“This is a message of energy and strength.” George W. Bush used this phrase in his 2000-whatever State of the Union Address. The singer of Total Fucking Destruction, the Philadelphia-based thrash technicians headlining Fontana’s, used the same phrase in virtually the same context; however, one might assume the guys with the Gauze t-shirts and the van aren’t lying to you. The song that followed the introduction “this one goes out to everyone on the planet” was called, and I probably don’t even have to tell you this, “Seven Billion Imaginary Deaths.” With songs ranging from two seconds to approximately two minutes, the sum belted out without a break: Total Fucking Destruction deserve their name. Not to mention, they’re totally ecologically conscious.

Next up, Wastelander. Before the band plays, we meet singer Voxel in front of the venue. A former-member of the now-defunct Wohan, China-based Hellfire, Voxel has one of the coolest names ever to exist. I wrote down a list of eight or nine Scandinavian, Japanese, and English bands he hadn’t heard from the early 80s. “You don’t listen to Guerrilla Sabotage Incendiary Mutineers? Dude!” Michigan-based Wastelander sound like wolves that only the American wasteland could have produced; wolves, doubtless, with kind souls and Venom back patches. Outside of the show I’d rolled one to smoke with the guys from the bands when the guitarist from Wastelander shows me a necklace he’d found in the circle pit after the show. “We’ve been trying to figure this one out,” he says, “it’s like the only thing found after the apocalypse.” It’s my necklace, complete with the Infant Of Prague from a good friend’s mother, an ancient mother of pearl pocketknife, a silver metal Alien charm from Africa Kay gave me, and the pen cap from the pen I somehow lost at the Immortal show. Somehow.

Wastelander has no place to crash so they come back to Skynet (our apartment) with all of the kids; they’re driving to Cleveland the next day. Crowded into our tiny bedroom we listen to Riistetyt and smoke while Josh, a metal head we’ve somehow managed to bring home, asks if I’m a neo-Nazi (I’m not) and repeatedly asks everyone else if they like old death metal. I prefer black metal. Eventually the Google box tells the band they’ve got two hours less than they’d expected to drive to Cleveland; and someone’s got to drive the graveyard shift back to middle America without a wink. We cast away our new friends (‘left, left, right, and there’s the van’) and can’t seem to figure out how this Josh guy is still hanging around.

Photography Raquel Nave

KEYWORDS: Music

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