Violence, sex and some violent sex

February 25, 2010 by Jordan Healy 

Local artists who take a cue from ICP’s violent brand of hip-hop performed at The Farm Monday

Here’s a concept for a musical group. Take two overweight white guys from Detroit, throw clown make-up on them and let them throw the most perverse and offensive lyrics that could possibly be imagined over a series of beats.

While this may sound ridiculous, this concept has worked successfully for almost 20 years with the longstanding horror-rap duo Insane Clown Posse (ICP), as well as all the other groups on their self-founded record label, Psychopathic Records.

In their two decades of existence, the group has racked up a few platinum and gold records and a legion of dedicated fans known as Juggalos.

On Monday evening, a group of about 200 of Las Vegas’ own Juggalos descended upon The Farm for a night of music by local artists who take heavy influences in their music from ICP’s dark take on hip-hop.

One of the only good aspects of going to any sort of Juggalo-themed concert is that you can always count on the performers to add a little spectacle to their show.

Arizona-based Uncle Phoenix took to the stage in standard baggy hip-hop fare, except with an extremely shiny, gold Mexican wrestling style mask over his face, complete with sunglasses. He was flanked by equally overweight behemoths wearing black and white face paint and shirts reading MOK, an acronym which was mercifully never explained.

Local trio Cutthroat Cadavers took to the stage all wearing matching Doctor’s smocks, complete with blood splatters going down their fronts. They get a point for coordination.

Though the groups’ outfits were different, one element linked their performances: They were both utterly terrible.

More often than not it was hard to tell if the groups onstage were actually rapping, because they had the lyrics recorded along with their beat, and they simply rapped over it. It was especially hard to tell in the case of Uncle Phoenix, as the mask covering his face made it impossible to see his mouth moving. Even if he was, the recorded vocal track was still extremely clear in the mix.

The other annoying aspect was the faux tough-guy attitude exuded, though this is primarily directed at the Cadavers. At one point, one of the members seemed displeased the crowd wasn’t getting into their music, so he yelled, “If this doesn’t get moving, I’m going to come out there and start a riot!”

If a riot is opening a water bottle and spraying it on the crowd, then it would have taken some kind of apocalyptic massacre to urge some life out of this audience… or possibly just some decent tunes.

The most interesting group to perform the entire evening was the Arizona-based rock group 9th Sphere. They were reminiscent of early (hed) P.E. in their funk-metal style, though their vocalist, Chesta, is much less capable than (hed) vocalist Jared Gomes.

Actually, Chesta was probably the only member of the group who under-performed, as he had the hype but seemingly almost no musical skill. His vocals alternated between a shout and a slightly-quieter shout and most of the time his lyrics would completely run together. Then again, one might not want to hear the lyrics to songs with such juvenile titles as “Hate” and “Mike Vick.”

On the bright side, it was extremely entertaining to watch Nomad Llevoc run his fans maniacally up and down his fretless bass, never failing to provide a funky beat with a strong drummer, RuDe, backing him. For the most part, guitarist Humble did an alright job playing the balls-out metal parts that comprised most of the songs, but he truly shined when playing the brief, slower, reggae-inspired parts.

In fact, the group could totally make it as a top-notch reggae act if they found a new vocalist and lost their ridiculous costumes. It would be extremely hard to focus on the good vibes when you have a guitarist sitting in front of you who’s wearing a mask that makes him look like a giant white ant, complete with antennae.

All in all, it was an entertaining show and worth sitting through just for the spectacle alone — if one can take sitting through song after song involving murder, drugs and having genitalia inserted into holes that weren’t necessarily there when one was born.

It truly is a phenomenon that such a genre can grow and thrive in the underground when one considers the extremely limited possibilities that it bears. It will be interesting to see what direction horror-rap takes when they run out of clever ways to murder people, and of course, places to put those make-shift holes they seem to be oh-so fond of.