Heavy Artillery final gig, epic roast dinner, and granny undies

My head hurts. Epic night last night (being Saturday night, where I come from). First, we had friends over for a jam in the basement drum dungeon.

CDH behind the drumkit

Johnowar doing "Dio" style vocals for Blackmore's Night. Actually really worked.

While they were jamming, I, the unmusical one, made dinner – slow roasted pork with crackling, potatoes and kumera, falafal and honey roasted vegetables (for the vegetarian), home-made bread, rotkoln (German red cabbage), peas, gravy and a lemon tart for dessert.

Results of an epic afternoon's cooking

Slow roasted pork (aka Why You Want to Go to Steff's House for Dinner). It was so tender it literally fell to pieces.

Then we had another couple of friends show up for pre-gig drinks. It was Liz’s birthday, so she brought a cake.

Liz cutting her birthday cake

The gig at the Thirsty Dog was the final gig of local thrash-metallers, Heavy Artillery. Our good friend, Ross, plays guitar for Heavy Artillery, so we had to be there. Awhile ago, CDH and his drumming buddy came up with the cunning plan of throwing a bunch of giant ladies underwear at Ross during the show (it’s even funnier if you knew Ross, trust me). This was our last opportunity to do it, so down to the Warehouse we went, and found some beautiful XXXXL upderwear for the occasion.

We all went off to the gig, undies in tow.

Samface showing off her lacy granny knickers

metalheads onspiring

Twisted Metal

We arrived just in time to see the end of Denni Elisabeth’s set – but she was up next with Twisted Metal, an epic Auckland metal covers band (CDH used to drum for them). They played a great set of Accept, Manowar, Dio, Megadeth and Venon. They’re sounding tighter than ever and pulled in a huge crowd. Even some dudes in togas were jiving up the front.

Twisted Metal

After Twisted Metal were Valium Incendium, who I’d never seen before and were pleasantly surprised to discover were a local power metal act demonstrating shades of Rage and early Blind Guardian – seriously amazing vocals and no “wussy” – very gutsy sound.

Finally, Heavy Artillery were up.

unsuspecting victims

Thirsty Dog was packed

We all shuffled in front of Ross, got our bloke with the video camera ready, and stuffed our undies under our shirts, waiting for CDH to give us our cue to unleash hell.

Despite having to play on stage with several pairs of ladies underwear being thrown back and forth, Heavy Artillery played an awesome set. It’s a real shame this was their last gig, but I do encourage anyone to pick up ther album “On the Warpath”, from iTunes, and send them a note through the Heavy Artillery Myspace page for a hard copy. As Ross said “the cover art alone is worth $9.99″. It’s a very well produced, tight, old-school thrash effort.

Ross

Lindsay from Heavy Artillery.

Heavy Artillery fans

And now my head hurts and the kitchen looks like a war-zone, and I have already done the customary “load the recycling bin with hundreds of beer bottles” trip. How was your weekend?

Shoggoth Kisses!