I wait patiently for my housemate to wake up to pay me back for the electricity bills. I sell three marginal guitar pedals on Marketplace when Televised Suicide announce there’s 20 tickets remaining for the Gaoled LP launch at Last Chance. I score one from the questionable profits and approach urination in my elated state. My vagus nerve hangs loose, deader than the headless mouse I pass on the street as the smell swirls around my bag of stolen beer and the smoke from a snapped Double Happiness found at the base of a pocket. Rock and roll is alive and if I do not come out the other side of this weekend with it then at least I will have died a martyr at an altar of something, and I am hoping it is a graceful death.

Last Chance Rock an-(d)Roll foot spa is heaving like a smoker’s lung after a night of vicious fornication. I can feel a bruise forming on my upper-pussy region from getting hip-slammed by the gates at Flinders pushing in between some newborn eighteen-year-olds with freshly-fed Mykis ready for a night on the town.

SIN TAX have forgotten how to plug their guitar into the cab. I’m gearing up to get smacked into next week. Lois says that Jah looks like the lion from the Wizard of Oz, I counter that Sin Tax are the most Narnian hardcore band in the city – hard to get a hold of, a rare treat to a tortured palette of posh dull dementia, an exclusive sneaker drop; time stamped and ready to blow. Everyone wants a piece of ‘em but they move on their own time. Wall of sound like Phil Spector on a tear. It’s really straight up with these fellaz rapid and vicious, herding dogs nipping at a sheep heel, brought to earth solely by the impermeable barrier of space-time. It’s so much that people aren’t even really sure how to dance to it, oily vape lungs preventing aerobic excellence. Sin Tax rips at the back of your throat like the hectic morning sneeze which fabricates new orifice in nasal passage, kicking premature blood clot out of uterus so your ovaries stop hurting.

TOTAL DEFEAT rock insane ass and I’m feeling Flex-ible. Kicks like a whack to the chest, d-beats and bass breaks abound across the arid landscape of Western Australia, here and there connected in one hazy melee. My housemate says to me earlier in the day that they should really fix the fact it costs less to fly to Indonesia than to WA and I agree but also I’m like phoenix with this lot who bring their Poison-ed Idea-tion to (p)Sychophant HQ postal address Victoria Street North Melbourne. I’m conjuring lines of literature until I get a fist to the back and slam my own bootheel into its blood relative. I remind myself that I’m a TAFE student - and a prospective one at that - and could do well to cool it with the autoerotic manipulation of my intellectual G-spot, so I just raise me dirty fist and think about how fucking deeeece a blood nose would be right now.

Unfortunately for CARCINOID I am possessed by the manipulative demon that is a chronic nicotine dependence which I maintain has nothing to do with my life choices and is a result of a cybernetic entity wearing my skin like a shearling jacket. So we elect to relocate towards the illustrious Queen Victoria Market late night smoke store to acquire the revolting elixir of our hellfire youth. This is to attempt an apology, though were I actually sorry I’d stop huffing darts like they contain some rare mineral that might fix my woes and actually acquire psychiatric treatment.

Sam has had so many Cruisers he falls into his own guitar amp. BECCY AND THE VAMPS are like a nice warm cuddle from behind with zero prurient intention. You’ve gotta be a mad cunt to make anarcho, because as an individual who does not wash enough, it can get a bit itchy after a while. I’ve sung the praises of these three one whole time and will continue to again. They sound record-identical, which is to say reminiscent of the first time I threw their album on and proceeded to throw a rock through a bus stop window because I couldn’t pick off the fascist stickers. It’s heaving with bodies, and I’m like who is this townie gronk in the Diesel button up but it’s just Caleb from Toy bounding around with a grin like a kid with perpetually capitulated parents, so I let my hackles down. We’re all just pummelling around, lurching forward for those big Peni-ile choruses that gimme lil goosebumps under me leather jacket, and I’m just so gee-d that they’re getting traction cos it really feels like yeah, What Seems Forever Can Be Broken, so I leave my Melbourne Bitter to the floor of the mosh and I think I should definitely finish reading The Primal Screamer given I went to all to find where it was in stock so I could steal it.

Lois and I are sitting on the stage lip with our backs to the band. I tell her I like music that sounds like shit and she asks me why and I say I think it’s because my brain sounds like shit and I need something to drown it out. I’ve made the executive decision not to get shithoused for night one in GAOL(ED) and stuck myself on foldback duty mostly so I can be near the dons but also so no man gets his unwashed dickhole hands on it. I’m at church right now brother, I dressed up for this shit. Respect me or make out with me about it. My intellectual capacity rivals that of the microscopic dust mite insinuating itself into the eyebrow follicle as the storm clouds of Tempt slam brutally into my ear holes. Kamikaze dive-bombs announce barks from the Baphomet positioned in full hunch centre-stage. With a perilous onslaught like a dangerous rope swing at a reservoir, anything could happen. Hands ram-raid the speakers as though a scratch from its busted wire casing could inadvertently launch some form of astral ascension into the bloodstream. The band appear as the bacteria which turns meat rancid – the audience a vomitous mass force-fed their strange anaerobic goo. They bash headlong through the best cuts from the album, taking breaks solely to wing light-up drumsticks into the crowd. Something like an outtake to the Earache Sessions sends fists flying. I close my eyes to lean forward and my nose collides with the vocalist’s upward mic swing, a tiny trickle of sweet, iron-rich liquid roll post-nasal into my open mouth.

Glass shatters into carpet and lies there capitulated and glittering in an arms race with the sweat on everyone’s faces – who can Crazy Diamond it up more in the piss-riddled baptismal swamps of hell? There’s a post-Lined lull as a cover gets teased and we think we’re getting Khanate, or if the stars are right some Suffer, yet what occurs instead is the furious slam of Rort, which inadvertently contextualises a great deal of the sound slamming around the small room. Beyond this point it is anyone’s guess what remains of the last two songs; how I ended up with that fracture in the finger; and I wonder whether time still exists within the heart of a collapsed star. There is clip art on the setlist depicting Sonic getting his toes sucked. What more could you truly ask for?