BrontoScorpio

BrontoScorpio
The Empress Ale House, Edmonton, AB May 21
By Fish Griwkowsky

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.
- exclaim!

They storm the stage with fur-lined barbarian finery, gallons of stage blood and, most importantly, the heaviest metal riffs this side of early-'80s England. If you miss the part of the show where one of their two female lead singers drinks the breast milk of the other, you can still catch the part where they rip the heart out of the angel, or fuck a frozen turkey with an eight-inch silver strap-on, complete with money shot. All the while, you can raise a rock-horned fist to the paper-mache devil who hovers over the buzzsaw metal extravaganza.

In all their bloody, pounding glory, BrontoScorpio — ex-Frosted Tipz guitarist Curtis Ross, bassist Al Hildebrandt and singer Roz Christian plus brutal burlesquer Kristine Nutting on vocals and costumes, and drummer Matt Moren—are part-metal band, part-performance art, all glorious rock spectacle. Just don't try to intellectualize it too much.

"We're not talking about getting your heart broken and stuff – unless it's, like, by the lich queen ripping your heart out of your body for some kind of ritual," explains Hildebrandt of the band's unique appeal and more unique live show. "The whole musical endeavour is based on this fantasy realm, so it's not just like a show for a show's sake; it's like music and a show for a show's sake."

To that end, they combine what is easily Alberta's most creative, twisted live show with metal that is unapologetic in its grandiose riffage. If GWAR got more sexual and worshiped Iron Maiden a bit more, you'd get something close to the spectacle of BrontoScorpio — which has naturally led to questions about their sincerity. For the band's part, they're less concerned with perceptions than the fun of rocking. And fake blood.

"We have a thing where it's really fun to dress up like some metal god. You know how fucked up and cheesy that is, but you still like it," explains Ross. "There's something about the power of playing it, but also kind of making fun of the power of playing it.

"Basically, it’s been done, it's been done ironically, it's been done over again," he continues. "It's been done so many ways; at this point it's basically a free question. So fuck it, let's just do it."

By Dave Berry
- Beatroute