Alternative rock band Antemasque may have taken a stab at the "world's most dangerous band" title after frontman Cedric Bixler-Zavala seemingly made an attempt to throw everything onstage at a recent festival stop at the crowd, including boiling water. The band was playing at the Westfest Rock Festival in New Zealand, a gig that apparently was one constant bout of chaos.
"We were standing about four [or] five metres back," fan Hugh Smith told The New Zealand Herald of the vocalist hurling a kettle of hot water into the crowd. "I threw my hand up to catch it before it collided with my friend's face...this bruised my hand and then splashed hot water all over him and my face. It bloody hurt."
Another fan stated that everything was fair game onstage.
"Whenever the vocalist picked up an item you never knew if it was going to land on you, it was quite on edge," they said. "He actually threw his microphone at the crowd at the end but since it was on a cord it landed just off the stage."
One fan of particular humor posted a series of images on Instagram showing Bixler-Zavala grabbing a wheeled instrument case and flinging it (where it presumably landed in the gap...hopefully not on top of a photographer) with the caption "Antemasque - anti stage equipment."
Although the absurd and dangerous stage behavior of rock bands has often been adored by fans, such as not the case at Westfest, with onlookers taking to the festival's and Antemasque's Facebook pages to demand action or apologies.
The whole incident is rather curious to your correspondent, considering how streamlined Antemasque is compared to At The Drive-In and the Mars Volta, two of Bixler-Zavala's (and Omar Rodríguez-López's) more well known and more hardcore-oriented bands. Although we recommended them for checking out at Coachella, maybe you should stand back a bit if you do.
