Sub Zero

Sardonica

Luzern Schüür

13th May 1997

The first thing to notice on climbing up the stairs were the ornaments being used to decorated the hall for the Misfits. Skulls were painted onto anything you could paint a skull on, hanging from the ceiling above the stage was a baby without any arms or legs, and also suspended from the ceiling was Misfits written using bones!

Sardonica were the first band to go stage. A 3-piece who played a kind of metally/thrashy punk. They were OK, but as with the case with most support bands, the sound wasn't that great, and it was more or less just a noise. They sounded OK, but nothing special. They struck me as being the kind of band you can hear playing in various pubs around the world on punk nights. However they did look like they were enjoying themselves, that is to say they weren't motionless, they jumped about, and had a bit of banter with the crowd, which I guess is kind of difficult, when the audience isn't native English speakers!

Sub Zero appealed to me a lot more. 4 piece this time, drummer, bass, guitarist and a singer, playing hard-core rather than straight punk. Bloody good they were too, the singer screamed and shouted a lot, ran around and jumped about with the bass player. They were definitely enjoying themselves which came across to the audience as a few more people started to "dance". Again it was hard to understand exactly what the singer was singing about, but he did talk to the crowd in between songs and showed a sense of humour.

The Misfits came on stage to huge applause, revealing large amps with the "crimson skull" logo painted on them, and a massive drum kit covered with huge spikes. The band members themselves (as was to be expected) were also decorated: Jerry Only(bassist) was bare chested, wearing leather trousers, a huge PVC spiked belt, and some face make up; Doyle(guitarist) was wearing similar attire; but the singer Michale Graves came on stage wearing PVC trousers, and a top hat. His face was made up to look like a skull and his torso had blood dripping down it! As for the drummer, Dr Chud, he was hidden behind drums, and spikes!
Even without the costumes it would have been very entertaining to watch the band moving about the stage! The bassist and guitarist both stomped about, while the singer jumped about like some sort of monkey punching flies!
For the first half of the set, the songs were played more or less back to back, only pausing long enough to give song title, and sometimes the album title also, since the set was a "greatest hits" set as well as featuring songs off the new album "American Psycho".

The 2nd half was almost like a pantomime! Jerry Only would shout
"Do you wanna hear 'song name' ?"
If the crowd yelled loud enough they played it, otherwise the request was repeated for another song! All this carried on until the final song, when they played so hard, the guitarist broke 2 strings. The lights came up, stuff started to be packed away, but the entire audience, just stood there shouting
"MISFITS MISFITS"
Over and over again, until the band came back on stage, organised their equipment again, played a couple more songs, and left again after promising to come back because we were such a great crowd, and they had had a great time in Switzerland, and they wanted to see more of it!
All in all a great night out at a great venue, with a good atmosphere! After all, how many venues do you know, where you could see a band like this, with no security , or barrier between the audience and the stage, and where they serve drinks in glasses, and bottles!