ScumFest 2011 Review

With so many fantastic bands on the one bill, I’d been looking forward to this gig for a long time. Arriving on the Friday to the Bussey Building in Peckham, you are greeted by the friendly Scum Fest Crew. Then you head in through the graffiti covered courtyard with huge pieces by Roa and Phlegm. Previous to this I’d only ever seen Roa’s huge graffiti pieces on the internet. A really unique black and white style of decayed looking birds, skulls and bones. Really added to the whole feel of the music for the weekend. A few heads were saying all the graffiti made the place look much like the KØPI Squat in Germany. So the main words for the weekend were ‘KØPI-esque’, ‘apocalyptic’ and of course ‘crust’. Now onto the the music review and how to write this without using the word ‘crust’ every second sentence!

First on stage were THE LOWEST FORM featuring folk from Birds Of Prey and Army Of Flying Robots. Very much aggressive thrashed out raw hardcore. Hard to be first band on at a large festival like this, so only received a polite applause, but deserved better. Next up ICON OF EVIL from Poland, with members from very impressive bands Evil, Infekcja and more. People were coming in steady at this point. And I’m sure the heavy downtuned Bolt Thrower styled riffs kept them coming. The musicianship exemplary, a band I really want to hear more of. In it for the long haul, SIMBIOSE from Portugal up next had that same ferocious Extreme Noise Terror type presence. Dual vocaled, adrenaline pumping, hard hitting crusty grind type sound. An intense performance setting the crowd off from the first note.

APPALACHIAN TERROR UNIT from the US take the stage, they are in the middle of a big European tour. So you’d imagine they would be exhausted at this point. Well think again, they are in mighty form. A total arse-kicking, mass of dreadlocks and spikes gather around the stage. ‘We will continue to break the law and destroy property’ is an anthem already, I think the title says it all. They give an unforgettable performance, anarcho as fuck. Like a revolutionary movement, they play music that is an assault on our current fucked up Orwellian world. Best of luck to them on the remaining tour. A quick run up to the offy for a break from the music. And back in to catch MEINHOF‘s set, they seem to be just getting better and better every time I see them. Raw catchy spikey punk with plenty of energy. A serious punk fury from just three people. Originally SHADES OF GREY were meant to play at this but had to pull out. So at last minute notice local band AGNOSY played instead. Fuck me what a performance, featuring ex-members from Beginning Of The End. They still have that sneaking through a dark corridor atmospheric type riffs which slowly build into total fucking crust armageddon. I hope they or someone else releases something by them soon, as the rafters of the building shook while they played.

Was a late night but Saturday arrived, and I missed BULLET RIDDEN because the train we were getting was cancelled. I had being listening to their album “Songs Written Before Jumping Out of an Eight Story Window” on repeat. You know when you go to a festival and you have a list of the main bands you wanted to see they were one of them… fuckin’ train station bastards! So drank and talked to to various folk until GREEN RIVER KILLER from Italy came on. Really heavy crusty grunting styled vocals with out and out rock ‘n’ roll punk rock riffs, damn good. Off for some vegan food upstairs, a flick through the stalls (everything from anarchist theory to Discharge knickers!) and then punk bingo. By the time I came back downstairs again, I’d completely missed GENITAL DEFORMITIES. Tom Croft from the band has sang with Doom and Extreme Noise Terror in the past, so it gives a bit of a clue of what they sound like.

FUK add some serious punk rock to Saturday’s line-up. They feature Gabba from Chaos UK on guitar. A friend told me beforehand that they played ‘100% Two Fingers in the Air Punk Rock’ era Chaos UK. I thought that was pretty apt alright, punk as fuck. Despite some sound problems DEVIATED INSTINCT go down a storm. A black mire of guttural guitar riffs and growls backed up with thumping distorted bass and heavy pounding drums. They completely capture that dirty, plague like sound that became known as stenchcore. A fucking storming performance and forever legendary.

Since it’s conception in 2004 ScumFest has raised over £7,000 for wide range of grass roots charities, organisations, causes and struggles both locally and internationally. The Scumfest Collective is 100% non profit and all proceeds go directly to the causes a gig or festival is in aid of. This year it was a benefit for Te Whare Roimata (the House of Tears) a grass-roots self-help group, Polish Anti-Hate Crimes Group and the funeral costs for Phil Vane from Extreme Noise Terror who tragically passed away in February of this year.

This was such an emotional performance by EXTREME NOISE TERROR. This was their first gig since Phil’s passing. A white sheet hung in front of the stage with a photo of Phil Vane projected onto it. The band asked for 10 seconds of silence to remember Phil, where singer Dean hugged Phil’s son Sam. The sheet comes down to a barrage of noise, then they gave one of the most intense performances a band could ever give. Tom from Genital Deformities sang Phil’s parts and did a great job stirring up the crowd. Such a relentless frenzy, camera’s flashing, at times it was hard to tell where the stage was with so many people surrounding it. This is a performance I’ll remember for my lifetime. ENT are pioneers of crust punk and still have that spark. It must have been very hard for UNHAIM to follow on from a performance like that. At times very melodic but then breaking into brutal Swedish and Japanese inspired crust. This has been a great weekend so far.

ScumFest post-gig Sunday the 29th of May at the Grosvenor pub, in Stockwell. Arriving that sunday night I think it was one of the quietest crowds hanging around outside. A lot of folks feeling rough after the last two days. This was the hair of the dog gig, I reckon. Locals CTHULHU YOUTH‘s music is very much based around the drumming. Thrashed out powerviolence by just a drummer and a guitarist, but create a great wall of sound. One drunk guy jumping all over the place for them, but in a good friendly way. FUCK RIGHT OFF from Birmingham play real short blast beat hardcore and do a great version of Rudimentary Peni’s ‘Blissful Myth’, with lot’s of audience participation. Now the first of the two touring Czech crust bands EVIDENCE SMRTI. To me I thought these were one of the best bands of the weekend… along with so many others I suppose! At times reminding me of terminal filth period Deviated Instinct. Evidence Smrti’s lead guitarist goes to the drums to join the last band of the whole weekend RISPOSTA who blast out the weekend with dirty, screamed out crust making the whole weekend complete. This was one of the best music festivals I’ve ever gone to I reckon, hanging out with folks from all over the globe from Japan, mainland Europe and the US. Great to be in such a multicultural place full of folk with like-minded ethics and music taste. Thanks so much to the folk behind Scumfest for organising such a great event. Here’s to the next one.

www.scumfest.org