July 5th 1988
Houston,TX-Axiom
Phew! That was the most intense and anxious 160 mile drive ever! When we pulled into town, I don't remember if we got a hotel room or not. I dont think we did since it was so late at night and I vaguely remember sleeping in the van. During the day we just hung out and probably went to the mall or something. Probably around 4 or 5 o'clock we loaded our gear into the Axiom. At that point, the club promoter told us he received a bunch of calls last night from our friends in Austin, saying they'll be driving over from Austin to bust our heads at the show tonight. From that point on it's safe to say we were all on edge for the whole night. I think it was at that point that Dave Brinkman (Angkor Wat singer) told us he was packing heat. Don't know if that put me more at ease or ramped up my anxiety? From here on out, we went about everything as we normally would on a show night, except we kept an extra eye on the door in case we had to rumble with our Hammer Skin friends from Austin. The Axiom was a pretty cool club, kinda dark and run down with a good rock n' roll vibe, kinda reminded me of a club here in Portland called Satyricon. Cool thing that happened during Angkor Wat's soundcheck was when Rob got up and sang Black Flag's "Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie". I was able to record both bands sets from the soundboard that night. Before the first band went on, I was selling merch for both bands and these two super fans approached me who were heavily into anything death metal/grindcore and kept telling me that Cryptic Slaughter had to to play T.D.M.! (To Death Metal) First song (if you can call it that) on side 2 of Money Talks. At first I thought they were joking, but they were dead serious. At the end of each sentence they would give me a complementary Tom G Warrior death grunt, straight off of Morbid Tales. After giving them a few stickers to hopefully shut em' up, they gave me a demo by NY's Baphomet and an original copy of England's Sore Throat demo. You can hear these guys yelling at the band in-between songs on the live songs that are on the "Convicted" and " Money Talks" reissues on Relapse Records. Check out the cool live footage from this show on YouTube. I don't remember anything about the opening band Afterbirth, who I assume were from Houston. Once again Angkor Wat put on an amazing energetic live set. Cryptic Slaughter took the stage and ripped into song after song from Convicted and Money Talks before playing a few new songs from Stream Of Consciousness (which went over great with the crowd, even the Death Metal duo liked em'.) After an encore or two the show was finally over. Never thought I would be so happy for a show to be over and to pack up our gear and leave. All of us were ecstatic that no one from Austin ever showed up. Time to catch up on some sleep before we head off for Memphis tomorrow.
Next up......another weird motel, swimming, the Monsters of cock, redneck hillbilly's and guns.
Rob chillin' in Memphis. I think he's grabbing an imaginary beer.
Adam Grossman, Rob Nicholson and Danny Lohner in Detroit.
Yeah! Buddy.
Scott Peterson, Adam Grossman and David Nuss (back) and Danny Lohner on the floor in Detroit.
Mike Titsworth and Scott Peterson in Detroit.
Bill Crooks flipping me off in Detroit. Leave me alone and let me sleep!!!
1 comment:
Hey dude,
Just wanted to say thanks for posting this stuff! Really interesting to read.
Sad to have never seen them. I was just born 10 years too late.
Recently saw Napalm Death and the played a cover of 'Lowlife,' which was much appreciated!
Thanks again!
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