Summer is not over yet, and at the Rockpile we celebrated this time of year with the best Freak show!!

The Return of Blood Opera!

This is the second time I became a witness to Toronto’s live horror show. In the style of Alice Cooper, four living dead zombies got up on stage and truly performed like Rock Stars. It is a strange balance to take your music seriously while you perform as bloody zombies with your stage looking like a graveyard or maybe that is supposed to be a 17-year-old boy’s bedroom.

Anyway, when you are on stage and you are pestered by a life-sized fly, do you bring your own can of Raid? Maybe a large fly swatter will do the job. After getting rid of that pest and working up a thirst it was time to drink the blood from a skull. This is a real summertime treat!

This crowd really seemed to love what was going on up on stage, because they were singing their songs and really engaged with the blood thirst that was going on.  In fact by the time the last song was warming up, I noticed the crowd moving back a little. The singer turned around to show off his best friend who I will call John Holmes.

He was swinging John around like a windmill while people gawked and even try to commune with John. But John would have none of that, because he began to spit at the audience and soaked them with his love. Even the dead girl who sat at the front of the stage wasn’t safe as the singer had the guts to penetrate her guts and the blood bath spewed all over anyone who was nearby. There is nothing like a good bloodletting to please your people.

Blood Opera in all its Gory:

Death Metal from Ohio!

The Convalescence came all the way from Ohio, to scream bloody murder right in your face. And, boy do I mean scream! If you love Death Metal with that crazy ass guttural growl, this band can do that.

Dressed in their form of Death Metal Make-up like all good Scandinavian bands do, these guys added a tiny twist. Instead of the classic Black and white, they chose a pale grey colour that had a rotting corpse look to it.

This crowd did not back down as they were soaking in every vicious note they produced. As I looked around the crowd, I noticed a seven year old on his Dad’s shoulder watching with pure curiosity about what was going on. I found out later that he was turning eight soon, and this was his birthday present.

The band raised the craziness to a new level as the mosh pit was gearing up to go crazy. It got really slippery out there with all the blood on the floor and even a banana man was slamming it. Talk about a Banana split! They finished the set with a song from 10 years ago called Broken Mirror! Once they got off stage, they walked over to their merch table to talk to fans. No time for showers with these guys, you get the real sweaty deal!

Photos from the dark side of Ohio:

Time to bring in the Royal Jelly!

The show stared off like a comedy show with Bill Manspeaker getting the crowd riled up. He decided it would be good to add three audience members up on stage to help out with up-and-coming antics. Well, the first person who was invited was about to have an eighth birthday soon! The band is now in everybody’s favourite category now. He proceeded to find unusual participants and gave them new names. So invited on stage were people like Dusty Hill from ZZ Top.

Also invited was Garth from Wayne’s World, Santa Claus, Bob Seger, Eddie Van Halen and Sammy Hagar. At one point Bill managed to get Eddie and Sammy to bury the hatchet and hug it out. Green jelly reunites Van Halen!

In fact, there ended up being over 20 people included on the stage. Let the chaos begin! They started with their version of Anarchy on the UK and then went into Follow your nose, with Toucan Sam flapping his wings at everybody.

There were about 100 pool noodles thrown out into the audience and everybody now had a party favour! To be honest, from that moment on, I could only see pool noodles for the rest of the show.

In fact, it was so chaotic, that I realized I knew none of the songs. That was OK in my books since the room was filled with euphoric pandemonium. Just the fact that everyone was having their own fun was worth every moment more than the music itself.

At one point, the Bass player named Slim came forward and decided to walk off stage and into the waiting hands of the crowd. We kept her afloat as she walked across and began to swing from the rafters. This woman was a trooper because she hung in there like an Olympian. She realized she had to make her way back but was stuck like a cat in a tree. She decided to trust us and I grabbed her boot and she proceeded to fall backwards towards the stage. About three of us braced forward to make her landing as soft as possible. Well, she got up right away to a wild room!

Other member of the band had a chance to sing their songs and add twists and turns to the entire evening. I remember videotaping the “Fuck It” song when a chicken popped up on my screen. You can view the footage on my Instagram page Blast_Toronto

The band decided to climb on a ladder for a guitar solo, others hanging off the walls in the back of the room and others right in the middle of a mosh pit. And the wiggly pool noodles were still waving proudly throughout the party.

If you needed to go to the bathroom, you didn’t even need to leave the crowd as rolls of toilet paper came screaming at you from a toilet paper machine gun. Now that is service with a wipe and a smile!

The evening kept mooing forward, yes mooing… They even had cows being sacrificed to the noodles as the crowd ran around singing ring around the rosy. This is the kind of slaughterhouse I can sink my teeth into. This is a full-on participation show.

Then the end was near as the cows were replaced by three little pigs. Yes, this is the song we all came to sing together. It was quite a good sing-along.

The timing was perfect because I think everyone got out what they needed to get out on a Thursday night. Exhausted and happy and feeling a little scummy, Green Jelly slimed Toronto in a most beautiful way.

Photos of the best Freak show in Town: