By Phil Vera, Crom / Despise You

So Sotoquest (aka the Michael Anthony of powerviolence) and I showed up to the warehouse relatively early—for what reason I don’t know. We knew that California Love canceled and that the show was going to start later, but we still headed down there. To our surprise there were already a buttload of kids hanging out and arriving in droves. I had to piss so fucking bad when we first got there, so I hauled ass into the place and barely made my way past the skate ramp (the place consists of a half pipe which doubles as a stage, and as the night progressed I really didn’t think anybody took into account that there was a stage) and into the bathroom, which looked like it had been hit with a dirty bomb full of diarrhea, piss and vomit. On my way out I forgot about the ramp, lost my footing and ate shit. I actually reached out, trying to grab onto some imaginary railing, but instead slid down and sort of spun 90 degrees. No bands had even played yet. My shame was soon flushed down the toilet and all was good as I ran into Grandpa who was looking debonair in his trademark hat, beer and blue jacket. Also Captain Cabron (whose name I just learned while writing this shit) showed up with a boa constrictor beer bong around his neck to the sounds of yells from people hoping to hit the beer bong, but I don’t think the Captain was going to just let anyone hit that shit.

Semtex Vest from Santa Ana (featuring dudes from Dead America and Winterthrall) started the show with their brand of grindcore mayhem. Final Draft from Inglewood fucked shit up and had a whole crew from their hometown going apeshit. Crom (featuring members of Tom Berenger Escape Plan, Christopher Upside Down Cross and Beat the Earth) ransacked the stage with a rotten stench, some thunderdust and a whole lot of nonsense. Crimson heckled the crowd and held the mic like a beer can, screaming, “Shoot arrows, eat pussy!” which set off a bunch of beers flying through the air. We played mostly songs of our new record Hot Sumerian Nights. Our set was cut short due to my amp drawing mud prematurely. Lack of Interest, featuring Bob “the Butcher” Loi on drums, had the kids singing along and raising their fingers. Maybe I was already fucked up by then, but I couldn’t figure out what they were pointing at. They played songs off their new record, Take Another Step.

By the time Despise You went on, the majority of the crowd finally made its way completely onto the stage. I could feel people breathing on me they were so close. I had to use another guitar head for the Despise You set and made the mistake of running my whole arm across all the knobs, turning them up to 11. As I realized later when I was five feet away from the amp and not within reach, the fucking reverb was all the way up. We ripped through the set and played about half of the songs off the West Side Horizons record. Shit kept getting unplugged and I had a china cymbal in front of me the whole time. I had this fear of being cut in half by it. Singer Chris Pessimiser threw out a home made Despise You skateboard deck designed by renowned artist Carlos Sanchez and apparently the guy who nabbed it got chased out the fucking building. Midway through the set we were down to one mic for three people. We must have looked like Journey standing around the fucking mic, sharing that shit. People were jumping all over the fucking place, knocking shit and each over everywhere. I heard from all kinds of people that came out of the fracas with black eyes, bloody lips and steamy asses.

To summarize the night, there were a good number of drunk fucks, a few barfings, a whole bunch of unpluggings, a couple of fights, pushing, shoving, pointing, some equipment failures, a couple of misunderstandings, yelling, necking, some marauding, a few lovers’ spats, some feuding and quarreling, cursing, a little chivalry, some fierce pitting and a couple of white t-shirts. Probably the most amazing show I’ve ever been a part of.

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