The Fatality Blog: Eastern Intoxication Days 14-16: Escape from Chin City

Count Grishnackh in front of the Chop Shop

Framingham was a bit of a trip. We were playing in an underground, illegal, all ages venue attached to a tire shop on the outskirts of town. Just the kind of shitty hole in the wall I like. Writing on the walls, garbage bags everywhere, littered with crushed beer cans, and probably blood, puke and semen on every surface. It kind of reminded me of the Fatality animal house where we recorded our first album. I’ve always resonated better in a place like this rather than a classy nightclub. I feel like I don’t belong in nice establishments. Nor do I particularly want to. If the club has a dress code, you can usually find me next-door drinking whisky with some real humans with real thoughts and problems.

Eytan at the merch table

The show was opened by some younger bands. They were real nice fellas. The local band Crypter were fantastic, and really bright, smart young men. As long as they keep pushing, they will make a name for themselves. After Crypter we got the pleasure of seeing Skull Hammer crush for the last time of the tour. I really love these guys. They have an honest working class feel that I can really appreciate. We look forward to seeing them again when they come to Toronto next month.

Razormaze rockin' a stellar set at the Chop Shop

Our set was great. We started in grungy punk venues and it is kind of imbedded into our DNA. One of the notable parts of the set was a super drunk kid. He was probably 17 years old and hammered to the gills. He was also rabid like an animal. Throughout the set he was like a Tasmanian devil, thrashing around and leaving a trail of destruction everywhere he went. Within the first 5 seconds someone got pushed into my mic stand as I was singing and slammed me in the face and gave me a fat upper lip. It rocked me good, man, I was seeing stars. Everyone was sloshed and rocking out, but this one kid in particular. He was just an animal. Every 15 seconds he lost his balance and ate shit right into a pile of garbage or the concrete floor. Several times he fell on the stage area completely fucking up our gear. I told him that I understand where he was coming from, being a young fuck up myself when I was his age, but didn’t like that he kept falling onto our gear and breaking our mic stands. In the end Andrew Ego had to escort him out of the venue.

Razormaze were fucking powerful. They were funky and groovy but also cutthroat heavy. It was actually pretty inspiring and made me look forward to crushing another crowd in Brooklyn.

Alex from Razormaze and Glen from Skull Hammer

Bill pouring us some shots of whiskey

Brooklyn was crazy, son. Pretty cool place to hang. Super sketchy though. We were playing at a club called the Acheron. We showed up at around 4. 2 hours before load in. So we went to the pub, the Anchored Inn, beside the club, which is owned by the same guy as the Acheron. His name was Bill and he was bartending. I was feeling pretty parched so I asked for a beer. He let me know that they had a special of a beer and shot of whisky for 5 bucks. The price is right so I got him to rack up a few for me and the boys. He gave us a shot called called a “pickle back”. Which is a shot of whisky chased by a shot of homemade pickle juice. Sounds revolting, but it was delicious. The 2 strong tastes really complement each other. Bill gave us a ton of free booze as we waited for the venue next door to open. We were playing with a wicked heavy metal band called Bröhammer. Nice dudes and really talented musicians. They played a ton of Dio covers and got the room nice and hot for us. After their crushing set, we went up on stage and set up our equipment. As we were finishing up setting up, a goth dude with a black tie and goofy fuckin’ hair came up to us and told us that they were going to go up instead of us. What the fuck? Why? They told us that the show was running late and they were supposed to go on by now. This didn’t make sense to me, because the entire show was running late, therefore we should had been on already too. They bitched and complained to the promoter until he came over and told us that they needed to go on first. Not only that, but they didn’t bring any equipment, so they would need to use our gear. I don’t know why I didn’t drop my pants and take a meaty Brooklyn pizza pie shit all over the stage right then and there. Maybe I was too relaxed from the pickle backs, but we gave them our set time. The goth band went up and stank up the joint. I’ve never seen a band clear a room so swiftly. We sat outside and watched all the patrons who would have enjoyed us leave and go home. Fantastic. The band basically farted into a microphone for 45 minutes. Yuck. After they left the stage we went up and did our thing. Not too many people were there but we played as if they were 10,000. Then a cool thing happened. The room started to fill up after we got the groove back. Very unexpected, but it turned out to be a great show, and we had a blast. I was a bit turned off by the unprofessionalism of the goth band though, god damn it.

Show flyer for Brooklyn

We stayed with a few girls named Kim and Karlynn who lived a block from the venue. We hung out and they played us some metal and country albums and we chatted into the morning. Very nice girls. The next day Kim was nice enough to give us a little foot tour of Manhattan. We came across some interesting shit. One of the things that I found extremely interesting is the demeanor of people in New York. Everyone is extremely guarded and cold. Just because they know that if they show weakness to the wrong person, they will get fucked over. There are just too many god damn humans in New York. I believe that there are equal amount of assholes anywhere you go. But if you are living in the 3^rd biggest city in the world, you also have the 3^rd greatest number of assholes. We had a great afternoon with Kim, hugged her goodbye and went back to the van to drive to Philadelphia. Eytan was following the GPS and it took us right into Manhattan during rush hour. Fucking gridlock. And we were running late for our gig. It took us about an hour to cross 3 lights. I was about to tear my pubes out in frustration. We said fuck it, and drove back to Brooklyn and took the bridge the fuck out of there.

Stuck in traffic in Brookyln

Philly Cheese Steak Sandwiches... MMMM

We called our friend Shawn from Rumpelstiltskin Grinder and let him know that we weren’t going to make it for our set. He was relaxed and let us know that he would switch the set times for us and put us on a little later. We showed up and pretty much set up and played our set. We had a half hour set prepared, but I got a little carried away with banter and beer bongs and shit like that. We even broke into the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song at some point if I remember correctly. We ended up going a bit over our set time. This left a sour taste in my mouth. I had been so angry with the goth band the night before for being so unprofessional, and here we were, showing up late and playing longer then we are supposed to. Most everything we do in Fatality is professional, but I felt that we looked like a bunch of dinks. We apologized and bought the band some shots for being such banana beak bastards. I guess it’s a lesson learned. Much respect to all the bands that played and all the people who came out. Special thanks to the boys in Rumpelstiltskin Grinder for putting on a wicked show and being such awesome dudes. We love you all.

After the show we stayed at a girl named Asia's place in North Philly. One of the shittiest neighborhoods I've seen so far on the tour. We just shot the shit with her and one of her roommates and went to sleep. I woke up, took a shower and then grabbed all my shitty laundry in a big ball and headed outside to the van through the godless savages that awaited me. As soon as I crossed the street, a sketchy looking fella started following me in his car and yelling at me. I had no intention to stop or even acknowlege this guy. But he kept honking and yelling at me requesting my attention. Finally when I reached the van, I turned around and asked him what the fuck he wanted. He said "You are dropping your laundry, moron!" I looked at the ground and noticed a trail of my socks, metal shirts and Scooby Doo boxers from Asia's place all the way to the van. As some sort of reverse honky version of Hansel and Gretels bread crum trail that lets gangsters from Philly know who to rob.

I really am a fat headed nothing.

Speener