Live Review: Municipal Waste, Shitripper, Execute

Sydney deathgrinders Exekute kicked off this celebration of all that is metal with a solid 40 minutes of double-kicks, pig squeals, grunts and rapid-fire riffage. Churning out tracks from their new Doomsday Mourning EP, the enthusiastic quintet offered up a solid set to a small but equally enthusiastic crowd.

With a name like Shitripper you know exactly what you're going to get – unrelenting pissed-off punk rock. Channelling the likes of Discharge, Circle Jerks, Cursed and any number of power violence outfits the Auckland natives hit hard causing the first heavy-duty pits of the evening. No fuss, no egos and no bullshit – this is how punk rock is meant to be played. Do yourself a favour and get thee to Shitripper's bandcamp and consume.

Municipal Waste haven't been to Australia for seven years. And remarkably, in that time they've changed very little. Unless you count the synth sections on The Fatal Feast as 'progression' (and for the record I don't) this is a band that has obstinately refused to move an inch from their template of beer-soaked crossover. And thank God for that. Everything you wanted from a Municipal Waste show was here – the wall of death, people crowd-surfing on body boards, and of course about 1500-minute-long songs about zombies, getting drunk and um… getting drunker. Although their attitude to life is sloppy, the Waste quartet can play and their set was flawless and varied. Alongside the staples (The Art Of Partying, Sadistic Magician, Thrashin' Of The Christ, Mind Eraser and Headbanger Face Rip) we got Wolves Of Chernobyl, from the underrated Massive Aggressive LP, new cuts off the latest album in the form of You're Cut Off and The Fatal Feast, and a deep catalogue surprise in Garbage Stomp/Poser Disposer, from 2001's split with Crucial Unit. Finishing off with the anthemic Born To Party, Municipal Waste showed why they are one of the few bands to survive the death of the new thrash movement. Hopefully they don't wait another seven years before returning to our shores.