Nekrogoblikon

Live at The Whisky a Go Go

West Hollywood, CA

October 22nd, 2016

Review and photos by Travis Baumann

As part of the esteemed "Super Smashed Turbo Tour 2016", with the mighty Pirate drinking band, Alestorm, the aptly named Nekrogoblikon was assaulting Los Angeles.

Nekrogoblikon are a Melodic Death Metal band based here in Los Angeles, and while the music is taking the genre seriously, most of their lyrics and stage antics are more on the comedic side.

On stage, Nekrogoblikon are Nicholas Von Doom (aka Scorpion) on vocals, Alex Alereza (aka Goldberg) on guitar, Aaron Minich (aka Raptor) on keyboards, Aaron Van Zutphen (aka Sack) on bass guitar, and plane old Eric W. Brown on drums (no aka).

They opened the set with the song, "We Need a Gimmick". The crowd was enthusiastic and started moshing right away. As they finished the song, their "Gimmick" appeared in the form of a little Goblin that came out and head banged on stage as well as molested and assaulted the musicians from time to time.

They played "No One Survives" next. The little Goblin dude jumped out into the crowd and literally walked on the top of them with the fans holding up his feet and hands until he made it all the way to the back of the venue and reached up to high five people up on the balcony.

After successfully making his way back to stage, the little guy disappeared for a while and in his stead, the lead singer of the previous band, Aether Realm, joined the band for the song called "Bears". He wore an animal pelt and apparently really likes bears.

They announced the next song as a recent release, "Full Body Xplosion", which brought cheers from the crowd followed by the Aether Realm guy leaping off the stage on top of them.  He body surfed all the way to the back of the venue almost hitting his head on the underside of the balcony, then leaped down to join the mosh pit.

"Prince of the Land of Stench" was up next and utilized the extremely fitting (and most likely inspirational) samples from the David Bowie movie "Labyrinth" which had scenes taking place in the said "Land of Stench".

The little Goblin guy made a return for his theme song, "Goblins Ahoy!" which combined Pirate style Metal with Goblins! They said the song was dedicated to Alestorm's keyboard player Elliot.

Now it was time for the band's own theme song, "Nekrogoblikon". I thought the entire show was hilarious and the music was actually good so I had a pretty big smile on my face the entire performance.

They finished the set with the fittingly named, "Powercore", which fueled the drunken crowd even further, with a nice churning mass of bodies taking up the entire room.

This was a good set, and a perfect opening for the also hilarious, and righteously binge inducing, Alestorm. I like these guys, sometimes we need a little bit of fun amongst all our Death Metal grimness, and these guys are the perfect dose.

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