Tag: New York Shitty

Redemption!…Sort Of…: Jerry Cantrell Live at the Wellmont Theater, Montclair, NJ 3/11/23

Posted on by Mike

It’s rare for me to able to see a show in my neck of the woods anymore, even though I live significantly closer to this venue than The Borgata in Atlantic City, which is where I last saw Jerry play. I haven’t been to too many shows lately; but outside of my last time seeing Black Label, most of the shows I’ve been to required me to travel. And keep in mind again, I didn’t attend too many shows between 2019 and now. I also am hesitant about seeing musicians twice on the same tour because I’ve heard stories regarding their inability to change things up. Zakk had that ability, hands down. I saw him live three times in 2005 and each time was DRASTICALLY different!

By the way, we’ll be getting around to him again real soon.

But nevertheless, I just to give this a go. It’s Jerry after all, and this was the final leg of the Brighten tour. My understanding is Alice are to reconvene soon so they can record their follow up to 2018’s Rainier Fog. This time they had a different opening band, an all-female group calling themselves Thuderpussy, not to be confused with Alabama Thunderpussy.

Thunderpussy began their set with guitarist Molly Sides playing a guitar propped up on a stand with a violin bow. I was a tad taken aback by that, as that was EXACTLY how Tyler Bates opened up Jerry’s set and encore in Atlantic City when I saw him previously. So, was this to mean Tyler wouldn’t be doing that tonight or even on this leg of the tour at all? Stay tuned to find out, girls!

The rest of the band walked on stage, and they began to play, their music reminding me of a modern-day Heart if Ann Wilson circa-1976 transcended time somehow. There were undeniable traces of Led Zep and Allman Brothers in their music peppered throughout. As if the violin bow on the guitar didn’t immediately give that away! Whitney Petty can sing her ass off. And she knows how to physically express herself on stage in a way that’s equal parts provocative and elegant.

There was one point that I do have on film, in which Whiteny is on her knees. Molly walks to Whitney and begins to lean over Whitney, Whiteny leaning back for her like they were going to kiss. HOT. Even hotter? Finding out later on that they are in fact a couple, and that the band are ALL lesbians. And I’m not even talking about the K.D. Lang/Indigo Girls style of butch dyke. I’m talking the hot lesbian type – the type I almost forgot existed!

So, between Thunderpussy’s kick ass live show – because their album, while not bad at all, sadly is a gross misrepresentation of the band! – and their physical performance, I’m convinced I want to fuck every member of Thunderpussy. Hard. I’ll fuck one while the three other members scissor each other while waiting their turns! I’ll make it work!

Did I ever mention I love lesbians?

Now for Jerry’s set!

Tyler Bates did in fact open up with the violin bow on the guitar. I guess there’s a theme here. I knew by the fact that he was bowing in the key of F that Jerry was going to open up with “Atone” and I was pretty much right. Before I continue, here’s the set list. All songs are solo songs unless noted otherwise:

Atone

Psychotic Break

Them Bones (Alice In Chains)

Siren Song

Cut You In

My Song

Check My Brain (Alice In Chains)

Black Hearts and Evil Done

Between

Angel Eyes

No Excuses (Alice In Chains)

Lesson Learned (Alice In Chains)

Man In The Box (Alice In Chains)

Would?

Encore

Whale And Wasp (Alice In Chains)

Brighten

Down In A Hole (Alice In Chains)

Rooster (Alice In Chains)

Goodbye (Elton John)

Notice a difference compared to last show, if you read about my last time seeing Jerry? More on that in a minute. The three-song opener was somewhat similar to the previous show, with “Psychotic Break” and “Them Bones” appearing early. One thing I noticed right away was his organ player. This time around, he took Lola Colette, his opener from last year with him as part of the band this time. Lola’s presence was made apparent almost immediately, not “just” because I was sitting in the middle of the building this time, but because Jerry had her playing organ on “Them Bones”. So, this wasn’t a situation where she was going to step back during the Alice tracks, Jerry made sure she’d be part of the show. And I have to say, while I understand Jerry wanted to do something different, organs and Alice In Chains songs go as well together as rock and rap ever did.

But this is a minor complaint.

