D.R.I.
Convicted, Conspiracy
Principal Club Theatre, Thessaloniki, Greece
16/3/2011.
After eight long years of abscence, the mighty Dirty Rotten Imbeciles returned to Thessaloniki and Greece in general. Their live performance in 2003 was one of the most phenomenal many people have ever seen and it was acknowledged as one of the most violent too, as the people were filled with affinity and would smash everything in their wake inside Hydrogeios Club then (now named Block 33). Regarding the fact that seasons have changed a lot and if you add the fact that as we grow up, less people that we knew come to the gigs, then we expected the live to be great and the people to be not so great. This was proved by the presence of less than 300 persons, in a day where a local team was playing and many that would attend the show decided to go the football match.
Conspiracy from Thessaloniki that opened the show is a band that always is filled with energy. This was the fourth time I saw them live and for sure it was the best. I think it suits them a lot to play in Principal because they had an even better sound this time than their support show with Annihilator and their whole performance was a click higher. They played some more than half an hour and the crowd seemed to boost them as much as they could. As always, thrash in the old school way with the cover of ”United Forces” by S.O.D. never missing from their live set. They gained the applause of the crowd and they can be sure that everything will get better once they go on like this. Thumbs up to the Gammacide t-shirt of the singer.
Convicted from the city of Volos were the next to play. More metallic way of thrashing in their music compared to some crossover incidents of Conspiracy and with a great sound also, the trio managed to play about 35 minutes and gave a good performance too. Full of energy, with the bassist looking as a clone of AC/DC’s Angus Young, banging his head and dancing his ass out in every inch of the stage, riffs following one another and doublebass filling the aggressive vocals. I must say that I was not very familiar with their music, but I can also tell that they won the impressions for sure. I wish them good luck in the future and have as many gigs as possible. They believe in what they do and that’s the best part of the whole story.
D.R.I. entered the stage full of confidence and entering with ”Beneath The Wheel”, the party started early and didn’t stop until the last minute. As far as performance is concerned, in my ears they were even better than 2003 and continued distributing pain and moshing with tracks such as ”Acid Rain”, ”Commuter Man”, ”Thrashard” (hell broke loose on that one), ”Argument Then War”, ”I Don’t Need Society” (a tear flows everytime I listen to this) and ”Who Am I?”. Needless to say anything about Kurt Brecht as a frontman, though my eye caught a moment where he had a kind of an argue with a fan trying to get on the stage at a point. Harald Oimoen on bass accompanied by the steady drumming of Rob Rampy created a great rhythm section.
But the main part of my joy was to see Spike Cassidy on guitars healthy and smiling, as he had a struggle with cancer, from which he has succesfully recovered and he’s back in duty once again. The band played 95 minutes totally with more than 30 songs presented and as the show was reaching the end, tracks like ”Couch Slouch”, ”Yes Ma’am”, ”Violent Pacification” and of course, the mighty ”The Five Year Plan” which ended the show, poured some more adrenaline to all the fans. There’s little to say about bands like D.R.I. and their honesty, I just wish it won’t be another eight years until we see them next time. As far as the ones who didn’t come are concerned… We win, they lose!
Aggelos “Redneck” Katsouras.