THERE has never been a music documentary like this.
Blood pouring everywhere. Shards of glass lodged in splintered skin. Band members masquerading as wrestlers. Midnight visits to service station bathrooms to repair severed flesh and mop up gaping wounds.
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Welcome to the aptly named Stabbed in the Face, a film about life on the road with Eat the Turnbuckle (ETT), the self-professed “most violent band” in the world which was formed in 2012, split five years later, and recently made a shock – yet predictably vicious – comeback.
A toxic mix of ultra-hard death metal and wrestling culminates in utter chaos on and off stage as the band documents their career that took them from Philadelphia to Europe on a one-way trail of destruction and chaos.
Ultra-Violent Death Match Rock & Roll isn’t for the faint-hearted – and neither is the film.
BEDLAM
Drummer Mike Beer (known as Beer Dust) had the smart idea to start documenting the madness – he didn’t tell any of the other members his plan for a film, deciding to soldier on in secret before eventually telling all – and what followed, thanks to the directing skills of pal Eric Griffin, of Patchtown films, is a 90-minute journey into mayhem.
Funnily enough, considering the absolute bedlam on stage and in the venues, the music takes a firm backseat.
“When you’re pouring half a gallon of blood out of your face, you’re not doing arpeggio sweeps,” Beer tells The U.S. Sun about the lack of musical impact in the film which is currently being hawked to several prominent film festivals.
“We tried to do songs that you can remember the words to and sing along and that was it. Let’s not kid ourselves.”
Beer says the uniquely wild scenes can be termed as “performance art.”
Yet don’t worry, Captain Hook, Chubb Rock, El-Shak-O, Jag-13, Jabber TGO and Beer Dust won’t be trashing your local theatre anytime soon.
Inspired by the brutality of Death Match wrestling, Eat the Turnbuckle would take to the stage, night after night, dressed in their grappling garb and, while unleashing eardrum-piercing metal, would perform a series of choreographed wrestling moves and play out storylines.
They made a shock comeback earlier this year, and The U.S. Sun was on hand to witness Beer and his pals brutally roll back the years and return to their glory, blood-soaked days.
The Royal Bloodbath, won by Death Match legend Necrobutcher, was as grizzly as it sounds.
RAZOR SHARP WEAPONS
The crowd – back then and now – would go nuts and often start brawling with themselves while Beer and his pals would smash each other in the face with all manner of weapons.
“The worst ones to be smashed with are those old-school office lights,” Beer said with a smile. “They are all dirty, the glass gets everywhere and is razor sharp. They become like sabers when broken.”
“There’s decent ways to get hit,” continued Beer without a hint of understatement. “You want to try and get them square across your back or right on the top of your head. Those smaller ones are horrible. Someone brought some to our last show – I got rid of them immediately.”
One night, Jabber, who combined his role as back-up vocalist with helping out with crowd control, had some glass lodged in his neck after walking into a broken light tube resting on someone’s shoulder. Lesser mortals would have collapsed on the spot. Eat the Turnbuckle isn’t normal though.
INSANE CHAOS
He took himself to hospital, had the bulb fragment removed and just kept on rocking and rucking.
The band, who according to Beer never put a “cent in their own pockets,” would often end the night crammed into a van and head to a motel. Sometimes they would all stay in one room before literally dusting themselves down before going again.
“One place gave us black towels when we checked in,” Beer recalled. “They knew what a mess we were in.”
“We looked insane,” he added. “I felt sorry for anyone working at 3 am who saw us with our shirts off, dusting each other off with hand towels to get the glass out of our backs.”
Watching some of the graphic footage, it’s remarkable that no one has ever been seriously injured.
They came close, however, during one stormy gig in Mexico.
The bar was serving super cheap beer in German-style beer steins, made of extra thick glass. ETT was waiting to come on stage, yet hell was already breaking loose.
“People were swinging around all this broken glass in the mosh pit and someone got hurt,” Beer said.
“The cops showed up and we were covered in blood. I was like, ‘It wasn’t us, we had nothing to do with it.'”
While the fans, for the most part, go home happy, perhaps a bit sore, but in one piece, the same cannot be said for the band.
In France, Beer, who doesn’t always become involved in the wars on stage, was asked by lead singer El-Shak if he wanted to be suplexed on stage.
A suplex is a move in wrestling that involves lifting someone and then slamming them on their backs.
Not everyone is trained – “We really could have gone balls to the wall with everybody getting trained but it’s six idiots who can’t get in a room together so it didn’t really happen,” he said – and the end result was painful.
“It sounded good and he tried to coach me,” Beer recalled. “He told me not to bend my foot, but I did and landed on the ball of my foot. It was like a lightning bolt.”
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With a broken, throbbing foot, ETT traveled 10 hours to the next venue with their drummer in excruciating pain. Beer has been sober for 18 years and felt bad even taking pain medication, yet it was needed.
A quick trip to the hospital the following day resulted in doctors strongly advising to allow the injury to heal – which meant no gigs and no foot pedals.
“That wasn’t an option, I played in the boot for 20 shows,” Beer said proudly.
Philadelphia, the spiritual home of wrestling in the United States, lapped everything up but Beer says the crowds in Europe were something else.
Some club owners – like one in Glasgow, Scotland – got wind of the storm brewing and decided to cancel the show, just to be on the safe side.
But there were plenty of venues in England, Germany, and across the continent that were totally onboard.
“Those crowds were so excitable, but they weren’t as violent as the crowds back home,” Beer recalled.
ETT may have brought the house down earlier this month, yet a full-blown comeback is far from sealed.
Singer El-Shak has honed himself a career as a wrestler in his own right, while the other band members have responsibilities and families to look after.
If Japan, which has a rich wrestling culture and, according to Beer, an “insane” Death Match scene, comes calling, the answer may be different, though.
“It’s like an abusive relationship,” said the drummer. “You know it’s potentially a bad situation, but you keep coming back for more.”
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