Flags of Hate, A Toxic Waltz and Too Much Vodka

The sign on the bathroom door reads:

"WARNING: Heavy use of strobe lights tonight!"

A night promising epilepsy? Sounds like a great time to me!

Kreator, Exodus, Belphegor, Warbringer and Epicurean were in Texas. My lingering bronchitis finally on the wane, I head down to San Antonio with my husband for an evening of death and thrash metal. Exodus and Kreator were two of much loved bands from my adolescence and Belphegor is hilariously brutal with their squarejaw death metal.

We arrive at the Scout Bar at 9pm to discover we've missed the first three bands. As the thrash resurgence quickens, promoters and clubs alike seem to be making the sensible move to start shows earlier, so the under 21 set can fully enjoy the chaos. I don't mind, but it's a paradigm shift in timing I have not yet mentally incorporated, and so, we miss more than half the show.

Behind the club, Belphegor is outside the now ubiquitous CruiseAmerica RV being provided to touring bands. Freshly post-set, they are sweaty and shirtless and Neanderthal. I am disappointed to have missed their set. Helmuth is quite jovial and insists we return after the show to the filthy camper to drink with him.

Mind you, neither of us drink, but with Helmuth, NO is not an option.

Inside, the Scout is fairly full, which always makes me happy. The scene is healthy, full of faces young enough to be my spawn. Most everyone is already sweating in the mid-80s Texas evening heat. Exodus is banging through Bonded by Blood. Although the band is mostly new members, they play the old material well and I am transported back to 1989 with my mother saying, "I HATE your shirt with the babies on it." Gary Holt, for whom I once held a passing 15-second fancy, still runs around the stage with good energy and enacts whammy bar torments upon his guitar to great effect.

I spot a friend wending her way through the crowd; after a quick greeting she and I head through the pit to the front. In their heyday, Exodus shows were fearfully revered: the pits were some of the most violent around. When they came through Buffalo in 1989 on their Fabulous Disaster tour, my boyfriend would not let me go. Disappointed, I moped at home and anxiously ran to the gym class we shared the next morning to find out what I'd missed. Ron was sporting a quail egg on his forehead with a large bloody gouge - that was the first and only time I'd ever seen him injured in the pit. I remember thinking, "Whew, I'm glad I didn't go."

As the years have passed, I've come to regret missing that show. Running up front with my friend, I reflect that it is now 20 years since that missed opportunity, 20 years of injuries, aging and fragility on me and where am I? At the rim of an Exodus pit in metal rabid San Antonio with my back to the moshers. But I am fine... mostly thanks to the fact that 70% of Texas metalheads have a BMI of 35+ and resemble ambulatory sacks of meal. No one is bony and no one has any stamina. It's like being surrounded by a bunch of hot, damp pillows who move crazily in cycles of 20 or 30 seconds, followed by exhausted stillness for 10 minutes or so.

"PLAY TOXIC WALTZ!" is the common cry during the set. My friend turns to me, laughing. "They aren't gonna play it, I bet they're sorry they ever wrote it!" True, Toxic Waltz tends to be roundly hated by many metal fans - it's a silly song at best, with lyrics so basic a nine year old could have done better. But... I have to admit, I like it. Always have. I loved the video: flying white Cons and the band running around the stage, Rick Hunolt's amazing leap... it celebrated what we thrashers did with no apologies. I remember sitting on the couch in my living room watching it with my boyfriend and holding his hand. Innocent little thrasher I was. That song is forever interwoven into that feeling of teenage wonder.

I am surprised when Rob Dukes announces Toxic Waltz as the last song. "I want to see this entire room - from the back to the front - fucking moving!" he screams. People oblige for about 20 seconds until their lives of Interwebz and Xbox bid them slow down, heave for breath. As for me? I think about 20 years again as I richochet between sweaty pillow-men, and how in a way, this is a redemption for missing Exodus so long ago. I am gleeful. Once I was 17 and moping I was forbidden to go see this band, now, nearly 40, I am there, in the pit, getting buffeted and having a blast.

An open circle closes in my psyche.

Kreator... well, seeing them in 1989 was a highlight of my show-going career - I banged until I was crosseyed. Frank Blackfire came straight to me and placed his pick firmly in my hand at the end of the set. Back then, that kind of contact blew my mind. I left the club moony and swooning, at least until I got a good look at a photo of Frank the next day and realized that swooning wasn't really merited.

The sign on the bathroom door about strobes wasn't kidding. Five or six positioned at the rear of the stage constantly blast the crowd in time with the double-bass. The bouncer makes an eight year old kid at the barrier put on sunglasses - can't have the kiddies twitching out in the middle of Violent Revolution. The bright lights allow me to observe how most of the front row doesn't seem to understand why they are there; blank faces stare up at Mille and crew for most of the set. A sloppy girl doing dance club hand movements seems to know the songs fairly well, although she isn't metal in the least. I quietly cheer when her slightly off-time clapping forces her huge plastic sunglasses to eject themselves from where she's stored them in her cleavage. Next to her, a 300+ pound female gothapotamus moos vapidly at the band. The brilliant strobes illuminate the tic-tac-toe board of cutting scars on her hamhock arms. I feel an intense impulse to get a Sharpie and ask someone if they want to go a couple rounds with me...

A lot of Kreator's material misses the mark, but they do play the classics: Extreme Agression, Pleasure to Kill and Flag of Hate, to name a few. Mille's unnecessary and overlong crowd-baiting before Flag has us ready to bail, but he only incites the crowd to scream "HATE!!!" three times, not the six or seven as we had heard he'd done on previous tours.

The show now over, we are beholden to keep our promise to go "have a drink" with Belphegor. Helmuth ushers us in to the den of iniquity that the CruiseAmerica has become. Greetings with various band members and tour support folk are exchanged. Whiskey is poured and knocked back. We think we are done, but no - now a bottle of Skyy vodka is thrust into our faces. "Vodka shot, come on!" We oblige. I hate beer and dislike 99% of wine, but I can handle hard liquor - perhaps because gulping is considered acceptable; the suffering only lasts a few seconds. Helmuth uses his fabulous peer-pressure skills to force another small shot down our craws before relenting. He then attempts to get us to smoke but finds no traction there. We depart the garbage-laden camper to the sidewalk outside and chat.

Five minutes later, I'm leaning heavily against the RV. The world is starting to slant slightly to the left and my eyes don't track so well. Helmuth cycles between good-naturedly insulting anyone in his line of sight and attempting to get us to drink more. I laugh too loudly and can't stop clapping my hands together over the off-color jokes and stories being told. After 30 minutes, my status as non-driver is exploited - the king of metal peer-pressure drags me back into the RV to toss back the last of the Skyy with him. Outside, I slug myself back up against the side of the Cruise and remain there until my husband announces it's time to leave. The walk to the car is done very carefully - pick up your feet - I pour into the passenger seat and promptly slant to the left.

As we drive home, I reflect on how much time has passed between the amazing metal gravy days of 1989 and now. How the thread is still unbroken. How the fire still burns. How I'm seeing a whole new generation of young kids at thrash shows - their pimply faces full of black, burning light. When Frank Blackfire put that pick in my hand I was still a round-faced little girl; now my hair is going gray. I think about how we are all aging relentlessly yet holding on to metal just as relentlessly. I think, as I often do, of my mother's desperate admonitions that this was just a phase. Yes, mother - the phase that never ends.

Home now. I flop down into bed. The room takes repeated hard lefts on a one second cycle. Gaaaah, make it stop. Yet, I am happy. I closed a circle tonight and once again saw why I stick with this sometimes crazy way of being. I renew two promises: to never let go of metal and to never, EVER let Helmuth make me drink that much again.