THERE has never been a music documentary like this.
Blood was flowing everywhere. Shards of glass lodged in shards of skin. Members of the group pretend to be wrestlers. Late-night visits to gas station bathrooms to mend cut flesh and mop up gaping wounds.
Welcome to the aptly named Stabbed in the Face, a film about life on the road with Eat the Turnbuckle (ETT), the self-proclaimed “most violent band” in the world formed in 2012, broke up five years later, and recently made a shocking – but predictably – vicious comeback.
A toxic blend of ultra-hard death metal and wrestling culminates in utter chaos on and off stage as the band documents a career that has taken them from Philadelphia to Europe on a one-way trail of destruction and mayhem.
Ultra-Violent Death Match Rock & Roll is not for the faint of heart – and neither is the film.
HELLO
Drummer Mike Beer (known as Beer Dust) had the good idea to start documenting this madness – he didn’t reveal his film project to any of the other members, deciding to continue in secret before coming clean – and what followed, thanks to the directorial talents of his friend Eric Fisher of Patchtown Films, was a 90-minute journey into chaos.
Oddly enough, given the absolute chaos on stage and in the halls, the music takes a back seat.
“When you pour a half-gallon of blood on your face, you don’t do arpeggio sweeps,” Beer told the US Sun about the lack of musical impact of the film which is currently being sold out at several film festivals leading.
“We tried to make songs that you can remember the words to and sing them and that’s it. Let’s not kid ourselves.”
Beer says these particularly wild scenes can be described as “performance art.”
But don’t worry, Captain Hook, Chubb Rock, El-Shak-O, Jag-13 and Beer Dust aren’t going to destroy your local movie theater anytime soon.
Inspired by the brutality of Death Match wrestling, Eat the Turnbuckle would take the stage, night after night, dressed in his wrestling costume and, while unleashing eardrum-piercing metal, perform a series of choreographed wrestling moves and play out storylines .
They made a shock return earlier this year, and the US Sun was on hand to see Beer and his friends abruptly roll back the years and return to their glory, their blood-soaked days.
The Royal Bloodbath, won by Death Match legend Necrobutcher, was as grizzly as it sounds.
WEAPONS SHARPENED BY RAZORS
The crowd – then as now – went crazy and often started fighting among themselves, while Beer and his friends smashed each other in the face with all kinds of weapons.
“The worst ones you can crush with are those old-fashioned desk lamps,” Beer said with a smile. “They’re all dirty, the glass gets everywhere and is razor sharp. When they’re broken, they become like sabers.”
“There are decent ways to get hit,” Beer continued without a hint of understatement. “You want to try placing them across your back or directly on top of your head. These smaller ones are horrible. Someone brought some to our last show – I got rid of them immediately.”
One night, a guitarist named Jabber had a glass stuck in his neck after walking into a broken light tube resting on someone’s shoulder. Lesser mortals would have collapsed on the spot. Eating the tensioner is not normal though.
CRAZY CHAOS
He went to the hospital, had the blister fragment removed and continued to swing and swing.
The group, who Beer said never put “a dime in their pockets,” often ended the night crammed into a van and headed to a motel. Sometimes they would all stay in the same room and literally dust themselves off before leaving.
“One place gave us black towels when we arrived,” Beer recalls. “They knew what trouble we were in.”
“We looked crazy,” he added. “I felt sorry for everyone who worked at 3 a.m. and saw us shirtless, dusting each other with paper towels to get the glass off our backs.”
Looking at some of the graphic images, it is remarkable that no one was ever seriously injured.
However, they got closer during a stormy concert in Mexico.
The bar served very cheap beer in German style beer mugs, made of very thick glass. ETT was waiting to take the stage, but all hell was already breaking loose.
“People were swinging around all this broken glass in the mosh pit and someone got hurt,” Beer said.
“The cops came and we were covered in blood. I was like, ‘It wasn’t us, we had nothing to do with this.'”
While fans, for the most part, go home happy, maybe a little sore, but intact, the same can’t be said for the band.
In France, Beer, who doesn’t always get involved in stage wars, was asked by singer El-Shak if he wanted to be suplexed on stage.
A suplex is a wrestling move that involves lifting someone up and then hitting them on their back.
Not Everyone Is Trained – “We really could have gone to the wall with everyone trained, but it’s six idiots who can’t get together in a room, so that didn’t really happen,” a -he declared – and the end result was painful. .
“It sounded good and he tried to coach me,” Beer recalled. “He told me not to bend my foot, but I did and landed on the ball of my foot. It was like lightning.”
With a broken, throbbing foot, ETT traveled 10 hours to the next venue with his drummer in excruciating pain. Beer has been sober for 18 years and felt bad even while taking painkillers, but it was necessary.
A quick trip to the hospital the next day led doctors to strongly advise letting the injury heal – which meant no concerts or pedals.
“That wasn’t an option, I played in the trunk for 20 shows,” Beer said proudly.
Philadelphia, the spiritual home of wrestling in the United States, blew it, but Beer says the crowds in Europe were something else.
Some club owners – like the one in Glasgow, Scotland – got wind of the brewing storm and decided to cancel the show, just to be safe.
But there were many venues in England, Germany and across the continent who totally agreed.
“Those crowds were very excited, but they weren’t as violent as the crowds back home,” Beer remembers.
ETT may have brought the house down earlier this month, but a full-fledged comeback is far from sealed.
Singer El-Shak has built a career as a wrestler in his own right, while the other members of the group have responsibilities and families to take care of.
If Japan, which has a rich wrestling culture and, according to Beer, a “crazy” death match scene, comes along, the answer might be different.
“It’s like an abusive relationship,” the drummer said. “You know the situation is potentially bad, but you keep coming back for more.”
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