Mortician show @ Europa - 5/18/08

A strange thing happened two days ago. For some funny reason, I decided to play detective and look for Club Europa in Brooklyn which I had visited on November 25 of last year (see blog) and hadn't been back since. Always one to look for a heavy metal hotspot, I decided to go find the place again, which was sort of tough because I didn't remember exactly where it was. All I remembered was that I take the G train from Hoyt-Schermerhorn and get off somewhere before heading into Queens. So, with fingers crossed and iPod headphones in ears, I set out on my voyage to locate Europa. I got off at the Nassau stop and proceeded to walk a few blocks until I got to Meserole Ave. and found the fucking club! WOO-HOO!

Wait! This is the part where it begins to suck. Turns out that there was a metal show playing tonight - and with local death metal band Mortician! This is great, or so I thought, until I saw that the show had begun early at 5pm and it was already 10pm. (I got off work at 8:30pm.) Not only that, but admission was $20! The bouncer told me that the "so-so" bands had already played and that Mortician were about to go on. So, spurned on by my love for all things metal and just plain stupidity, I paid the $20, plus losing $3 because I used Chase bank to pull the money out, and went inside to an almost empty room of a few regular metalheads and the NYDM (New York Death Militia).

Well, the bands that did play, Goreaphobia and Squash Bowels, played actually pretty good. Goreaphobia is half of Incantation, a deathgrind band from PA, and two other dudes, one of which was wearing a spiked face-mask. Squash Bowels is a Grindcore band from Poland who use some of the same stage presence and vocal patterns as Napalm Death (don't they all?) but none of the originality. I kept hoping there would be more to come, especially after paying my last $20 to hear some unknown bands play my music.

Mortician came out in the end, which consisted of NYDM founder Will Rahmer, aka Will Mortician, Roger the guitarist and a large drummer dude. Sadly, the band was missing a bassist, or at least the hands of a bassist. Will was sporting a cast as a result of some injury and was relegated to standing in a corner of belting out his best cookie-monster voice like a Hell's Angels version of Chris Barnes. This is the first time I've ever seen a frontman stay in one spot for the whole damn set! I mean, come on, man - move a little! The guitarist was basically stealing the show and blasting on high at a G tuning, which is, in my opinion, how all metal bands should sound like. The drummer was top-notch! But my attention kept going back to emphatic stiffness of Will Mortician. Couldn't he have hired a bassist to substitute for him? Judging from the lack of a crowd, I'm assuming the energy was gone way before Mortician went onstage, or I entered the venue.

I did, however, meet an interesting fellow by the name of Ralphie (who bears an uncanny resemblance to Chad Grey, frontman for Hellyeah and Mudvayne), or as I call him "Whistler" in the bathroom (no, it wasn't like that, but I did meet another Ralph who happened to be wiping his cock with his T-shirt.... DO NOT ASK!) and we talked about the band shirts we were wearing. I was wearing Death, and he was wearing Metallica's "Metal Up Your Ass" which I also own. Eventually we got to talking about the NYDM and he introduced me to Will Mortician and the leaders of the chapters around the NY area. First, there was dreadlocked Randall and then the trollish-looking Tomas. Nice enough gents, but I got the feeling that I was being scrutinized by them which made me feel somewhat uncomfortable, a lot of constant whispering in each other's ear and pointing at me. Honestly, I'm not one for joining clubs but I figured it would be exactly what I need in that I would have friends who actually like the same kind of music I do! I don't know much about the NYDM, but it does seem like an exclusive club that only a certain type of person would fit in. In my opinion, though, I don't think I do. A very funny and tense moment of the night was when I assisted them in loading the CDs into the back of a PT Cruiser, and there was almost a fight between Will and Ralphie. Something about respect and a tone of voice that Ralphie was giving Will.

I managed to snag me a drumstick, which someone thoughtfully left out for me to take, and I got to me a cool dude from a band that I had missed and had played earlier. That shout out goes to Buckshot Facelift and its members Tom, Sal, Dan, and Will for giving me a copy of their new CD "Universal Goat Tilt" (and it's killer!). Go check them out at http://www.myspace.com/buckshotfacelift100 right now!

So, in conclusion, I was disappointed with the high cost of seeing only three bands at an impromptu show and I didn't get to take any pictures because my fucking cellphone ran out of battery, but came away with a drumstick, a shitload of band flyers, greasy-puttied hair, some new "friends" from the NYDM, and a killer new album.