LIVE REVIEW: MUNICIPAL WASTE with special guests Turd!, Sooks and Gaoled

After an absence from Perth of eleven years Municipal Waste certainly wasted no time making up for it. With a selection of guest bands that filled a multi-genre gap that catered to everyone. Having TURD! opening the evening proceedings with songs about, well, turd.

SOOKS were quick to the mark with a good old fashion in-your-face punk/garage rock fusion that really hit that sweet spot and had the first mosh of the night well underway. GAOLED (despite being plagued by a couple of technical difficulties) still managed to pull off a dynamite set.

Enter the main attraction, from the get-go Municipal Waste were persistent in making sure the circle pit was alive and well throughout the entirety of their set. With a setlist loaded with 24 year’s worth of thrash metal party anthems it was not hard to maintain the energy as powerhouse frontman Tony Foresta commanded both the stage and the crowd with an almost effortless, fierce charisma. Paying homage to the late, great Bon Scott (who he assured us the band would be visiting tomorrow) he expressed great admiration for being back in Perth after such a long absence. Initiating multiple circle pits (one of which he insisted be around a pole in the middle of the room) and encouraging a chicken fight in which he himself jumped offstage to partake in.

The remainder of the set had Municipal Waste going off-script with song requests which had them playing Wolves of Chernobyl and one of the venues bins being thrown around the room occasionally making its way onto the stage for the whole last half of the set, eventually ending up over Foresta’s head as he continued to sing. Joking that they are about to be the first band to ever pretend to walk off stage, then come back on to play an encore.

Showing no signs of slowing down and a discography that would put less committed groups to shame it is easy to see not only why Municipal Waste are the godfathers of modern thrash but how even on a freezing winter Saturday they could still fill a room to the brim and get the whole crowd as unhinged as what this patron witnessed, with a collective stage presence to suit. I can only hope they return a lot sooner than another 11 years.