Live Review: Body Count, AB Original, Total Eclipse

Opening to a campaign of 'fuck the police' in tonight's proceedings, AB Original bound out to Total Eclipse spinning KRS-One's "whoop whoop, that's the sound of the police" at 9.30pm and dare to check the call-and-response stimuli to an audience of black on black jeans and rock-tour tees. If anyone in hip hop can sway a hardcore metal crowd it's the 2 Black 2 Strong workings of Trials and Briggs. Despite AB Original's battering onslaught and the presence of reality rap's unquestioned originator over 30-plus years ago, this is not a hip hop gig. Zipper bags deployed.

Slayer's Reign In Blood pulls open the curtain for Body Count, setting the thrashing pace with Ill Will behind the kit with guitarist Juan "Juan of the Dead" Garcia, bassist Vincent Price and OG members Sean E Sean on the buttons and high school faithful Ernie C on lead. The man himself, uniformed in South Central LA-issue black Dickies, Chuck Taylors and a Dodgers cap, takes us back into that war zone with Body Count's In The House and Necessary Evil then to more recent Manslaughter. Meanwhile, conspicuous to anyone stage right, the eyeball of wife Coco with Ice-T's little girl quite au fait with an up close rock concert, dancing along on Mum's lap, is a marvel on its own. Truly Ice-T's own.

"I've been a cop on TV for as long as you've been alive," Ice-T tells a front row fan who's not yet 20. For tonight is truly a homage to the iconic 27-year career of Body Count and ironic given Ice-T's tongue-in-cheek Law & Order: SVU job versus Cop Killer infamy.

Ernie C goes to work, guns out, hair out, blood-curdling the chords with an insatiable lust for Body Count's 25-year-old classic There Goes The Neighborhood, leading to a whirl of a sweat-bucket carnage stirring in the pit. Leaving Ill Will to unfurl a thunderous drum solo, Body Count are in full murderous swing. Ice-T returns after a backstage pause to discuss his philosophy on the Black Lives Matter movement, citing it pointless in the face of anybody who dares to meddle in the affairs of governments and big money. When it comes to the green, No Lives Matter he decries in Body Count's latest big-hitter, after which a masked Trump makes an appearance and gets stomped on stage. Cop Killer springs out of the pig pen with no preamble, despite its notoriety. Nevertheless it's received in great throes of antiestablishmentarianism and disdain.

Ice-T kicks it with the youngest along the front row, a 19-year-old, and gives him a word of advice on entering adulthood and dealing with arseholes... it went along the lines of 2014's Talk Shit, Get Shot. Body Count is over 25, Ice-T is 59-years-old — too old for a bullshit encore. He orders the lights down for what he calls a virtual encore. They return for Born Dead and roll out in respect to those fallen from street violence on This Is Why We Ride. What a fucking show! Body Count, motherfucker!