Words and Photos by Andrew Parks
You know what grindcore is? Funny. And we mean that in the nicest way possible. An explanation, via Friday night’s Blackened Music bill at Brooklyn’s Masonic Temple…
True to every stereotype about metal’s most simple but satisfying scene, Pig Destroyer, Repulsion and Brutal Truth basically bludgeoned a half-filled room with slight variations of the same song for three hours, give or take a few set changes and beer breaks. While Repulsion’s incredibly rare set–their first NYC appearance since forming more than two decades ago–was the clear draw here (many people left after they played), PxDx cemented their position at the top of today’s grindcore heap with a frenzied set that pulled cuts from their entire catalog. The crowd was out of control in all the right ways, too, treating the stage as their launching pad and the floor as their very own Coliseum.
As you’ll see in the photos below and a separate post of videos from the show, we spent most of the night getting clobbered by crowd riders and ugly fat dudes. Which was fine–as someone said to us after the show, “The thing I love about Pig Destroyer, is that you can actually hear some riffs in there.” Not to mention the bbbbuuzzzzzzzzz of Blake Harrison’s spark-slinging table saw, who proved that grind bands don’t need bassists; they need power tools.
