Originally published in ‘zine issue #6, 1993
GWAR and Avail
9:30 Club, Washington, D.C.
by Editor
The night started off with openers Avail, formerly from the once-jumping Reston, VA hardcore scene, playing its now emocore stylings. The band, years ago, moved down to Richmond, VA and changed the lineup. The music was pretty happy sounding and not bad. There were a number of hardcore types, as well as metalheads, getting into the songs. Avail has an album out on Catheter Records.
GWAR, also from Richmond, came on next and proceeded to kill all sorts of people on stage, including concert security, a cop, a bishop from the clergy, a member of the road crew, and so on. The band also acted out parts of “Rock ‘n’ Roll Never Felt So Good” off America Must Be Destroyed, out on Metal Blade Records. GWAR also belted out tunes from Hell-O!, and at one point the reanimated corpse of Techno-Destructo took control of two GWAR slaves and of course a huge fight ensued. In addition to playing songs off Scumdogs of the Universe (“Horror of Yg,” “The Salaminizer”), Slymenstra Hymen blew a fireball on stage and Oderus Urungus dared some supposedly gun-toting audience goers to shoot him right then and there. I got totally splattered with blood but I didn’t get any brains on the head like last time.
What a gig! The show was booked at the 9:30 over two nights, so I’m sure GWAR played other favorites on the other night. So check out Avail and GWAR, which is up for a Grammy for the Phallus in Wonderland home video. ■
Malevolent Creation, Suffocation, Epidemic, Stentor, and Medussa
Bayou, Washington, D.C.
by Editor
I’m sorry to say that I missed the two local (Maryland) acts, but when I got to the show after Medussa finished and told the bassist I had just arrived, he said, “Good,” and explained that his guitarist was quite ill and their performance was bad because of it.
California’s Epidemic came on and played in support of its Metal Blade debut, Decameron. The band’s variety of death metal with some thrash influences didn’t go over with much enthusiasm with the crowd to say the least, but I thought the band played very intensely. When the singer said that this was the best show so far, I didn’t know whether to think he was being sarcastic as hell or what, until I found out that the gig was only Epidemic’s fourth show on the tour and maybe it was the best show. Also, the band was selling both its demos for one price, which I thought was a good idea.
Suffocation from New York came on next. In support of Roadrunner Records’ Effigy of the Forgotten, the band’s first album, the group played several songs off that one and a few new ones which will be on the band’s new album, which it was in the middle of recording. This being the first show on the tour for the technical death metal band, Suffocation went over very well with the audience and did a great job.
Roadrunner’s Malevolent Creation from Florida played next. Of course the band played several songs off of both its death metal albums, The Ten Commandments and Retribution, the new one. The band’s style to me seemed a bit more basic than the other two bands, whose riffs sounded more complicated. The crowd was eating it up. A weird thing was, one of the guitarists dissapeared from the stage five or so songs before the set was over. But the rest of the group played on and did “Thou Shall Kill!” as the last song. ■
Photo: Morbid Angel on stage with Barney Greenway on vocals, sometime in the early 1990s (courtesy Debbie Sellnow)
