Gutalax

Gutalax, Pink Socks, a deranged rabbit, flying toilet paper and a sold-out night of Valencian Punk and Czech Gore Grind insanity. Valencia, you beautiful lunatics, what the actual fuck happened last night?

There are gigs you attend, gigs you remember and gigs that leave you questioning whether the laws of physics, human dignity and responsible alcohol consumption were ever anything more than a collective misunderstanding. Last night at Peter Rock Club belonged firmly in the third category, as Czech Gore Grind merchants Gutalax returned to Valencia for the first time in two years and transformed a sold-out room into a steaming, bouncing, toilet-paper-strewn monument to the beautiful absurdity of extreme music.

The evidence was everywhere. The same familiar faces who had been waiting two years for this moment were packed shoulder to shoulder, eyes wide, grins spreading across faces that suggested absolutely nobody had come here for a quiet night out. There was a smell of anticipation in the air, the sort of electricity that only happens when a crowd knows precisely what kind of madness is coming and has decided, collectively, that behaving like a normal human being is no longer an option.

Before Gutalax could unleash their particular brand of musical sewage, Pink Socks had the job of warming up a crowd whose enthusiasm was already bubbling away like something best left undisturbed beneath a public toilet. It was a welcme opening salvo, setting the tone for an evening where subtlety had been invited to stay at home and common sense had apparently been refused entry at the door.

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And because this was never going to be an ordinary evening, a completely crazy rabbit was wandering around feeding people drinks, as though Peter Rock Club had temporarily become an alternative universe where woodland creatures had abandoned carrots for booze and taken responsibility for crowd management.

Quite honestly, nobody could have invented a more appropriate warm-up act for the carnage to come.

The atmosphere was already gloriously unhinged, but when the opening set reached “Skinheads Por Obligacion”, the crowd went absolutely mental.

Whatever remained of the distinction between audience and performers disappeared in a surge of bodies, raised arms and voices roaring along. The room erupted, and suddenly it was clear that this wasn't merely a support slot to be endured before the headliners arrived; the party was already in full swing, with the rabbit presumably somewhere nearby arranging the next round.

If Pink Socks had been tasked with getting the audience moving, mission accomplished. If Sergio had been hoping to leave a few people with ringing ears and questionable memories, he was doing rather well too.

And yet, this was only the appetiser.

Two years is a long time to wait for Gutalax, particularly when the band in question has built an international reputation on making the words toilet humour sound like a perfectly respectable branch of extreme musical science. The Czech outfit returned to Valencia with the sort of following that makes a sold-out show feel less like a concert and more like an illegal gathering of people who have all received the same deeply suspicious invitation.

The familiar faces were there again, the diehards who understand that Gutalax aren't something you simply watch from a safe distance. You participate. You throw yourself into the madness, you lose your voice, you question your footwear and you accept that, at some point, a toilet roll is likely to become airborne. Then the band hit the stage.

Frontman Maty is a magnificent force of nature, a man who seems to operate on a frequency somewhere between a human being, a cartoon character and a malfunctioning industrial appliance. His manic energy was contagious, his stage presence gloriously ridiculous, and his ability to whip the room into another level of insanity appeared to have no obvious upper limit. He wasn't simply fronting a band; he was presiding over a full-scale breakdown of public order, with a grin that suggested he wouldn't have had it any other way.

Toilet rolls began flying towards the stage, filling the air with white paper streamers as the crowd threw itself into the music. The mosh pits opened up, bodies collided, and crowd surfing turned the audience into a rolling, heaving conveyor belt of delighted lunatics. There was no room for passive observation here. If you were standing still, you were either catching your breath, trying to locate a missing friend or wondering how on earth you had ended up with toilet paper stuck to your shoulder.

“Diarrhero” sent the place into another dimension, while “Assmeralda” and “Poopcorn” kept the collective insanity bubbling at a temperature that would have alarmed most health and safety inspectors. Every familiar riff seemed to act as a starter pistol, sending another wave of bodies into the pit, another collection of fans over the crowd and another volley of toilet rolls towards Maty and the band.

By the time “Vaginapocalypse” came around, the whole operation had become a glorious, unmanageable spectacle. Gutalax were delivering precisely what the crowd had come for: ludicrously entertaining, brutally energetic goregrind, performed with a sense of humour so shameless that attempting to take any of it seriously would have been an insult to the occasion.

The music was fast, filthy and relentless, but the real magic lay in the connection between the band and the audience. These weren't people who had casually discovered Gutalax last Tuesday and decided to pop along for a look. These were fans who had waited two years for this return, who knew the songs, understood the joke and were determined to make every second count.

Peter Rock Club became a human washing machine on its most violent spin cycle, with Maty at the controls and absolutely nobody searching for the off switch. Like a particularly aggressive bout of diarrhoea, the whole thing came on quickly, hit hard and was over before anyone was remotely prepared for the consequences.

One minute we were deep in the madness, surrounded by flying toilet rolls, sweat, noise and people behaving as though civilisation had been a terrible idea from the beginning. The next, the set was over, the lights had changed and that familiar post-gig feeling began to creep in: the disbelief that something so gloriously chaotic could have disappeared quite so quickly.

Gutalax had been away for two years, yet somehow the wait had made the reunion feel even more ridiculous. The same faces, the same camaraderie, the same unrestrained enthusiasm and a room full of people who had collectively decided that the best possible use of a night in Valencia was to lose their minds to songs with titles that would make a hospital receptionist reach for the disinfectant.

The party continued backstage, where the boundary between a perfectly good evening and a catastrophic personal decision became increasingly difficult to identify. My own recollections from this point onwards are, to put it politely, somewhat compromised. I don't actually remember leaving...

Somewhere in the aftermath, I believe I arranged to meet the band for breakfast in Paris. It sounded like a splendid idea at the time, presumably during one of those moments when alcohol convinces you that you are a functioning adult capable of making plans, keeping appointments and remembering conversations.

Reader, I did not make it. I was, to put it in the most scientifically accurate terms available, completely shitfaced. Whether the breakfast arrangement was ever properly confirmed, whether anyone was waiting for me, or whether the entire conversation existed only in the foggy theatre of my alcohol-addled imagination remains a matter for future investigation. What I can confirm is that Gutalax had delivered a night sufficiently ferocious to leave my memory with several missing pages, and that any plans involving an early start and a respectable breakfast were doomed from the moment the first toilet roll took flight.

Gutalax's return to Valencia was everything a sold-out show should be when the band in question specialises in turning extreme music into an outrageous communal celebration. Pink Socks got the night moving, Sergio brought his own flavour of madness, the rabbit kept the drinks circulating, and Maty and the Gutalax crew proceeded to turn Peter Rock Club into a monument to the wonderfully stupid, gloriously loud and thoroughly liberating side of live music.

The mosh pits, the crowd surfing, the toilet rolls and the deafening response to “Skinheads Por Obligacion”, “Diarrhero”, “Assmeralda”, “Poopcorn” and “Vaginapocalypse” all contributed to a night that felt less like a concert and more like a public health emergency with an excellent soundtrack.

Most importantly, after two years away, Gutalax returned to find their Valencia faithful waiting with open arms, questionable hygiene standards and an almost religious commitment to the cause.

And me? I'm still trying to work out how I got home, whether breakfast in Paris was ever a real thing, and why a band whose songs celebrate the less glamorous aspects of the human digestive system managed to leave me with such a beautiful memory of live music. Well, the bits I can remember, anyway.....

Gutalax at Peter Rock Club: sold out, utterly deranged and an absolute bloody triumph. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to find a toilet roll, a large glass of water and possibly a new liver......

Words and photos: Rhyan Paul