BrontoScorpio

The Empress Ale House, Edmonton, AB May 21

BY Fish GriwkowskyPublished Jun 1, 2009

When a metal band lays down a layer of American Psycho plastic setting up, be warned: tonight, there will be blood. Little did we know how much, and with what gusto it could be spilled. Thanks to BrontoScorpio, prop metal is alive, thriving, and whipping pig hearts at the floor in Edmonton. In a city besieged by actual violence, perhaps this show — with its Savage Sword of Conan role-playing — is an understandable spectacle of ownership.

Either way, holy, man. In such a tight, rustic venue is it ever weird to watch a pair of beautiful singers perform disturbing theatre like this, screaming over rabid, oddly funk-tinged guitar licks. I'll tease no more and simply catalogue the horrors. First flew the breast milk, the ironically named Roz Christian coming at her co-vocalist Kristine Nutting with a knife. This business all happened under an enormous Halloween Satan. The wretched, looming creature took up half the deck, barely leaving an inch for guitarist Curtis Ross, Alan Hildebrandt on four-string rhythm. Both rockers dressed as steppe barbarians as the women sang of pharaoh slaves and revenge.

Anyway, as the rusted and frantic power chords flew, so did the blood. An angel in a prom dress was pulled from the audience and slaughtered behind a sheet (classic Alice Cooper move). Then, staring with dead, glaring, terrifying eyes, Nutting ripped a Safeway turkey to pieces and "had sex with it" using a silver, home-made, uh, "personal massager."

Grinning and stupefied, the crowd merely waited for the next attack, and on they came in a flurry of zombie, Vegas high kicks and Iron Maiden spawned music, powerful enough to support the devil's twisted slideshow.

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