Starcrawler
Photos and review by Fiestan Photography Only days after releasing their new video for “She Gets Around,” Starcrawler brought their unique brand of grunge-infused grotesque punk to Browerij West in San Pedro, CA on May 11th. One part freak-and-doom à la Black Sabbath and The Stooges, another part the raw punk sensibility of Hole and X, all mixed with the frenetic energy of The Ramones and The Clash, this band is hoisting the banner of the new LA punk scene and planting it firmly in the arid Southern California soil. Their set, including “Used To Know,” “Hollywood Ending” and their anthem “I Love L.A.” were punctuated with crowd-surfing, a call to mosh, and a polemic by guitarist Henri Cash to the older crowd and press corps to “…move to the back, you had your chance to see good bands, now let the younger people move up front!” Not just paying lip service, Cash also finished the show by plucking a young ecstatic boy from the audience and had him finish the final chords of their encore, “She Gets Around” to a cheering audience. The band’s wicked frontwoman, Arrow de Wilde, unfortunately couldn’t bring her signature fully unhinged apoplexy-and-spittle performance to a fever pitch, on account of the all-ages attendance at the brewery, but even still, the crowd was completely thrown into berzerk mode by her onstage mayhem, Cash’s intensity, along with drummer Austin Smith and bassist Tim Franco turning up the heat in the rhythm section. After great sets by openers Slaughterhouse, Mike Watt + The Jim & Terry Show, and Death Valley Girls, Starcrawler fulfilled her promise to make it okay to love LA punk again, something I never thought I would say in 2019. No, we don’t want to leave today.
Death Valley Girls
