Live: Obscene Extreme Festival 2014 – Day 3: July 18th, 2014.

Obscene Extreme Festival

Friday kicked off with a rather early morning breakfast and well, some rather colourful shorts from my Swedish partner in crime, who looked and still is a complete lady killer. This being said we had to hike another 3KM’s to the festival grounds, but first we needed to make a pit stop at the supermarket. I managed to buy a chocolate, energy drink and some bread, because nutrition is what I am all about.

With utter disregard for any traffic signs and rules we finally managed to drag our sweaty arses to the festival area, which was filled with people, living and half dead. Kruger kicked off proceedings rather early, so the hangover amongst the majority of the crowd was very present. Mad props to them, as these crusters didn’t let that discourage them from laying waste to the population of hung-over-ville. The d-beat crust commandos did their thing as the local band that’s given a chance to show off their skills at OEF and man, they didn’t disappoint.

At this point it was time to grab something cold to drink and I dragged myself to the bar and got a mixed slushy, which was basically the best decision of the day. I then rallied more troops and we headed off to see the Brazilian equivalent of Disclose and Framtid as Deaf Kids took the stage, whom I was in a fortunate position to write a review about last year as they released I am the Sickness, which blew my mind. It’s safe to say the raging distortion storm could be felt in every bone in my body as they plagued into us with fast, harsh and relentless distorted d-beat crust, which had some incredible tempo changes. It was by no means one dimensional, which is always my criticism of d-beat/crust bands. Their own brand of unadulterated noise filth, buzz-saw d-beat crust really did kick off the party. It was truly appreciated by those whom were fortunate enough to experience it.

I managed to make my way to the grind market again, inevitably, and picked up some sweet cassettes and shirts as I made my way down to where the bands put up their merch tables. I did this about once an hour to ensure I got someone special a EyeHateGod t-shirt, but no luck. It was time for another one of those slushy things as the heat intensified.

Made my way back to the stage after seemingly losing everyone I was with for Idiot Ikon, who treated us to the Swedish interpretation of d-beat/crust, a line-up consisting of members from Splitter, Thinner, Shades of Grey and Raised Drunks. We have a winner! They didn’t fuck around and got stuck in from the get go as the crowds started getting bigger at the front of the stage and the beer was flowing, they were truly entertaining and just a lot of fun to watch.

The next band I was keen to see was Gutslit from India and the first Indian band to ever play Obscene Extreme and there couldn’t have been a finer debut. Their brand of super fast brutal death metal had my ears prickling and the old head bobbing back and forth with a huge smile on my face. The rhythms were also out of this world and the put on such a performance, it was like they were Obscene Extreme veterans and the crowd responded in kind.

Gutslit

The next band to see was Warcollapse, but first I was pleasantly surprised by Besta from Portugal who had a horror/gory inspired feedback hardcore punk meets old school grindcore culmination going, which made the old ears prickle once more as they put on quite a show and I was surprised I’ve never heard of them before. So it was a pleasant afternoon surprise for those of us looking forward to other bands in the late afternoon and evening.

It was finally time to see the mighty Warcollapse as all the crusters flooded to the stage, including some of the Swedish crew I spent some time with. It was expecting something completely mind blowing and the music was exactly what I expected. The harsh, feedback ridden, d-beat medium tempo crust reigned supreme, but there was just something lacking for me. I feel that the stage was too big and that a smaller venue would have suited Warcollapse better, especially with the energy and intensity we experienced from the other bands. This being said, musically, they were as tight as I expected and as good, if not better than their records, but in terms of performance it was rather boring in my personal opinion and I struggled to sit through their set.

Warcollapse

For the first time in my life I missed a band I truly wanted to see in Vitamin X, but did manage to catch their last song and the atmosphere was absolutely incredible, they seemed to have fucking killed it and I managed to get some merch from them at least. This put behind me, I sat down to watch the very much-anticipated performance of legendary death metal act Nunslaughter from the USA. An awesome culmination of old school thrash metal riffs and death metal that has never been compromised throughout all their releases got the crowd into a hair-whipping frenzy from the get go. The Christ crushing image went a long way, but if felt at times they were too kvlt and well, I found some of it pretty funny, but all and all an excellent performance.

Nunslaughter

Right, so the evening was starting to draw to a close, but not before a triple-header, which included the legendary Brutal Truth, Possessed and EyeHateGod in probably the heaviest few hours of the fest.

It kicked off with Brutal Truth and Dan Lilker’s last ever Obscene Extreme as the band is set to call I quits after his birthday in October. It was business as usual for one of the custodians of grindcore as they ripped into us at 100miles an hour. As I stood on the side of stage with many of the other bands and crew members in awe, the crowd were losing their shit like nothing I’ve seen this far at this instalment of Obscene Extreme. Losing your mind to pornogrind or whatever is one thing (which I still don’t understand) and seeing a crowd lose it to a proper grindcore band was something that will live long in my memory. Beach balls, stage diving, screaming and just losing their fucking minds as the crowd gave Brutal Truth a proper send off. It was absolutely unforgettable. The guys seem to enjoy themselves during the set and once a band enjoys itself, the crowd really does feed off that. One of the best parts was seeing the drummer Rich Hoak and the legendary “face of a million expressions” as my buddy Carl so elegantly put it. It was something to behold as a whole and that only occurred to me properly after their set as I was just absolutely blown away.

Brutal Truth

Next up were legendary death metallers Possessed and I was a bit excited to finally get to see them as I firmly believe in the saying “Seven Churches on vinyl or fuck off”. This was a dream come true for me personally and I am sure a lot of people will agree with me that Possessed are undoubtedly one of the fathers of death metal as a heavy metal sub-genre. After fading away in obscurity, they’ve reformed around the front man Jeff Becerra and man did they put on a show? It was crushing from the first to the very last; reminding these tech death metal morons that sometimes overcomplicating something doesn’t really make it better. Slow, heavy and absolutely pulverizing from start to finish as we were treated to one of the best death metal acts I have seen in a very long time. The San Francisco death metal cult was truly back in full force and word on the street is that they’re even writing new material, so I’ll leave you with that.

Possessed

Eyes were getting heavy, but I wasn’t exactly sure if I was tired or if it was something in the air, because EyeHateGod were up next to tune low and play slow, well kind of anyway. After seeing Jimmy Fallon earlier that day to enquire about merch and being informed they’ve misplaced/lost it along the way I was even more excited to see them and maybe film some of it on my GoPro as a momento. Yeah, I get all sentimental, so what? Back to business… the New Orleans lads ripped everything to shit and well, Trutnov was the new Vietnam. It was a sludge/punk barrage of muddy riffs blended together with some eerie and grim rhythms that left a trail of destruction in its wake. The noise and feedback factor was next level and the machine just rumbled on into the night. It was one of the longest shows, but felt so short, everyone was getting into it and the most interesting thing was watching people who are usually bombarded with fast music react to EyeHateGod’s music as a whole. It was an ugly affair and yet I fell in love with a band all over again. I don’t think Obscene Extreme has ever witnessed something this disgustingly muddy, murky and slow in its existence and it was like watching a piece of history being made.

EyeHateGod

After the rather sludgy affair, I spent the rest of the evening in a trance like state before finally calling it a night after Demonical as we’d have to be up early for the final day with heaps of bands still to play and awesome times to be had. It got to a point where the punk inside us gave in and we took a cab to our accommodation. It’s understandable, especially after the day we had.