Chaos In Tejas Killed It This Year

Trash Talk photo courtesy Alison Narro.

Thursday 05/21

Trash Talk - Mohawk

Trash Talk delivered on the healthy storm of buzz that gathered running up to their set at Mohawk. Frontman Lee Spielman spent as much time offstage as on, launching himself into the crowd and leaving an unfortunate roadie to make sure his trailing mic cord didn't strangle anybody. Despite a guitar shortout on the final song, which saw guitarist Garrett spraying his tallboy into the audience and stalking off the stage in frustration, the set left us hungry for more. As it turns out, Trash Talk return to Austin next month to play Red 7 with Leftover Crack and The Casualties. You have been warned. -Matthew DeWitt

the thermals. photo by chad wadsworth for austinist

FRIDAY 05/22

The Thermals - Mohawk

Portland trio The Thermals, as expected, turned in an exhilarating set of robust pop-punk on Friday night at The Mohawk. The crowd was already buzzing, having already enjoyed quality performances by The Shaky Hands and Til We're Blue Or Destroy (who later played an encore show inside after The Thermals). Hutch Harris' typically anthemic vocal delivery imparted prophetic musings aplenty, and the vibrant rhythm section inevitably transferred doses of energy into a crowd right in the thick of Chaos In Tejas 5. The Thermals delivered irresistible melodies, catchy hooks, and of course, the almost annoying yet undeniable chant of "oh-way-ow oh-whoa-oh" (in the title track of the record Now We Can See) in over an hour chock-full of fuzzy garage-pop ditties. Some older classics were naturally in the mix as well -- we were extremely excited to hear the short but epic anthem "Everything Thermals" although we didn't get to enjoy some of our favorite F*ckin A selections. Still the crowd was satisfied, many jumping up and down with the beat for reasonable stretches of time, others sustaining equally lengthy clap-alongs. - Adi Anand

crowd at the business. photo by tyler nutter for austinist

SATURDAY 05/23

The Business - Red 7

UK Oi! godfathers The Business attracted one of the more colorful crowds to their Saturday performance at Red 7. Both kids and old-timers stuck to traditionalist standards, codified in the 1970s or earlier, demanded by their chosen styles--from the dressed-up mods, sharps and skins (not at all to be confused with racist skinheads—the original UK skin movement was influenced by Jamaican rude boy culture) to the polar opposite raggedness of the gutterpunk crowd, everybody had it nailed. As one festival organizer put it to us, if any two nights could have “gone wrong” during Chaos In Tejas, this was one of them—as a genre, Oi! has had an unfortunate association with violence. Yet personal hostilities remained out of sight, and The Business brought the same raw punk energy they originally delivered in the 1980s. Much like the looks adopted by the assembled crowd, adding thirty years to the band’s lifetime apparently didn’t change much. -Matthew DeWitt (as told by Nash Cook)

SUNDAY 05/24

Drunkdriver - Sound On Sound Records (instore)

New York trio Drunkdriver brought the acrid atmosphere of a New York basement show to the North Loop Sunday afternoon. Indeed, the entire neighborhood seemed awash with St. Mark’s Place spillover, as tattooed street punks, goths, new wavers etc. swigged forties and enjoyed the relatively mellow afternoon. Inside, the store was of course a blast furnace, exacerbated by a wall-to-wall crowd and a band determined to sweat out their set Turkish bath style. The mood, best described as “restless,” could be measured by the audience’s choice of beverage—malt liquor energy drinks with names like “Joose” seemed to outnumber beers by two to one. Live, Drunkdriver came off more like a straightforward hardcore band than the semi-industrial bludgeoning machine detailed in their recorded output. Still, the band knows their dynamics, evidenced by the moment, during the last song, when the beat dropped and every head in the audience began nodding in rhythmic satisfaction. And there’s no denying the charm of a model-pretty hardcore singer whose entire patter consists of “two more songs,” “one more song,” and “thanks for coming out.” -Matthew DeWitt

eyehategod at red 7. photo by nash cook for austinist

SUNDAY 05/24

Harvey Milk, Eyehategod - Red 7

The fest went out with a bang last night at Red 7, with two sets of pummeling amp worship by metal bands with distinctly different takes on Southern rock. Following a shambolic set by Japanese hardcore traditionalists Crude, in which the soundcheck continued into the actual set for an interminable period, Atlanta trio Harvey Milk took immediate control of the stage with a lurching, stop-start riff so heavy that time seemed to slow. Having formed in the 1990s and lain fallow for years, Harvey Milk are enjoying a career renaissance of sorts, and thank goodness.

Headlining was the legendary New Orleans sludge of Eyehategod, a band so oppressively dense and negative that the songs become almost life-affirming through the sheer force of will necessary to make such heavy music. Yet the songs have an undeniably Southern vibe, seen in the bluesy riffs and the band’s savvy rhythmic interplay. The band played tight and loose, running through clockwork time changes, subtle shifts in rhythm, and those everpresent swells of feedback. The band ran through all the “hits,” with “Dixie Whisky,” “My Name Is God (I Hate You),” and “Left To Starve” proving to be highlights. It should be noted that singer Mike Williams, besides being an utterly hypnotic stage presence (at one point, he held up the mic by its cord and punched it over and over), also proved to be one of the funniest people seen onstage all weekend. “Thanks for staying out all night to come see us,” he told the crowd midway through the set. “We know that, Neurosis patch or not, you gotta be at Best Buy at 8am tomorrow morning, selling fucking Guitar Hero.” -Matthew DeWitt