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Music

EAT THE TURNBUCKLE, Philly's Extreme Wrestling-Themed Hardcore Band, Are Terrorizing Europe

Oh my god! Somebody stop the damn match!

Photos by NK Farr

It’s rare for a band known for their bloody and calamitous live show to actually live up to their reputation. Philadelphia’s wrestling-themed metal band (or self-proclaimed “Ultra-Violent Death Match Rock & Roll”), EAT THE TURNBUCKLE were three dates into their Journey To Parts Unknown tour when I caught them in London. After having their Glasgow show pulled at the last minute after a Scottish politician caught wind of it, they had the nervous energy of injured sportsmen forced to miss an important football match.

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Now, I think it’s fair to say that nothing quite commands an audience like five big, half-naked, heavily tattooed men with weapons. ETT appeared at the back of the dark room and charged through the crowd, one in a Sabu-like Arabian headdress, another with a Lucha Libre mask and a crutch wrapped in barbed wire.

Their live show was sheer, ECW-style carnage and unabashedly fun. A lot of blood was spilled and it climaxed with them laying a door across two chairs, covering it in thumbtacks, picking up a pre-warned preppy-looking kid from the audience and throwing him through it.

Looking round the room, I tried to work out what their fans were like; Metalheads? Hardcore kids? Wrestling fans? The answer is; all of the above, at the same time. The people were slamdancing and were also shouting along to the Ric Flair interview snippets; cheering for the stunts as much as they were for the songs. They were a combination of all that’s great about death match wrestling and all that’s great about grimy metal. When it all ended, crowd members left blood-splattered and covered in shards of broken tube lights, which I now know are signs of a good gig.

I caught up with the band (El-Shak-O, Chubb Rock, Captain Hook, Jag-13 and Beer Dust) in their tour bus for a pre-gig chat.

NOISEY: OK, so, introduce yourselves.
El Shlak-O: We are EAT THE TURNBUCKLE and we do violence! And music. Sometimes. [Laughs]

So how’s the tour?
El Shlak-O: It’s been awesome so far! But in Glasgow they pulled the permit for the show. There was an article in the fucking newspaper, some politicians got word of it. We showed up and they wouldn’t let us play! But the city won’t keep us out, we’ll be back.

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Jag-13: Ironically, Glasgow was the biggest wrestling city that we were playing, they have their own league, the ICW, and it attracts thousands of people.

So do you attract wrestling fans?
Jag-13: Yeah, man. Rock and wrestling fans.

El Shlok-O: We have wrestlers coming out to the shows. Balls Mahoney…

Captain Hook: We played the Gwar-BQ and Necro Butcher actually wrestled us onstage which really fucking awesome!

Nice. How did it all start?
Jag-13: Well, me and Shlok played in some similar bands, doing over-the-top wrestling gimmicks and GG Allin-esque performances, but it wasn’t really wrestling. So we thought we’d get together and make a real wrestling band.

El Shlok-O: We’re all based in the area of Philadelphia, the home of ECW and CCW, home of ultraviolent wrestling! It was born and bred there.

Captain Hook: It’s in the water!

El Shlok-O: So we hand-picked every psycho-lunatic-asshole from the bands in the surrounding area and put them together to make this monstrosity.

Jag-13: Add some wrestlers and some light tube; you’ve got yourself a band!

So how has it been received?
Jag-13: Well, what we’re doing isn’t new, but at over-the-top level that we’re doing, it is new. We need to let it marinade in people’s heads for a little while because right now it’s still fresh.

El Shlok-O: People are like, “What the fuck’s going on?!” [Laughs]. It’s really polarized, either you think the band is the greatest thing you’ve ever seen, or you think it’s retarded and you hate it.

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Are you all ex-wrestlers?
El Shlok-O: Some of us have had training, some haven’t.

Chubb-Rock: I wrestle my liver on a daily basis.

Have you got any horror stories?
El Shlok-O: Ohhhh yeah. Balls Mahoney from ECW chokeslammed me off the stage into a table, I landed wrong and separated my shoulder. I had a softball-sized goiter on my shoulder for weeks. I’ve also got two slipped-discs.

Captain Hook: I broke four of my ribs.

Jag-13: My knees have blown-out.

Chubb-Rock: Countless scratches and cuts. I scratched my cornea on a fringe from Jag’s jacket.

El Shlok-O: Even the attire is ultraviolent!

Captain Hook: One of our other singers, Iron Jobber, had a piece of glass lodged in his throat for like four days. He went to the hospital and they pulled a huge chunk of glass out of his neck. He was like, “Damn! That’s why it hurts when I swallow!”

Do you bring your own weapons and props, or pick them up at different cities?
Jag-13: We encourage the fans to bring the weapons. We bring stuff but we ask them to bring some so it’s more fun for them.

Chubb-Rock: Like if somebody brings a weapon and you use it, they love it.

El Shlok-O: There was a dude the other night that brought a kendo stick and we used it and he was like, “Bleed on it please!” So we did, it was fucking weird!

What have you normally got in your arsenal of weaponry?
Jag-13: Everything and anything! What you got?

Captain Hook: Tables, chairs, tube lights….

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Jag-13: Cheesegraters, thumbtacks, nails, a shovel, forks, a pizza cutter, a spool of barbed wire.

El Shlok-O: A flyswatter with thumbtacks stuck to it, a barbed wire crutch.

Jag-13: Whatever we can find and whatever people bring. Someone had a barbed wire baguette in France!

Who are your favorite wrestlers?
[Silence as the band members think deeply about this]

El Shlok-O: Aww man, that’s too tough.

Or your favorite wrestling era?
Captain Hook: Mine is the Memphis wrestling era, I love that. One of my favorite things apart from Death Match is the Andy Kauffman stuff. I really like the comedy in that, how crazy it was and how pissed off he had people. It was real, but not real, but real. I also love the Terry Funk stuff and Cactus Jack.

Chubb Rock: The Japanese stuff…

Shlok: It’s all good, dude. Every era has its pluses and minuses.

What about right now?
Shlok: Oh, right now is fucking garbage. It’s fucking PC bullshit, manufactured shit.

Jag-13: We like to support our friends in the smaller leagues.

Captain Hook: The independent leagues is where it’s at.

El Shlok-O: Yeah but WWE and fucking TNA, that shit’s garbage, dude. My favorite era was ECW, it was the best because it was violent and it was good wrestling combined. Early CCW too, when they took the ultraviolence to such a ridiculous level, hanging people from suspensions, multiple panes of glass, weedwackers, fire! I mean, come on, who doesn’t like people on fire?!

Jak Hutchcrat has wrestled a body pillow. Follow him on Twitter.