Crossover To Hell @The Square

(Party Vibez (VIC), Deathcage, Exekute, Head In A Jar, Desintegrator)

28 July 2013

Sunday! Yeah, why not? And with announcements like unbeaten Onni “Hot Nutz” Hirvonnen, bassist of Head In A Jar, challenging anyone on Sega Mega Drive to beat him finally and Fred, singer of Exekute promising a stage dive, it was a gig we had to be at!

Thundering thrash punk metal was welcoming us into the Square with Desintegrator getting the Sunday crowd going. The mosh pit was on and the crossover was in full swing.

Getting Onni away from gaming and onto the stage, Head In A Jar were next on stage. Thrashing it away with the headbanging and moshing getting stronger while the actual head in a jar was passed around, their show was blowing the last tiredness from the weekend away. The guys sang their songs about rats, poor eating rich but this time not my favourite, self-titled Hear In A Jar, with a guy, selling himself, ending up as a head in a jar and finding his mind-blowing super powers. Instead, they played more songs from their new album: Double Suicide, Nuclear Strike on the Vatican, Genocide City, and Carniverous Carnival... titles which suggest that Head In A Jar are obscure fun. ;-)

Following Head In A Jar, Exekute conquered the stage and singer Fred was doing his announced stage dive. With a stage only about half a meter high that was a challenge he and the crowd coped with well. There was also an attempt of crowd surfing but due to the low ceiling of The Square it was almost impossible to do a lot of that. Fred then organized a wall of death and anyway, nobody could stop the mosh pit going. Exekute are a great live band and I am happy I finally saw them in action. Fred is an impressively powerful singer but the guitars are just as great and the band just plays great death metal. I am not the greatest fan of death metal but those guys just rock it.

Deathcage were then leading back to the metal punk crossover. Those guys have been around for some time and are heavily influenced by Japanese forefathers Deathside, Crude and Bastard but also Iron Maiden etc.

Party Vibez, the headliner, was making me think more of something dance or reggae. Those guys from Melbourne were certainly party and even more certainly not dance, reggae or anything else I was associating the name with. Even if the headbangers got a little Sunday afternoon tired, Party Vibez heated them up and the circle pit was just not stopping.

Before finishing here, there is a last note: Onni did not get beaten. Metal-Roos owner Michael was closest with losing 2:4 to Onni but nobody got him. The Finnish are just natural ice hockey talents. (I want to stick to my Finnish in combination with ice hockey theory here, so I can't mention how Head In A Jar's Nick "Breakfast Man" Coady won 8:2 against a half Finnish landsman of Onni but) I guess the challenge is on for the next time!

\m/