Fugazi - Calton Studios and Paradise Lost - The Venue, Edinburgh 1990

I first heard Fugazi through tape trading, one of the guys I used to trade with stuck some songs on the end of something to fill up a side of the tape with "Ian from Minor Threat's new band" so I thought cool looking forward to hearing this. I listened to it and was a bit confused, it wasn't fast hardcore, I didn't get it, at that point I was into speed, music pretty much had to be as fast as possible so Fugazi wasn't hitting the mark. It was off kilter and complicated. I just didn't get it.
A few months on and they released Margin Walker and the same trader stuck the whole thing after another hyper speed hardcore album and I thought, not that shite again but I kept listening to the tape and it really grew on me and I went out and bought the vinyl. In 1990 I bought the album Repeater on tape and it was pretty much the only thing I listened to for ages, even my Iron Maiden loving mate Steve loved it and as such it was the tape for any car journeys we undertook.
So one weekend I was due to go see Autopsy and Paradise Lost on the Sunday at the Venue in Edinburgh and decided to go through to Edinburgh on the Saturday to buy records in Avalanche rather than buy them before the gig and then risk them getting broken or nicked. As I walked towards Avalanche I spied a poster saying Fugazi were playing, which got my interest going and as I got closer realised that the date was that night, fucking hell, well I had to go so went without vinyl in favour of a gig ticket and a ten flash bulb for my 110 cartridge camera, yeah I only got to take 10 photos at a gig back then, and those flashes kind of just balanced precariously on top of the camera and would fall off at the slightest touch so just perfect for taking photos at gigs. They also just looked cool as fuck...

 I then fucked about Edinburgh for a while killing time before heading down to the Calton Studios and ended up running into Ian and Brendan on the Royal Mile, I think I said something like "Hey you're playing tonight!" they were probably glad I was around to give them such a handy tip as they obviously had no clue why they were there eh...
Dr Phibes and The House of Wax Equations opened the gig with swirly trippy indie rock and lots of fancy lights and strobes. It felt like what I imagined being on drugs must have been like, I saw them a few times more and they were always great.
They paled into insignificance though as soon as Fugazi played, really intense and played just about everything they had put out at that point, a few folk shouted for Minor Threat songs and stage divers were stopped by the band which added a bit of tension to proceedings. I can proudly say I was not one of those people on this occasion, I saved that for when Mindfunk played.
This was the only time I ever saw Fugazi and I wish I had had a better camera to take more shots.

After the gig I had to figure out what to do with myself as I'd missed the last train home and spent some of the night sleeping on a bench in Waverly train station until being chucked out at about 5am, I then wandered about a bit and ended up climbing Arthur's Seat and watching the sun come up. Sounds quite serene and beautiful eh, possibly it was, but I was chilled to the bone, ached all over and was fucking starving so fuck the sunrise.
I had a pretty miserable Sunday morning wandering the city aimlessly waiting for somewhere to open, bummed spare change of people for a while so I could buy a hot chocolate in a vain attempt to thaw me out a bit and then headed to The Venue mid afternoon in the hope that some of the Sunday regulars were as sad as me and be hanging about at that time.
Autopsy and Paradise Lost were both great, again I wish I had a better camera, or more money for flashes and films at least as I used the last of my shots on Paradise Lost as I liked them more than Autopsy on record.

In all it was a great weekend if somewhat unplanned but I was thankful for my bed after the three mile walk home after getting the train back to Dundee on the Sunday night. Then on Monday I got to go to school and brag to Steve that I just got to see Fugazi. In your face mate, ha ha.

Bolt Thrower and Memoriam

Bolt Thrower were a special band for me, first band I saw live in a club as oppossed to a seated theatre (on the Grindcrusher tour no less with Carcass, Morbid Angel and Napalm Death) and I wrote off an interview to them for the first issue of ENZK and was surprised to get a reply (and ended up corresponding with Karl for a number of years and seeing them numerous times in the Edinburgh Venue and up in Aberdeen) so it was with a heavy heart, but not unsurprising all things considered, that I read the band's statement declaring their tour of duty to be over.
A bit sad that I won't get to see them live again and experience the aural equivalent of "being run over by a tank for an hour" as Gav Kidd described it when I took him to see Bolt Thrower in Glasgow in 2006.

So here is a bunch of photos I've taken of them set to a live version of All That Remains, thanks for the memories:

So what does remain?
Not much word on what Gav, Jo and Baz are doing but Karl has teamed up with his old BT team mate Andy Whale along with Frank Healy and Scott Fairfax (who have been in Benediction, Sacrilege, Cerebral Fix, Napalm Death...) to form Memoriam and got it together pretty quick in releasing a 7" The Hellfire Demos containing two songs; War Rages On and Resistance (a third song from the demo session, Surrounded By Death, has been released on a flexi with Decibel magazine in the states.
It's pretty much in the same vein as BT but the sound isn't as dense and steamrolling, feeling like there's a bit of breathing space in the guitar work instead of the wall of crushing death that BT employed so devestatingly.
Memoriam are by no way lightweight though, the riffs are slab heavy with creeping scales thrown in and Karl's vocals are still that mixture of growled out but audible style. Lyrics and song titles seem to deal with war as per previous Willets' work and I expect they work on dual levels as ever.
The 7" came out on Purple, Clear and Black vinyl, pretty much sold out except for a few copies on black so hit up Cosmic Key Creations if you want to get your hands on one before it's too late.
As you can see here the purple version was customised to match my ironing board cover...

The decibel flexi is pretty pricey if you're not in the US due to the crappy postage rates from the US but if you live over there you should snap it up as it's like $6. Follow this link to stream the song and order a copy:
Memoriam Decibel Magazine

Memoriam are currently in the studio recording an album so looking forward to that dropping in a few months and they are also going to play the Lord Of The Land in Scotland on 1st April which is headlined by Autopsy (who I saw last time they played here, 27 years ago!) and Acid Reign are playing too (who I also saw many times feckin years ago and also last September and they were still ace) so I'm fucking chuffed for that indeed, although it falls on the wife's birthday, oh bugger...