Fatality North American Tour Diary Part V

Saturday, 27th July 2013

Toronto’s favorite thrash party monsters Fatality are currently on a two-month North American “Towards Disastour” in support of their latest album, Psychonaut. Vocalist Spencer Le Von checks in with Dead Rhetoric.com, sharing tales of their time in Baltimore, and Richmond, VA….

Boy, I sure hate being the designated driver while everyone indulges in booze and gets silly. There is not a more thankless job in this world than to be chauffeur for this wily group of 4 young men with hard-ons. When I am tasked with doing this, I tell the boys right at the beginning of the night: “I will drive us to where we gotta go, but you may as well start calling me Stephanie, I will tell you right now.” Stephanie is the name of my inner fat girl. Everyone has one, that snarky voice in the back of your head when everyone is hammered and having a great time except for you. I always imagine Stephanie looking like Chris Farley from the Gap Girls sketch on SNL.

fatalitytourblog5pic1“Can we go now? I’m bored.” “No, you can’t have sex with that girl, we came as a group we leave as a group.” And occasionally, just an incredulous “Really!?” are all things that can be heard by Stephanie as she passive-aggressively ruins everyone’s night like a serial arsonist of mirth. Did I mention that I also stink at driving? I am famous for absentmindedly spending most of the drive with the cruise control set to 10 under the limit, with only the most tenuous grasp of the wheel at 7 o’clock, cyclically drifting on and off the shoulder rumble strips. You know, those little grooves on the side of the road that make your tires rumble to wake you up just incase you decide to take an ill-advised nappy while on the way to your destination. “BUM-BUM-BUM-BUM” goes the rumble strip, followed by countless crass backseat remarks such as “Dude, you spend more time on the shoulder than a goddamned parrot.” I might have been angrier were it not completely accurate.

fatalitytourblog5pic2But it has been a while since we last spoke, so let’s take it back to where we left, shall we? We left NYC in a state of goofy blurry-eyed bliss and made our faithful voyage to Baltimore. We arrived nice and early and decided to go for a stroll through the streets down to the harbor. While nowhere close to the neighborhoods depicted in The Wire, the areas we were in seemed pretty rough around the edges with loudmouthed lunatics and bullet holes in a few of the storefront windows. Our gig was at a venue called the Side Bar. A cozy underground bar that has a capacity of less than 100. Before the gig started I went for a little walk by myself to clear my weary mind. I bought the local paper and chilled out on a stoop reading and relaxing on my lonesome.

I read that Baltimore had 32 murders in the first week of the summer. Holy dog shit. They must really love our band in Baltimore because I found the word “Fatality” written about 80 times before I even got to the funnies. Either that or they are all just constantly murdering each other over there. I also passed by the strip club district. I was drawn to it because there was an almost tangible darkness that hung over the street of sadness. The other thing I liked about it was they had old-school strip club barkers standing in front of every club trying to pull in some business. I saw men in cowboy hats outside of each club sayin’ goofy shit to me like “Hey swinger, looking for a good time and cheap thrills? Girls girls girls, nude and nasty.” “No thanks sir, but I might be back.” As we drove past the same strip after the gig the entire street was blocked off with caution tape and 10 cop cars. I reckon there may have been a shooting shortly after I scurried back to the venue.

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