Prison Affair's Egg-Punk Criminals at Le Ritz

    Barcelona’s Prison Affair are one of the leading names in the internet-oriented microgenre called egg-punk. Both they and the bands that get grouped in with them are known for short, rapid, abrasive and immediately catchy lo-fi music, often with unintelligibly crunched vocals and cheap keyboard hooks. Their musical identity is then tied near exclusively to the recorded format, as it is impossible to achieve the budget-analog sound in the live setting. After a last-minute Facebook marketplace scramble to grab tickets, I was excited to see what kind of energy they’d bring to the stage.

    The three-band event marked the first sold-out show at Le Ritz I’d been to in years. Le Ritz is one of my favourite venues in the city as it lends itself well to three kinds of shows. Touring bands who have not made it big yet, touring bands who used to be famous and have dwindling careers, and bands whose music is too wild to ever sell enough tickets to fill a larger room. A sold-out Ritz show warps these conceptions, but I believe Prison Affair are a solid third type. 

    I stepped into the show just before the first opener, local band Faze, stepped out onstage. A trombone, glistening in the room's purple and red overhead lighting, suggested something dire to come. Faze are a hardcore four-piece who use wildly delayed vocal shouting over their cacophonous riffing to seep the listener in hot auditory quicksand. The frontman swings his arms around the stage while beaming looks of total panic into the audience. The experience created is one of sinking in a silo. A man kneels overhead, screaming down at you that the freak accident causing you to fall will historically be known as your fault, and that there’s nothing you can do about this. His voice echoing down through the thin steel walls are your last thought before your lungs fill with grain. The tightly packed crowd at first had little movement, which was likely an energy conservation strategy, preparing for two later sets from more established acts. Faze deserved a pit, however, and one was created amidst the frontman finally picking up that trombone and blasting dissonant frequencies into the delayed microphone. The solo evoked witnessing a tragedy while too intoxicated to have any idea how to react. The people were flailing. 

    Our local Puffer, another name in the egg-punk world, had the shortest set of the night. Their particular brand of screaming and thrashing was more tightly contained. The kind of subdued energy that exploded out of the frontman in short hip thrusts to the sky during his wholly unintelligible screaming pelted the audience with instances of pure rage. The band’s egg-punk ethos transforms onstage into just a hyper-energetic thrash-fest of stupid catchy riffing that makes people bounce as much as mosh. The pit really got going during this time, and despite the packed room, the pit was respected and given ample space to move around. It was around this time that a typical mosh criminal appeared. A bearded man decided to play the role of the knuckle-pusher. The knuckle-pusher will superman you across the pit with the full force of his fist. It’s less than a punch in damage, but it will leave you breathless as you fly to the other side, trying to make sure your balance is kept. There were many victims. As Puffer ended their 15-minute set with their song “Suffering”, I was starting to get fed up with the bearded criminal.

    When the trio of Spanish finally had their turn, everybody was ready to unleash the energy they’d been saving for the headliners. The band began dramatically tuning their instruments while bestial gurgling poured from their mouths. The sound of the bass alone could have cut me in half, and I would grow to regret my decision not to bring earplugs. The band didn’t take any breaks for most of their set. An uninterrupted onslaught of short banger after shorter banger persisted. The band’s setlist material ceased to matter at a certain point, as the vocals turned into growling mush and the riffs changed up so often it was nauseating. They followed Puffer’s suit and delivered the shortest headlining act I’ve ever seen, which was exactly what was needed after two other high-velocity performances in the furnace that was quickly becoming of Le Ritz. I was thrown, tossed, punched and spun in the sea of exploding limbs. Balloons were blasted in upward spirals by rapid forehead-butting. One balloon met a muted end as it was launched directly into the disco ball. It felt profound. Somebody, maybe the band themselves, threw a prop jail cell into the pit. The bars were trashed by the mob, bashing into random, unseen hands like a scared sparrow in a glass maze. Every bar was removed from the cell, and whoever brought the prop certainly had no reason to take it home. Eventually, everyone in the room forgot it was Monday. The knuckle-pusher got me with an elbow to the hip, which temporarily dropped me to my knees. The crowd’s protective barrier saved my life and many others that night, stopping the pit once just to allow somebody to tie their shoes. On the subject of shoes, the knuckle-pusher found somebody’s lost left one on the ground during the band’s only pause, and held it up high to return it to its owner. I was briefly sympathetic to this character, and it is not for me to say if this good deed balances out a night of lung-busting strangers. My opinions on him may have finally been sorted, however, when I found myself part of his human shield as he landed back-to-the-floor in the final moments of the band’s final track played. Maybe it was important to have a criminal at a Prison Affair concert.