Skinless' first Boston appearance 11/20/15

Upstate NY's own Skinless has been banging heads since 1992, rearing 5 albums, all supported by countless tours. This latest album, is not seeing tour support, but plenty of shows to fill the months.  Now, for some reason, those earlier album's tours never made it out to Boston, so, Skinless and Boston finally had a long over due devirginizationing throw down, to end off 2015. Skinless regularly played closer to NY, in western Mass. namely the Palladium, which, Sherwood, vocalist of Skinless, was banned back in 2001 for stage diving off the PA, amonst other stuff. Anyway, here I was merchin/drivin/roadietc for Skinless, ( I have for the last couple albums) at the Brighton Music Hall, I was told it was once called Harper's Ferry, and had a lot of good bands rock the place. There's good and cheap South American food next door, if ya ever there, get some. 
 A band called Scalpel opened, but missed them, I was a bit busy with T shirts, and what not. Then it was Dysentery up next. No, I didn't get it from eating the pupusa next door, it was the name of the band up next. They put on what sounded to me like NYDM, and the slam was in full effect. The vocalist is from Tentacles and Streetsweeper, some of upstate NY's finest bands to grace that scene. The crowd in Boston was a cool, generous, old school, heavy patched battle jacket sorta crowd. They were a sweaty bunch, slamming like crazy, a little circle pit action, every one seemed to have fun with it.

Next up to bat was Abnormality, from Boston. They provided your basic death metal style, not as slam-mosh tastic as Dysentery, though the crowd was slamming and moshing up the joint, displaying their appreciation for death metal coming to Boston. I must mention that Abnormality is fronted by a stunning woman named Mallika Sundaramurthy, whom has a deep guttural growl, that matches any male counterpart of hers that I have ever heard. She also at times accompanied her deep death metal vocals with some black metal dying witch screech that makes it's so tasty as a total package.  Look for my interview with Mallika, for further detail about their up and coming death metal band to look out for, they just got signed to a major metal label, and new album soon, etc. 

Next up, it took over 20 years, but Skinless finally hit the stage in Boston. The completely grateful and exuberant crowd responded with fist and headbangin mania, circle pit spazz outs, karate moshers and football clobbering hooligans, all hitting it with a grin. Everyone had a blast, the club sounded great, oh yeah, Bob flubbed a song, haha, and Sherwood said "If some motherfucker comes thru that door waving an AK, I want everybody to attack that fucker and kill him!"
Good times in Boston, that scene is hungry for the death metal, and coming from NY, their scene greeted NYDM style with open arms. 

Noah and Joe Boston 2015

NY vs. Boston aside, we are more neighbors than enemies with Boston, and Mass. as a whole, and it's safe to say as a New Yorker, BOSTON RULES!!!!
*all photos by George DeMers* aka don't steal my blurry shots dickwad