Thrilling. Killing. Kultastic.
Like Linus from those wholly depressing Peanuts cartoons of youth, I began the night firmly attached to the pool table, my big, blue security blanket. By the time I finally dragged my carcass out to the external Noise Gazeebo, lashed uncoordinatedly to the side of Rocks, it was moments before the local boys of Synthetic Nightmare would harangue us all with their brand new song. The one with the totally unpronounceable german name which I’d print here, but my keyboard doesn’t have keys for whatever alphabet those dirty Jerrys write their space language in. Within two blinks of a lamb’s tail, I’m firmly entrenched at the bench in the furthest corner, drinking, smoking, coughing, writing, wondering why people who don’t (correct me if I’m wrong) speak German feel compelled to write a song in German, trading recipes, and chewing up random scraps of filthy recycled paper to ram in my ears, lest these dirty, goth-metal fuckers infect me with their Sonic AIDS. In other words, the new song wasn’t really that bad.
In classic ADD fashion, it takes me every second of four minutes before I’m paying exponentially more attention to the crowd than the band itself. Blame for this is due, in part, to Synthetic Nightmare’s legendary adherence to the over-utilization of their fog machine. One does not look at the stage when the stage is obscured by smoke that smells like Grandma-unless that stage is on fire, there’s screaming, rockers are dying and there’s no real danger to onlookers. But that’s beside the point. The point is that Will and Nick have a hard enough time figuring out where the stage is when they’re jolly well standing right on the thing. If they happen to be off the stage on one of their frequent walkabouts when the fog curtain of stealthy doom goes up and none of us can figure out which way is up, it’s a damn miracle either of them can find the fucker again.
But that’s also besides the point. The point is that the crowd was really fun to watch there for a minute. Like the guufy mid-operative transsexual…dude…ette…in the high heels who feels so dedicated to the act of thrashing that…(s)he(?) steps out of the covered tent, into the drizzly, pissy rain and thrashes in a pit of one. This dedication to thrashing amuses me and slightly humbles me-I have not the dedication of this (wo)man(?). There is a guy in the middle of the crowd who looks exactly….EXACTLY like gothic Ricky Gervais. Dances a bit like him, too, I think. But it’s when I’m trying to not-creepily steal glances at the obscenely attractive young lady with the red Mohawk sitting next to me when Will mounts my table like a steed, plants one foot on the paper I’m writing on and shoots me a look that says, “Dude…I’m a little drunk right now…do you know where the stage is?” Not really, I shrug back to him. “Cool…I’mma play here for a minute.” Struck by my own stark lack of originality, I wait until he’s looking for either the stage or the pirate ghosts out in the glowing green fog when I reach up to play like I’m going to jam two fingers up his asshole. This play at comedy is obviously meant to impress the girl in the Mohawk with my wit and charm. She smiles politely. The guy over her shoulder sees this and makes the same motion, only straight up. I want to shout, “Dammit, man! Entirely in spite of this blizzard, I know which way is up! I’m just trying to ram a finger up Will’s ass!” But I know…I know if I shout this, precisely where the song will cut out, and educating this mongoloid is not worth screaming, “I’m trying to ram a finger up this guy’s ass!” in front of a silent, crowded room is not worth it.
The thing I really have to give them credit for is that when Nick and Will have a Crocodile Dundee moment and go on their inevitable walkabouts, it proves them to be true-blue pure-bred Rockers of the People. Discontent to stay segregated from their fans, they feel the driving need to be in the middle of the action-bring it to the common man, shove the Rock right in their faces and make us love them so much more on account of this. When they leave the stage, I actually find myself fondly wishing it hadn’t been so soon. Thrill Kill will be on momentarily and dash all this from my mind.
There is waiting. Then there is smoke. There is chanting. There are drums. There is My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult. They don’t even think about taking the stage until the whole thing is so obscured in mist that we don’t even remember that there is a stage. But we can hear it. And this is god damned showmanship. The backlighting comes on slower than a cruel lover and Groovie Mann is singing, groaning, moaning and croaking musical obscenity in our fog-blind faces and holy shit I think every single one of us is about to come. Nobody should be able to achieve an effect like this with nothing more than fog, a disco ball and a film-shaped movie screen made out of poster board and glue. This isn’t normal. This isn’t safe. This is Thrill Kill.
When he asks, “How yall doin’ tonight, Richmond,” in his sick, satanic voice, I feel like it’s a lukewarm response, and it makes me want to fucking cry…though that may be the earplugs. The response after the next song is better and gets better still when the girl comes up to the stage for The International Sin Set.
