On 26 October 1991, grindcore/death metal legends and lifelong anti-fascist punks Bolt Thrower beat up violent, Sieg-Heiling Nazis at their gig in Pennsauken, New Jersey, while on tour with Immolation.
Members of a nearby Nazi biker gang had previously turned up at gigs and caused trouble by harassing people. That night would be no different:
Singer Karl Willets: "I remember throughout the support bands these nazi pricks had started to do that stupid arm streching routine a lot...I got on stage and told them to stop..(no suprise they didn't...but they'd had a warning....)"
A fan in the crowd recalled: "About a half hour into the set, a circle pit opened up, but it wasn't for moshing. The skins were brutally beating and kicking a guy who was lying on the floor in the fetal position, trying to protect himself from the boots.
A tall, skinny skinhead ran off to the back of the club, and when he came back, he had a baseball bat, which he used to pound this poor guy's head into mush. The crowd erupted into a proper riot. Bolt Thrower's singer, Karl, jumped into the crowd to pound on skinheads, god bless him."
"I looked out the corner of my eye to see this huge Neanderthal coming right at me, with Adolf Hitler tattooed on his chest- at this point our Tour Manager intervened with the German slugger!
I saw the nazi monster collapse to the floor with blood pissing out of his head, the backswing to the bat almost killed one of the skinhead kids whom must have been about 12.
The place descended into chaos, the security guards were related to the skinheads, it could have got bad... We loaded our gear out superquick thanks to a more together Immolation and high-tailed it out of there. As we left, Baz remembered we left the baseball bat in the venue, he went back in to retrieve it just as the skinheads returned to the venue for vengeance... I have never seen a man move so quick through a melee of flailing limbs!
We drove off and we then thought that we were being followed by carloads of nazis after our blood, so we pulled over to confront them, yelling as we approached the stopped vehicles, until we realised it was some fans just making sure we got away ok..."
20 years later Journalist Kez Whelan concluded: "As you’d expect from anyone with at least a rudimentary grasp of history too, Bolt Thrower have been defiantly anti-fascist since day one. In stark contrast to the apathetic “apolitical” leanings of many war obsessed metal bands, Bolt Thrower’s principled ethics have seen them get into some scraps over the years"
"As vital as Bolt Thrower are to the fabric of death metal, it’s stories like this that demonstrate the punk mentality that has always underpinned the band."
