punk

D.R.I. / Attitude Adjustment / Voetsek @ Slim’s, San Francisco CA, January 9, 2010

It’s a given D.R.I. will draw a crowd in their adopted city. Add that this was D.R.I’s first show here in six years since guitarist Spike Cassidy was diagnosed and then beat colon cancer and you have a sold out crowd where getting to the bathroom was a 15-minute undertaking. The band’s performance was far from a history lesson; it was a bunch of grizzled veterans showing the kids how to take care of business.

Justin M. Norton recaps D.R.I.’s recent return to Slim’s in San Francisco, CA.

Suicidal Tendencies: Live At The Olympic Auditorium

Suicidal Tendencies concerts have always been a combination of ultimate fighting, self-help seminar run by the Rev. Mike Muir and communal exorcism of bad mojo. If you’ve attended a Suicidal show you’ve likely left bruised or with a split lip but feeling like you could tackle the New York Marathon. Once I got popped on the side of the head, had a cigarette flicked down my shirt and still had a good time.

Black Anvil: Time Insults The Mind

Like Goatwhore, like Crucifist, Black Anvil is not so much preoccupied with the thin-sounding Scandinavian aspect of black metal (although we are privy to the odd melodic movement reminiscent of Dissection) as they are completely obsessed with the mid-1980s first wave of Bathory, Possessed, and early Celtic Frost, the kind of primitive, immediate, old school metal with crust-infused riffs thick enough to stick to your ribs.

Adrien Begrand reviews the fantastic new debut release by NYC black metal/punk trio Black Anvil.

Tank: Their War Drags Ever On

Of all the original NWOBHM bands, few have been as sadly under-valued as London’s Tank. Formed by former Damned/Saints bassist Algy Ward in early 1980, Tank took the raw aggression of Algy’s former punk bands and applied it to a more metal setting.