Amanda points out that this is very jazz, very funk, very experimental, and not at all what she expected, and she is absolutely right. This is WAY more groove than I ever expected to hear oozing out of a Sacrosanct Monday, but you couldn’t cut the smile off my face with a scalpel. Amanda’s either. When she says this, it occurs to me that they really are absolutely on fire now, and the red backlighting punctuates this all the more apparently. They are retro funk superstition, pure, uncut and mainlined straight into the sexiest, slashiest cerebral corners of our lizard brain. Parlaiment’s dark side. Tom Waits dripping down the leg of Bootsy Collins. Bono at his sleaziest prime if Bono liked girls……and felt about 70’s porn the way he feels about empty political gestures. But they’re not on fire the way bands usually are when I review them in a stream-of-consciousness gush. They don’t explode into and out of every new song like a sudden cocaine crash, they slime their way in and out sexy, slick and smooth as the red hot sex that every single fucking song is dedicated to. Groovie Mann doesn’t need to leap and stomp every square inch of stage into paste. They don’t need a drummer sweating bullets like Conan on the Wheel. And their bassist might actually be the single coolest cat in all of Rock and Roll.
And as soon as I finish writing that, the show shifts suddenly and surreally with the words, “This is what you came here for-the birth of the Thrill Kill Kult!” This is where they explode into two barrels of cocaine and a methamphetamine chaser. Double-speed old-school proto industrial. On This Rack realigns the entire crowd in seconds. And maybe they’re right. Maybe this won’t last forever, but it can sure as shit carry about 8 songs before the end of the show at this same unbroken fever pitch of electronica mayhem.
As far as they can get from the first half of the show-gin and tonic in a tye-dye chair under a lava strobe to hard whiskey shots with bullets at the bottom and every fucking thing I was promised at age 18, watching The Crow for the first time and every cell in my body screamed, “Fuck me, I wanna BE there!” This is what I think when they’re grinding into A Daisy Chain 4 Satan. And when they say it like they say it, I, too, want to live for drugs. But it’s not until After the Flesh that I really remember what music is supposed to feel like. For three whole minutes, I remember every feeling I ever had at every show I ever went to, age eighteen, and I wake up when it’s over, standing in the center of the chaos, front and center, smiling ear to ear.
When it ends, it’s like detox. We all look at each other like we’re about to start shaking and scratching at our arms any moment now, and does anybody have just one more spike left in ‘em? Just one more hit of that pure, uncut sleazy music we love so, so much? Nobody? A sledgehammer to the balls couldn’t have hurt worse than the end of that show-than the moment the stage said goodbye to My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult.
I will go home with two lungfuls of artificial smoke and a hard-on that will last two days.
In classic ADD fashion, it takes me every second of four minutes before I’m paying exponentially more attention to the crowd than the band itself. Blame for this is due, in part, to Synthetic Nightmare’s legendary adherence to the over-utilization of their fog machine. One does not look at the stage when the stage is obscured by smoke that smells like Grandma-unless that stage is on fire, there’s screaming, rockers are dying and there’s no real danger to onlookers. But that’s beside the point. The point is that Will and Nick have a hard enough time figuring out where the stage is when they’re jolly well standing right on the thing. If they happen to be off the stage on one of their frequent walkabouts when the fog curtain of stealthy doom goes up and none of us can figure out which way is up, it’s a damn miracle either of them can find the fucker again.
But that’s also besides the point. The point is that the crowd was really fun to watch there for a minute. Like the guufy mid-operative transsexual…dude…ette…in the high heels who feels so dedicated to the act of thrashing that…(s)he(?) steps out of the covered tent, into the drizzly, pissy rain and thrashes in a pit of one. This dedication to thrashing amuses me and slightly humbles me-I have not the dedication of this (wo)man(?). There is a guy in the middle of the crowd who looks exactly….EXACTLY like gothic Ricky Gervais. Dances a bit like him, too, I think. But it’s when I’m trying to not-creepily steal glances at the obscenely attractive young lady with the red Mohawk sitting next to me when Will mounts my table like a steed, plants one foot on the paper I’m writing on and shoots me a look that says, “Dude…I’m a little drunk right now…do you know where the stage is?” Not really, I shrug back to him. “Cool…I’mma play here for a minute.” Struck by my own stark lack of originality, I wait until he’s looking for either the stage or the pirate ghosts out in the glowing green fog when I reach up to play like I’m going to jam two fingers up his asshole. This play at comedy is obviously meant to impress the girl in the Mohawk with my wit and charm. She smiles politely. The guy over her shoulder sees this and makes the same motion, only straight up. I want to shout, “Dammit, man! Entirely in spite of this blizzard, I know which way is up! I’m just trying to ram a finger up Will’s ass!” But I know…I know if I shout this, precisely where the song will cut out, and educating this mongoloid is not worth screaming, “I’m trying to ram a finger up this guy’s ass!” in front of a silent, crowded room is not worth it.