The good news was that I was able to hear the entire band this time. The bad news is that I was able to hear Greg Puciato this time. I said it. Fuck, what was Jerry thinking to take Gil Sharone’s advice?? Greg was so pitchy, and so fucking WHINY! Greg, please, stick to sacrificing your body jumping off balconies. But the important part of this show was that this time around Jerry played a LOT more solo material than he did last year. Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean he did a deep dive of his previous two albums. He in fact performed the exact same tracks for those two records that he performed last time. But when I heard “Siren Song”, which I’ve dubbed “Breaks My Back Pt.2”, I was pleasantly optimistic. I also thought it would’ve been one hell of an opportune time to break out “Breaks My Back”! He did preform about 90% of Brighten, however. That alone was a major step up because any time Jerry plays solo is a rare privilege. I might be wrong, but I feel like he toured for this album longer than he did for Degradation Trip back in 2002.

The energy in the place also was MILES ahead of the crowd at the Borgata. I didn’t need to be told it would be, as Montclair, being in northern New Jersey, is essentially in the shadow of New York Shitty. Therefore, there was definitely a mixed, yet equally rowdy crowd. I even bumped into someone I hadn’t seen in almost a decade, while walking to the back of the line. Jerry himself even commented that we were “the best crowd on the tour so far!”.

That energy was made apparent when, for the start of the encore, Jerry had broken into “Whale and Wasp”, the gorgeously depressing instrumental off of Alice’s 1994 EP, Jar of Flies. No one could’ve expected that. I know he performed it in 2019 in Seattle, before he even announced he was even writing a solo record, but that was a completely different situation. So this was a treat! When he broke out “Down In A Hole”, one of Alice’s greatest songs of ALL TIME, the entire crowd, minus a few, joined in one big singalong. The only thing that damaged the moment was Greg’s WHINY bitch vocals. I will never forgive Greg Puciato for that or for even having any kind of a career.

Upon leaving after Jerry’s final performance of the classic Elton John track “Goodbye”, I walked out of there feeling like he might’ve actually listened. The biggest complaint of the tour’s previous leg was addressed – he played more solo shit this time instead of turning his band into an Alice cover band! Fuck yes! I just wish he performed more material from the previous solo records. They could’ve proven to be an interesting challenge for the rest of the band, and even for Jerry. We’re talking tracks that, before 2019, he hadn’t performed for the better part of two decades!

So, with Jerry poised to record with Alice again, the question remains: will he ever record or even perform solo material again? I guess only time will tell…

Random Memories of Trevor

Posted on by Mike

It had to be sometime in early 2003. I was on a bus heading home, and, while I still had probably fifteen more minutes before I reached my destination, I pulled out the latest issue of Revolver Magazine from my backpack. If memory serves me correctly, the magazine included a one-page section highlighting recommended up-and-coming bands. There were three bands, one definitely was Himsa (fucking absolute vomit!), and the only other band I remembered was some band called The Black Dahlia Murder, whose music the magazine categorized as “Megadeth Metal”.

That’s not a joke.

Time would go on and a whole year and a half would pass before I finally came across Unhallowed, The Black Dahlia Murder’s 2003 debut album, probably in Sam Goody. I remember that this was also the same day that I bought the very denim jacket that I’d cut the sleeves off of to make a vest out of.

Unrelated note: Don’t ever use the term “Battle Jacket” to describe your denim vest with patches and buttons and spikes on it. Or go ahead and do so and be as retarded as everyone else that uses the fucking stupid term.

Anyway, my dad drove me home, as I still didn’t have a car yet. I opened up Unhallowed and looked at the cover. What’s in a name? What’s in a cover image? In the early days of mp3 downloading and, with a whole decade to go before Spotify existed, I still bought CDs, and still do so to this day. Therefore, the only way to find out what any band sounded like, was to either download a track or two, or to simply BUY the album. I popped the album into my five-disc changer and the following two tracks fucked me up.

The music in this video is actually the opening instrumental title track to the record and it breaks right into “Funeral Thirst”, so it made sense to just post the video instead of two separate links of any kind.

Either way, upon hearing those two tracks now I remember EXACTLY what stood out to me those most. The music alone was not just balls-out heavy, but those minor chord harmonies happened to make me feel every single negative emotion I ever knew or felt in my entire life. I wanted to cry, I wanted to die, I wanted to choke anyone I could get my hands on. It was hopeless. It was beautiful.

Then I heard that fucking voice. It was like nothing I had heard at the time. It was a hell of a lot more screetchy than most Death Metal bands I’d heard, with the sole exception of Chuck’s vocals on The Sound of Perseverance, Death’s last record. He hit the traditional guttural style as well and I realized that he was using the two styles for the sake of a dynamic that was not there at the time. It changed things up in all the songs and it fucking made things far more exciting.

Clearly whoever described this band as “Megadeth Metal” in Revolver Magazine a year earlier must’ve been either high or just absolutely clueless. The Black Dahlia Murder, especially as made evident in their latter-day releases were more like the greatest Carcass disciples you’ve ever heard!

This was just the beginning of a long ride for the band for the better part of two decades, two decades that would especially see Trevor Strnad standout among the traditional Death Metal frontman stereotype. As serious as he was in the video posted above, his sense of fun and humor would become FAR more prevalent not just in the videos the band would make in the coming years, but in his persona onstage. The best thing about it all was Trevor manage to balance this act out to the point that his goofiness NEVER took away from the band’s or his onstage intensity. He never took himself seriously and that connected with all of us because we knew it was genuine.

But to be clear, his lyrics were as Death Metal, and as brutal as it got. He’s a line or two from “Christ Deformed”, one of my ALL TIME favorite TBDM tracks:

Diabolic ritual open the portal to damnation
Dark legions gathering for virtuous insemination
Molest and sodomize deride the seed of god’s creation
Impale the Nazarene succumb to a spiritual inversion

In our unholy father’s disgusting house of shame
We revel in endless hatred burning so absolute
Corrupting all who’d enter here surrender to darkness
We kneel to those no more who’d burden and beguilt

Within these wretched walls a summoning proceeds
What form will manifest of this abysmal devilry
The children now are bleeding, we eunuchate his sons
To evil blood and fire this earth will soon succumb
With hell reborn
Your Christ be scorned
Dead faith now torn
His love deformed

That’s why I intentionally waited before I wrote this piece. It was hard to let sink in, that not only is Trevor gone, but to think about how it just might’ve happened. But much like with my tribute to Chris Cornell, I will NOT discuss what happened. Enough people have written about that, and we still haven’t a clue as to the whole story. But I, like most fans of The Black Dahlia Murder, have memories of meeting Trevor and even talking with him at length. Things like this, along with his ability to ACTUALLY HAVE FUN are truly why he’s the single most important Death Metal frontman in DECADES. While my memories aren’t as amazing as others, they meant something to me then, and they without question mean something to me now. So, I’ll share them.

It was the summer of 2006, and I traveled with two friends (one of which eventually got what was coming to him via a heart attack) to the Starland Ballroom in Sayreville, NJ for the Sounds of The Underground Tour, which included The Black Dahlia Murder, GWAR, Behemoth (and you bet your ass I met Nergal on this day!) and several others. I walked by TBDM’s merch table when I noticed a tall, flabby looking guy with a tattoo that read “HEARTBURN” across his belly. It was Trevor. I walked up to him and introduced myself when he replied, “talk a walk with me for a second”.

“Do me a favor, will ya?”, he asked me, as we walked. “We’re shooting a video for “Statutory Ape” today, and I need you and everybody else in that crowd to go fuckin’ crazy. Can you do that for me?” “Fuck yeah!” I immediately said. Hours later, the band walked on stage and Trevor immediately called out the entire crowd “C’MON YOU PUSSIES!!!!”, as they grinded out “I’m Charming” off Miasma, the same record that includes “Statutory Ape”. Sorry to say that no, I wasn’t crazy enough to be a part of that pit, but once Trevor called them out all bets were off.

My last memory didn’t involve a request to sacrifice myself in the pit, no. I traveled to the now defunct B.B. King’s in Times Square, New York Shitty (I said what I said), to see TBDM along with Hate Eternal and 3 inches Of Blood in January 2008. There might have been one other band on the bill, but I forgot who it was. Anyway, my friends and I arrived at B.B.’s and almost immediately I spotted Trevor at the bar. He looked a lot like he did two years prior, funny looking shorts, topless, hair all disheveled. I walked up to him again and he laughed as we reminisced over our previous meeting.

We parted ways after that, and he eventually found his way backstage. But what I always remembered about both those times was that he made himself accessible. It’s a story we’d ALL go on to hear about him over the years. He always hung out with the fans. Upon moving to Brooklyn (and I’ve to this day no idea why he’d do that to himself!), he apparently hung out at St. Vitus on the regular and would support the local bands and talk with everybody there. He even wrote a column for Metal Injection where he’d recommend underground Extreme Metal bands.

I don’t know many other frontmen of legend status like Trevor’s who’d do all those things. We might not ever completely know what happened to the charismatic (that word doesn’t even do it justice!) frontman of THE single most important Death Metal band of this century so far. But he left an UNDENIABLE mark that can never be removed. There will never be another frontman as genuine as Trevor Strnad.

RIP Trevor Strnad 1981 – 2022