes swoop down to steal the stage as a more traditional four piece ensemble. Finally, no drum machines, no samples, just real instruments making a right old din! As the frontman throws himself around the pit, proving a challenge to snap photos without getting barged, it is clear what a good rapport this growler has with the crowd. There’s a harsh, raspy edge to his vocal delivery which compliments the blackened vibe to tracks like ‘Wolfpack’ with its foreboding guitar picking and its frantic drumming that’s interspersed with unhinged breakdowns. The set is over before I know it, and initially I consider it odd that the two headlining bands are down for the shortest sets of the night. Then again, grind is all about who can play the shortest, fastest songs and with their spasmodic bursts of noise, The Magpyes rose to the challenge.
Well I was waiting for someone to take the gore in gore-grind literally and alas, it was to be the Noxious Coitus brothers, who step out in blood soaked aprons ready to butcher us all with a final blast of grinding mayhem before home time. This duo certainly proved entertaining and made me rather glad I hadn’t fled early to nurse my case of the black death (okay, okay, it’s just a cold, sorry). Tracks like ‘Fatal Foetal Facial’ (how’s that for a tongue twister?) have the whole crowd eating out of their bloodstained hands, boogying around to the romping rhythms that are just as infectious as a nasty outbreak of MRSA. With titles introduced like ‘Munted on MDMA’ and ‘Stake Bake Face Fuck’ it’s kind of hard to take this outfit seriously, though with the splattificated shower cap adorning Rich Goretash, something tells me they wouldn’t want us to anyway. Bazturd switches from guttural, bowel shaking growls to the kind of squeals you’d expect to come from an eviscerated pig, over the crushing guitars. Ending on a high note with what I can only describe as demented circus music I make for the exit, feeling relieved that my bowels are still in tact. With the afternoon having grinded to a halt, it’s time to head home for that cuppa tea I was promised on the posters (well, the beer was just more tempting, alright!)
Luci Herbert
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