Municipal Waste / Iron Lung – Manchester 04/12/08

The Music Box, Manchester 04/12/08

As Iron Lung appeared onstage the crowd surged and swelled forward, eager to get a glimpse of the two-headed beast. The duo wasted no time launching into a set of pulverising, Ringworm-like heaviness. Drummer/vocalist/bruiser Jensen, besides smashing the shit out of his kit and larynx, also provided comic banter between songs and during one interval a punter paradoxically asked ‘Is he a midget?’ Bleak sounding and unforgiving in its delivery, Iron Lung’s set was an inversion of the headliner’s party-thrash.

Municipal Waste emerged to a hero’s welcome; beer-fuelled madness was imminent. The energy levels in The Music Box increased ten-fold as the previously static audience were transformed into rampaging thrashers as the band assailed them with material from their back catalogue. ‘Headbanger Face Rip’, ‘The Thrashin’ of The Christ and ‘Sadistic Magician’ soundtracked the visual chaos as the mosh-pit flailed and raged whilst overhead stage-divers fell through gaps in the writhing mass of sweating bodies. The crowd was a decent mixture of heavy music fans but one individual stood out from the crowd – a man dressed in a Santa outfit. This beacon of Christmas was rightly called up onstage by the band and then stage-dived into the pit whereupon his most festive of uniforms was torn from his very skeleton, then held aloft by the bloodthirsty perpetrators. Soon after, The Waste announced they’d temporarily renamed 17 second scather ‘I want to Kill The President’ to ‘I Want To Chill With The President’ depending on Obama’s performance in office. A major highlight was when the band launched into the highly anticipated ‘Born To Party’ which contains the must-shout-a-long Municipal Waste is gonna fuck you up!!! The stage was immediately invaded and the booze-fuelled atmosphere reached a new apex.

The band delivered what amounted to a ‘best of’ set which absolutely flew by and left everyone baying for more. Time flies when you’re having fun and at MW gigs so does blood, beer, sweat and hair.

Scribed by: Pete Worth