4 Real?
As Municipal Waste bound onto the Scala’s small stage to rapturous applause I can’t help but survey the crowd to get an idea of who is buying this party-thrash. As well as the excitable teenage boys and older metallers there is a large element of the crowd who look like they’ve wandered in from Topshop or a Hollyoaks audition, and, perhaps most surprisingly for a metal gig, there are actually quite a few girls here. With a name like Municipal Waste and the obvious thrash and hardcore influences this makes me wonder what is going on here: are Municipal Waste for real or are they just a carefully constructed entity (hi-tops and headbands) created by hipsters for ironic purposes?
The Wasters kicks off with ‘Unleash the Bastards’ and ‘Divine Blasphemer’ which blast by with compact shards of hectic hardcore and metal poses that energize an already excitable crowd. Another five minutes go by and ‘Beer Pressure’ and ‘Masked by Delirium’ are despatched, while a giant inflatable seat is ricocheted between the crowd and the stage. ‘Terror Shark’ sees two young men emerge from the pit on their contemporaries’ shoulders clad in, well you guessed it, shark costumes. ‘The Thrashin’ of the Christ’ provides more dumb laughs and a nice mid-tempo crunchy riff which is followed by two extra versions of the irreverent Cliff Burton dedicated ‘Black Ice’ first in a grindcore style and then in tribute to doom legends St. Vitus. Tony ‘Guardrail’ Foresta introduces ‘Acid Sentence’ as a song about, “a serial killer from England’ and the song has a definite early Slayer feel about it. Whilst elements of the crowd might be metal tourists Municipal Waste certainly are not - they simply don’t give a shit what anyone thinks.
Tony then sets sex starved teenage minds racing when he invites all the girls in the crowd up to the stage to sing backing vocals to ‘Boner City’. Depressingly some morons in the crowd begin to chant for ‘tits’ until, happily, Tony sets them straight - shouting them down from the stage. The new backing singers give it their utmost before they bow out with some impressive sequential stage diving. This is what Municipal Waste do really well: involving the crowd and having a good time. They’re like Pantera without the violence, drugs or Phil Anselmo. ‘Born to Party’ and a deserved encore sees out the show and the band prove they’re not posers even if some of the crowd are.
To view all photos taken during this set click here. There are 10 available.