MUNICIPAL WASTE
by Ramona Chrome
Fun Fun
Fun Fest 2010, Saturday, around 5:30 pm. I am pretty goddamn exhausted. I’m
here by the grace of a free PIP pass and have been drinking tallboy Heinekens at
about the rate you would expect, never mind the flask of bourbon in my fella’s
pocket. I’m tempted to seek out some grub and maybe a shady place to sit down to
stave off incipient crankiness, but Municipal
Waste is about to take the black stage. 
I’ve been told by my
friend Carlos, a man who knows his metal, that I am not to miss Municipal Waste.
Sure enough, as soon as the band plays its first note a few minutes later, all
thoughts of anything except rocking the fuck out are long gone. The specifics
are pretty fuzzy by now (and then, I’m sure),but I definitely remember lead
singer Tony Foresta saying: “This is a song about doing a
circle pit on Jesus’ face…it’s called “The Thrashin’ of the Christ!” over a
crowd roaring like Vikings on a pillage. Somewhat later, I think, some guy
was passed above the crowd alllll the way from the roiling pit in front of the
stage to the merch booth. I think he won a T-shirt somehow. The whole crowd was
rockin’ out, totally immersed in the show. Municipal Waste’s energy and
enthusiasm are infectious, and their gigs are loud and fast and fuckin’ fun, all
that rock-n-roll should be. It was my favorite set of the festival in a very
crowded field.
Municipal Waste has
been out there wastin’ ‘em all (to paraphrase the title of their first
full-length album) for more than ten years. The band, consisting of Foresta on
vocals, Ryan Waste on guitar, Andy Harris on
bass, and Brendan Trache on drums, was formed in Richmond,
Virginia, in 2000. Supposedly, their first gig was a New Year’s Eve keg party
ringing in 2001, where they were charged with inciting a riot. The band
went through a couple of lineup changes in these early years, but the current
lineup, with Philip “Land Phil” Hall on bass and Dave
Witte on drums, was cemented in 2004. MW’s sound is pure thrash—the
band cites Suicidal Tendencies, D.R.I., and Anthrax as influences—with a blood-and-guts
comic-horror metal edge (check out their awesome cover art and videos on their
website:http://facethewaste.com/). The band has steadily recorded on
several labels, most recently Nuclear
Blast, a German indie metal label and relentlessly toured all over
the world since their very beginning. The songs may be all about drinkin’ and
thrashin’ and zombies, but these guys work damn hard (in addition to drinkin’
and thrashin’).
When I spoke to Foresta in June, for instance, he called me from Chicago on
the afternoon before they played a show there, on the tail end of the North
American leg of their tour supporting The Fatal Feast,
MW’s fifth full-length album. The band had been on the road all over the country
since April, and they were preparing to embark on a two-month European tour
after only six days at home in Richmond. “I just found out,” Foresta sighed. “I
thought I was gonna have like ten days, get up to New York and visit some
friends. Naw. I gonna go home and sleep.” 
Despite this,
Foresta couldn’t have been cooler about giving up some of his day to talk to me.
During our hey-how-you-doing spiel, we established that we were in the same time
zone (the band members do their phone interviews during a specific hour, local
time wherever they may be). “I’m in Texas,” I said. “Oh, where?” he said.
“Austin.” “Oh fuck yeah, we love Austin!” The band had recently stopped here to
play Chaos in
Tejas. “The show was great,” Foresta said. “We played at the Mohawk, it
was cool. But we love Red
7 too. That’s our favorite place to play.”
So how about that very-quickly upcoming European tour, I asked. “Oh yeah,
it’s gonna be crazy,” says Foresta, obviously relishing it. “Our first three
shows are in London, then Greece, and then Sweden, I think. In like four days.”
The only drawback, he said: “I hate to fly…it dries out my throat.” The crazy
schedule is partly due to the astounding number of music festivals in Europe,
particularly metal festivals, and partly due, I’m sure, to MW’s huge popularity
over there. Asked about his favorite places to play, Foresta said, “Oh man, I
couldn’t even choose. London’s been really good to us…Italy, they go crazy,
Finland shreds…” Foresta said that the band hadn’t been to Europe recently after
a couple of years of doing short tours “like six times a year. We got a little
burnt out.” (And, as a fellow plane-hater, I can imagine, spent way too much
damn time in the air). 
This time, the band will
spend a longer time touring a greater number of countries, every one of which,
it seems, has a summer music festival. Cool with Foresta: “I like the
festivals…I like walkin’ around and checking out the other bands. Some bands
aren’t too into it, but I like it.” Foresta was also psyched to be sharing
the bill with some of his personal favorite bands, among them Suicidal
Tendencies, Poison Idea, Brutal Assault, and the Descendents (“I cried,” Foresta said of the
Descendent’s first reunion show here at FFF 2010. “Man, Mastodon was bummed when they had
to play at the same time as those guys.”)
Municipal
Waste’s European tour is winding down as of this writing (if you can use the
term “winding down” to describe a bunch of guys who tweeted yesterday: ”It’s
Dave Witte’s birthday today! If you are at our gig in Finland this evening
please throw a beer or a cat at him. Thanks.”). Perhaps the band will spend some
time at home in Richmond, where Foresta recently bought a house and where
they’re all involved in other musical projects. Iron Reagan, another of Foresta and Land
Phil’s bands, has been working on tracks which they will be looking to release
“as soon as I get the fucking vocals done,” Foresta laughed. Foresta gave
up another hobby for rock-n-roll, though: volleyball. “I was on this league and
got really into it and messed up my knees. So I said, I can’t do it. I gotta go
on tour, you know?”
Hell yeah, Tony! See you at the show.
Municipal Waste will be taking the Black Stage at FFF Fest 2012!!! Time slots and lineups to be released in October!
M