The thing I really have to give them credit for is that when Nick and Will have a Crocodile Dundee moment and go on their inevitable walkabouts, it proves them to be true-blue pure-bred Rockers of the People. Discontent to stay segregated from their fans, they feel the driving need to be in the middle of the action-bring it to the common man, shove the Rock right in their faces and make us love them so much more on account of this. When they leave the stage, I actually find myself fondly wishing it hadn’t been so soon. Thrill Kill will be on momentarily and dash all this from my mind.
There is waiting. Then there is smoke. There is chanting. There are drums. There is My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult. They don’t even think about taking the stage until the whole thing is so obscured in mist that we don’t even remember that there is a stage. But we can hear it. And this is god damned showmanship. The backlighting comes on slower than a cruel lover and Groovie Mann is singing, groaning, moaning and croaking musical obscenity in our fog-blind faces and holy shit I think every single one of us is about to come. Nobody should be able to achieve an effect like this with nothing more than fog, a disco ball and a film-shaped movie screen made out of poster board and glue. This isn’t normal. This isn’t safe. This is Thrill Kill.
When he asks, “How yall doin’ tonight, Richmond,” in his sick, satanic voice, I feel like it’s a lukewarm response, and it makes me want to fucking cry…though that may be the earplugs. The response after the next song is better and gets better still when the girl comes up to the stage for The International Sin Set.
Amanda points out that this is very jazz, very funk, very experimental, and not at all what she expected, and she is absolutely right. This is WAY more groove than I ever expected to hear oozing out of a Sacrosanct Monday, but you couldn’t cut the smile off my face with a scalpel. Amanda’s either. When she says this, it occurs to me that they really are absolutely on fire now, and the red backlighting punctuates this all the more apparently. They are retro funk superstition, pure, uncut and mainlined straight into the sexiest, slashiest cerebral corners of our lizard brain. Parlaiment’s dark side. Tom Waits dripping down the leg of Bootsy Collins. Bono at his sleaziest prime if Bono liked girls……and felt about 70’s porn the way he feels about empty political gestures. But they’re not on fire the way bands usually are when I review them in a stream-of-consciousness gush. They don’t explode into and out of every new song like a sudden cocaine crash, they slime their way in and out sexy, slick and smooth as the red hot sex that every single fucking song is dedicated to. Groovie Mann doesn’t need to leap and stomp every square inch of stage into paste. They don’t need a drummer sweating bullets like Conan on the Wheel. And their bassist might actually be the single coolest cat in all of Rock and Roll.
And as soon as I finish writing that, the show shifts suddenly and surreally with the words, “This is what you came here for-the birth of the Thrill Kill Kult!” This is where they explode into two barrels of cocaine and a methamphetamine chaser. Double-speed old-school proto industrial. On This Rack realigns the entire crowd in seconds. And maybe they’re right. Maybe this won’t last forever, but it can sure as shit carry about 8 songs before the end of the show at this same unbroken fever pitch of electronica mayhem.
As far as they can get from the first half of the show-gin and tonic in a tye-dye chair under a lava strobe to hard whiskey shots with bullets at the bottom and every fucking thing I was promised at age 18, watching The Crow for the first time and every cell in my body screamed, “Fuck me, I wanna BE there!” This is what I think when they’re grinding into A Daisy Chain 4 Satan. And when they say it like they say it, I, too, want to live for drugs. But it’s not until After the Flesh that I really remember what music is supposed to feel like. For three whole minutes, I remember every feeling I ever had at every show I ever went to, age eighteen, and I wake up when it’s over, standing in the center of the chaos, front and center, smiling ear to ear.
When it ends, it’s like detox. We all look at each other like we’re about to start shaking and scratching at our arms any moment now, and does anybody have just one more spike left in ‘em? Just one more hit of that pure, uncut sleazy music we love so, so much? Nobody? A sledgehammer to the balls couldn’t have hurt worse than the end of that show-than the moment the stage said goodbye to My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult.
I will go home with two lungfuls of artificial smoke and a hard-on that will last two days.