CHICAGO - The Congress Theatre this weekend stowed away its Spanish-language Ministry of Christ placards in favor of the Expo of the Extreme, an ambitious shockapalooza for year-round ghouls. Promoted heavily via fanzines and the Internet, the gathering attempted to represent an intriguing array of uncommercial music, unpopular politics, and fringe visual culture into something resembling a social movement. Metal, gothic, noise, industrial and punk bands roared constantly on two stages, while sideshow acts cavorted and table vendors hawked weird music, morbid jewelry, pornographic comics, and Budweiser.
When "alternative" culture ascended to prominence, it jettisoned a scattering of "extreme" components too difficult for mainstream consumption, such as bondage, conspiracy politics, and occultism. The media has bought into the new tag wholesale, from ESPN2's Extreme Sports, all the way to the lunchtime Extreme Quesadillas served in the Time Warner cafeteria. Promising to stake the parameters of Extreme Culture, the Expo failed as an inspiring congress of original ideas - but it held itself together with moments mesmerizing and baffling.
During his first American performance, headliner Mortiis captivated the Friday night crowd without playing a single note of live music. The Norwegian "dark-ambient" musician instead stalked a stage filled with smoke and dramatic lighting, enacting an arcane Grand Guignol-style vampire scene while dressed in the guise of a pointy-eared goblin. "I got out of metal about five years ago," the 22-year old musician explained, "and decided I was going to do some obscure, melancholic, and sad soundtrack music. I will never play instruments on stage."
One of the weekend's most bizarre acts was Saturday evening's appearance by New York guitarist The Great Kat. The daughter of former Mondo 2000 editor Wes Thomas, Kat Thomas is a former Juilliard violin virtuoso whose cultural contribution is now a hysteric ego exercise. Screaming psychotically, she whips young male "worshippers" while playing ludicrous speed metal covers of classical pieces like "Flight of the Bumblebee." Later on Saturday, Sweden's Dark Funeral delivered a powerful Satan-charged set of gurgling high-speed Scandinavian black metal, complete with fake blood, corpse paint, upside-down crosses, and pig's heads flying through the air.
The expo's entertainment value suffered from some significant cancellations. A bevy of porn actors, including Seka and Ron Jeremy, did not appear to MC the event as planned. Boyd Rice, a modern counter-cultural icon for the angry white male, made a brief appearance but canceled his scheduled act. Australia's Destroyer 666 were refused passage to America at the airport. Maybe the US$66.60 for a three-day pass was too extreme itself: Instead of the thousands the theater could hold, the crowds only numbered in the hundreds.
The Midwestern metalhead masses feasted on appearances by old-school heroes like Trouble and Exciter, but the audience also seemed to be in the mood for something new. There were dance performances based on belly dancing and martial arts. Members of the William Darke Psycho Circus and Freakshow juggled chainsaws and caught lead balls on the head. Bloody sacrifice was a popular stage trick: various performers enacted scalpings, and the pantomimed slaying of male and female virgins. Chicago's Hatewave turned heads and stomachs by slaughtering a chicken during its zealous mid-afternoon set.
On Sunday, North Carolina's Buzzoven and New Orleans' Eyehategod turned in the two of the most musically moving performances of the weekend, offering thunderous emotionally-charged blues chaos instead of a drilling barrage of perfect speed. Also Sunday, the Mexico City band Transmetal demonstrated the growing popularity of metal in Latin America. Uninspired misogyny reigned during sets by the Murder Junkies minus the late G.G. Allin, the Mentors minus the late El Duce, and Fang, whose singer spent eight years in prison for murdering a woman.
More convincing fringe cases were present in the bodies of Answer Me! publishers Jim and Debbie Goad, convicted obscene comic artist Mike Diana, and schizophrenic musician Wesley Willis. Recovering from chemotherapy, Debbie Goad distributed a candid tract called Cancer Me!, explaining her new relationship with a 35-pound tumor.
"I'm not supposed to worry about my uncertain future," Goad wrote. "If I wasn't a cheery person before getting this sickness, how am I supposed to be one now?" Her revelations were found not in a demonic torture chamber, but laying helpless on a kitchen floor. But they contained flecks of truth shot from outside the common existence, which is, after all, what dozens of outrageously clad subterraneans were chasing all weekend.
