Today was my 36th birthday. What better way is there to spend it than a relaxing evening of METAL! This was my first visit to the newly remodeled Neeners Pub. Neeners is a pretty nice venue with a decent sized showroom/stage and a good sound system. All of the bands got to be the first to do something on the new stage, with one doing something that probably won't be repeated in the near future. Turnout for the show was disappointing to say the least with (probably) only 20 paying customers to be found. The only upside to that is that the venue remained relatively cool the entire evening, something yours truly really appreciates!

Dorgan Onor started the evening and got a good reaction from the five or six people there at the time. The two-piece lineup (with programmed drums and samples filling the backline) kicked out a tight set of their highly original metal/hardcore/noise/industrial hybrid tunes. Bassist/Vocalist Tim Dorgan seemed to unload a lot of rage and frustration in his performance, jumping around like a wild man and displaying some painful looking facial expression. Reed (the guitarist) was solid throughout despite filling the lead and rhythm spots since they are missing one member currently.

Skitzo is best known for their guitarist/vocalist Lance Ozanix's appearances on the Jerry Springer show puking on people for one reason or another. What few people know is that Skitzo has been thrashing out the metal since the early 1980's and have released a dozen or so albums since then. They play music in the classic thrash vein and are damn good at doing so. Their set consisted of an hour or so of classics like "Kill with a Vengeance" and songs from their latest CD "Hellavator Musick" such as "Angels Blood", Frozen Dead", and "Krystal Death's Horizon". The rhythm section (consisting of David Ostwald on drums and Kelly Gillis on bass) provided a strong backdrop for Lance's speedy guitar and vocals. For a dude best known for puking, the guy has a heck of a voice and is able to pull off all the metal standards (growling, clean vocals, high metal yells and so on) without any detectable difficulties. When the fantastic set was close to being done Lance unleashed some quantities of green fluid from his esophagus all over his "travelling companion" Octavia. For pictures of the puking, check out the Photo Gallery. They played one more song and then called it an evening.

All in all it was a great evening, despite the out of place middle band who sounded like a Creed clone or something. Check out Skitzo if they wind up at a venue near you and stand a little ways back from the stage near the end. For more info on Skitzo or to purchase CDs or videos check out their web site.

Photos from this show can be found in our Photo Gallery