ShowListing.RttP{MAY 6th! The Network, The Binary Code, Hivesmasher and MORE in Lowell!}

Pit Stories: "Don’t Do This To El Guapo" (a.k.a. "Rage In The Basement")

We've been talking to bands and fans everywhere to get their favorite mosh pit stories. This week The Binary Code guitarist Jesse Zuretti sends in a short-story length submission that he even titled "Don’t Do This To El Guapo."

A wise man by the name of Bas Rutten once said, “He tried to kill me, now I gotta return the favor."

Back in May we did a quick, week-long jog of dates with a gaggle of maniacs called Gloominous Doom. What seemed sure to be a super smooth run of shows turned quickly into a giant rager by the time we hit our first night. The second date had us doing an on-air performance and interview for UMass Lowell‘s Stress Factory Radio Station before our much anticipated basement show with the_Network and Hivesmasher. The show was going down in the concrete slab beneath the house where the Hivesmasher cubs keep all of their honey. This makes only for a dangerous, loud, and uncontrollable night from what we learned very quickly. Brett, our faithful live Bass-Master 3000 (also of East of the Wall/Biclops/Day Without Dawn/Postman Syndrome/Yoko Ono/Rolling Stones/Chumbawamba notoriety) managed to score a nice boo-boo from good old Aaron Heinold of Hivesmasher, incurring the aftermath of a Hivesmasher stunt induced by a severe amount of alcohol consumption. Read with caution, in case you ever plan on going to one of these basement shows with the level of rage emanating from the bands on the bill.

We’re nearing the end of our set, which was nothing more than a pain in the ass for me, as I broke a string nearly every note I played (thanks to Joseph Spiller of System Divide/Aborted & Kevin from the_Network, I was able to switch over to his guitar, and break his strings). The rage in the air is starting to feel real heavy. Not a frustrated rage, but a rage created in cooperation by the bands and the show-goers. The made-for-pain-and-violence setup of the basement made it ever so easy for the rage-aholics to spread their wings of anger, and throw bottles and karate dance in the 10x30 space we rocked in. As we’re moving our crap out of the way for the_Network, we can feel the kids there with like-minded angst toward humanity getting pumped for the misanthropic gaggle of drunken outdoorsmen to start playing their ferocious set. Even without a bassist, these guys managed to make the concrete crumble and shake by the end of their set.

As soon as Hivesmasher pummels their way into their first song, the maniacs comprising the entire audience start raging a level higher. Broken glass covers the floor where Converse sneakers and Sauconys patter to the beat of the grind. A large man dressed in a bright orange windbreaker suit (head to toe, this guy was the sweetest deal of the night) flails his arms and legs, kicking and air chopping, sort of like a graceful asylum patient with a jar of centipedes dumped into his now pried-open straightjacket. Nevertheless, the pot's about to boil, and we're in the eye of the shit-storm.

At a show we play, 9 times out of 10, you can find Brett up front, dead center, head banging in all of his 110lb glory for every single band on the bill. As per usual, there was no deviation from the norm on this particular night - especially since Hivesmasher are long-time amigos of Brett and the East of the Wall crew. This could go both ways: it could be a “bro-down” set, where a band acknowledges the sweetness of bros getting together and being idiots, or Hivesmasher could simply acknowledge Brett’s presence by smashing a microphone into his eye socket.

I'm sitting next to our merch table in the back of the room, watching the kids near the band go ape shit, when all of a sudden Little Man Brett comes trudging over to me, half bent over, holding his hands over his right eye. When he moves his hands away from his eyes, I do the typical “Ooooo, sheeeit that looks bad” in response to the wound. The microphone Aaron decided to use to penetrate Brett’s skull with apparently managed to snag the outer right brow and cheek causing it to bleed quite a bit. Essentially, the mic did not fit into Brett’s skull through his eye socket. Now, Brett might be a tiny guy, but he proved to be anything but a pussy. He simply takes a shirt, holds it up to his face to keep the blood out of his eye, and walks right back up to the front of the “stage” area, head-banging as if nothing happened. And this was only one song in!

Aaron and the Hivesmasher dudes really made us feel like we were a part of some kind of smashing brotherhood by the end of the night. Brett opted out of getting stitches at any point during the tour (and did not get stitches any time after the tour).