The Best, Worst and Weirdest Stuff We Saw at Berserktown Day Two

All photos by Josue Rivas

Berserktown II isn’t just the best-named music festival in Southern California, it’s also arguably the weirdest. Over three days in Santa Ana it plays host to over 100 underground noise, grind, and hardcore acts. That includes dozens of bands you’d probably otherwise see in a house show, but also bigger names like Australian post-punks Total Control and noise-rock gods Royal Trux, who’re closing the fest out with a much-anticipated reunion set on Sunday.

The festival started last year as a grimy throwdown at club Los Globos in Los Angeles, where bands like Hoax and Dawn of Humans did crazy shit like spill blood and tape foreign objects around their private parts. For this year’s edition—happening Friday, August 14 through Sunday, August 16—the fest relocated to a new venue at the Observatory just south of L.A. in Orange County; there’s a bit more room to stretch out with three stages, a vendor area and food trucks. The expanded lineup—which includes a dance tent—is more “eclectic” as well, if that’s really the right word to use. But the whole thing is still gnar enough to have attracted a lot of hype up and down the coast in recent months. Eager to get a taste of what seems like an unprecedented underground event, a crack team of Noisey journalists have joined the hordes trekking south from L.A. to investigate the scene.

Below you will see some of our findings for day two of Berserktown II.

Power Trip Brings the Brutality

Back in the late 80s, crossover legends D.R.I. perfectly captured the glory of the mosh pit in an ode to this punk cornerstone in a song called “Thrashard.” One line from the song went: “A boot to your forehead / A knee in your face / Your nose and lips / Start to bleed,” and over 25 years later, Dallas’ Power Trip made this beautiful vision come alive Saturday night with their own brutal set of crossover-oriented thrash punk. Limbs flailed, arms punched and crowd-surfing punk revelers took long leaps and luxurious somersaults into the pit like they were Olympic divers. The set oozed with raw rage as the band threw down brutal tempos, flying V riffs, and the occasional jump kick from charismatic frontman Riley Gale. The mood in the room was that much darker because for much of the set, video screens flanking the stage played footage from the 1992 L.A. Riots. The Dirty Rotten Imbeciles themselves would’ve been proud. - Peter Holslin

Royal Headache

Punk Drunk Love with Royal Headache

Year after year, Glastonbury can't pull off the big Oasis reunion. Just the second year of Berserktown, and promoter Graeme "Baby Gatsby" Flegenheimer has managed to reunite Royal Trux and No Hope for the Kids, bring Career Suicide back to California after a seven year absence, and give garage-pop Aussies Royal Headache a reason to "get the fuck away from Sydney," said Shogun, their soulful singer, nonsensical philosopher, and writer of love songs he sarcastically refers to as "hardcore shit." With a blistering 14-song set that included "Really in Love" and "Girls," Shogun crooned the hardcore crowd by pacing around the small stage, hopping on one foot, and unleashing howled words about daydreaming in pubs, and the women that broke his heart. Royal Headache added some heart to a room that was blackened by metal and hardcore on night two. Even the girl who had shaved her head in the parking was feeling the warmth. - Art Tavana

Our VIP section guitar shredder

The VIP Section Turned into Guitar Center

Covered in artificial grass and squelchy leather sofas, with an airstream as the centerpiece, the VIP section at Berserktown looked like a picnic site for suburban punks. It was the safe zone on night one, the only place to escape the sound of high-frequency feedback piercing your eardrums. But on night two, the VIP section turned into a bad day at Guitar Center, when a massively fucked-up concertgoer snuck in, picked up a guitar, and plugged into the Moog pedal board setup and turned it up to 11. Going into a deranged 15-minute solo, the unwelcomed guest produced the most horrifically unsettling feedback, all while looking like some neanderthal trying to figure out how to use heavy machinery. By the time he was done, everyone had evacuated the VIP section or hit the Excedrin bottle at catering. This was the same half-brain who moshed to Âmes Sanglantes' dark noise on night one – which would be like waltzing to Antichrist Demoncore. - AT

“Party Bus” Becomes Ride From Hell

All weekend Berkserktown has been offering a free shuttle, ferrying concertgoers back and forth from L.A. to Santa Ana on a big black “party bus” outfitted with padded benches, stripper poles and cup-holders to carry your cans of PBR. For the most part this has been a very useful service—a way for festivalgoers to cut down on gas costs while partaking in some pre-game action during the hour drive south into Orange County. (The bus’ driver is also pretty cool; don’t forget to tip!) The only drawback is that, if the wrong DJ gains control of the bus’ sound system, things can turn sour real quick. That’s what happened at the end of the night on Saturday; it was 1 AM, the last shuttle of the night, and most of the riders were clearly down to chill after taking in an exceptionally long day of heavy music. But that didn’t stop a group of attention-starved teens (or at least they looked and acted like teens) from hijacking the sound system and blaring a mix of their favorite shitty lo-fi black-metal bands at top volume the whole ride home. Yeah, we get it. Har har har! Dipshits. - PH

Black Witchery

Black Metal Fatigue

There's a point when Satanist gimmickry and overly dramatic growls start to become transparently shitty. On night two of Berserktown, the second stage was loaded with black metal bands with names like "Black Witchery," the New Years Day of black metal (New Years Day being an undead emo band on the Warped Tour), or "Volahn," which translates to " Ritual Kaos," bro. Staring into a sea of dyed-black longhairs dressed in, duh, black, with shirts covered in Old English, and ancient symbols hung upside down, what occurred was a form of "Black Metal Fatigue," which strangely began on night one in the dance tent. For weeks, people were wondering if "Varg," scheduled to play night one in the dance tent, was Varg Vikernes, of Norwegian black metal fame. Varg thankfully wasn't that Varg. But the ultimate moment of black-metal-sploitation occurred when the lead singer of Black Witchery did a mid-set sound check in his demon growl, saying "less delay, more reverb, more drums" like he was reenacting an exorcism with strep throat. To his credit, he never broke character. - AT

Antwon

Antwon Starts a Dance Party Amidst the Punk Chaos

Considering that Saturday’s lineup was dominated by hardcore and black-metal bands, Mariah Carey’s “Always Be My Baby” was the last thing you would’ve expected to hear coming out of the speakers. But San Jose rapper Antwon totally went there during his late afternoon/early evening set. And you know what? It made sense, in a way that a lot of unexpected things make sense at Berserktown. The MC, who was rocking a ball cap and a Michael Jordan basketball jersey, was the only hip-hop artist on the bill, and he brought the intensity with brawny, poised, occasionally raunchy raps. But then he’d go into dance party mode with the help of his DJ. Towards the end of the set they cued up Alice Deejay’s late ’90s Eurodance cheeseball classic “Better Off Alone,” and rather than react with confusion or annoyance, the audience in the pit area went into spasms of glee, dancing merrily to the four-to-the-floor beat. Naturally, somebody also leapt into the audience to do a little crowd surfing—this is also kind of a punk show, after all. - PH

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