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Pit Stories: "Go Back To Zumiez!"

Every Tuesday we chat up metal bands from across the genre spectrum and across planet Earth to get their most memorable Pit Stories.

This week Chris Kelly of Philadelphia outfit Alustrium shares a tale of a hardcore dancer battling invisible ninjas - but hitting a real person. While he was great at windmilling innocent passers by, unfortunately his smack talk skills weren't quite up to par (blindgreed1 would have eaten this kid up and spit him out half-chewed in the insult hurling arena). Chris tells the story thusly:

Though we've seen our fair share of notable pit moments in our career, there's one that stands out to me. A few years ago we supported a pretty heavy hitting line up at Croc Rock in Allentown, PA. That place was our go-to stomping ground for a number of years. If I'm not mistaken, the tour package was The Faceless, Revocation, and the Haarp Machine (pretty sure that was the only US tour they ever did). Despite the fact that these were some of the more prominent technical metal bands around that time, in Allentown you will never have a shortage of misplaced deathcore kids looking to fight some invisible ninjas.

Though we avidly despise that kind of ridiculous, spastic self expression, it wasn't hurting us so we kept our mouths shut. That is until the most skilled of the ninja fighters landed one of his windmilling fists on our former drummer's face. Spoiler alert: not a cool thing to do. Needless to say, our guy quickly returned the favor and a few of the venue bouncers immediately stepped in. Both guys were dragged outside and thrown into the parking lot to settle their shit.

At this point the rest of us had either seen or heard about the incident and we were all now running to the parking lot to see what was happening. The ninja warrior was uttering your typical meathead jargon; "come on, bitch, the fuck you gonna do about it?" That kind of thing. At this point our drummer had no interest in continuing to interact with this kid simply because if either of them were to kick the other's ass, it was certain that the police would get involved. However, the last thing we heard him say before pulling him back inside was "Go ahead, man. Keep being a fucking moron. Go back to Zumiez." That line alone made the entire debacle worth it in our eyes.

Alustrium just released new album "A Tunnel To Eden" last month, which you can pick up at Bandcamp here. For more details on what's happening with Alustrium lately, head over to the band's Facebook profile.