It was too good an opportunity to miss... A free weekend and our erstwhile D-beat crust punk friends, Crutches from Sweden are playing in Berlin. Steve Sync and myself have travelled far and wide for many years, sometimes as bandmates, always as buddies. Far from being jetsetters, we find the cheapest option available and press Go! This time, a direct flight from the North West of Britain to Berlin was way too expensive for our punk rock pockets so we found a route from Liverpool to the Polish city of Szczecin (no, I hadn't heard of it either). This involved rising at stupid o'clock on Friday morning - (my Thursday evening involved rehearsing at Orange Studios with Spam Javelin ahead of our own batch of gigs later this month). I dropped a gear and smashed the accelerator into the floor and sped to Steve's hometown of Rhyl, picking up a succulent Chinese meal along the way, and after a couple of hours' snoozing in the spare room, we headed to Liverpool airport for the 5.45am flight to Szczecin.
It was a clockwork kind of weekend - everything went to plan - everything fell into place. The car parking spot at the airport (always more expensive than the flight), through security, onto the plane, photographed and fingerprinted by border control in Szczecin, straight onto a train to the city (45min ride), and onto a £14 Flixbus for a two hour journey to Alexanderplatz in Berlin. We picked up the 300 bus to Eastside Gallery right next to the heavily graffiti'd Berlin Wall, found our hotel and then headed out to the venue, Reset (via some punk rock pubs). It was early, but we snuck our heads round the door in the venue and found Andreas, Daniel, Oskar and Tom of Crutches milling about with the other bands. I had last seen Crutches on their Greek mini-tour late last year, so it was good to catch-up with them again and share a pint (or twelve!) of Berliner with them. We were soon joined by more old friends in the form of Nic and Nina and the venue filled up with people and a party atmosphere - ready for some grinding noise!
Despite a heavy hungover head, I woke up next morning laughing. What a great night! We were eventually asked to leave the venue as those running it wanted to go home! All three bands played short but blisteringly sharp sets. CRE-DES started things off with their rumbling brutalist shouty noise from Hanover. Their Demo (here on Bandcamp) is actually better than the live set, but then again my attention was spread thin from talking to many people at the same time.
Horrific Visions were up next, and they upped the ante - like a reversal of CRE-DES, their live set was better than their Bandcamp EP, which is also very good. Visually striking, the Berlin band are fronted by Kody (who I believe moved here from Indonesia), and they've played with Crutches on previous visits to the German capitol. It's almost hypnotic D-beat (if there's such a thing) and great entertainment.
On day seven of an eight date tour, Sweden's Crutches were on fire (as were their livers). They volleyed a very short, yet uncompromising set at the German (and Welsh) crowd. They mangeled as we begged for freedom...
You too can get mangeled here - bandcamp
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