Action-adventure rock heroes ArnoCorps headline Alternative Tentacles "Krampus Night" party at GAMH
Legendary East Bay action-adventure heroes ArnoCorps headline the Alternative Tentacles "Krampus Night" punk rock holiday spectacular hosted by Jello Biafra at the Great American Music Sunday evening along with garage punks the Darts, Mexican punk outfit DMFK and North Bay crew Moms With Bangs.
One of the Bay Area's pioneering punk-rock figures and an outspoken political gadfly, Biafra first came to fame as the lead singer and main songwriter for the Dead Kennedys. Started in 1978, the brash San Francisco quartet mixed surf, garage rock and rockabilly, providing a foundation for the singer's bitingly humorous lyrics and caustic delivery on classics like "California Uber Alles" and "Holiday In Cambodia."
The band would release a string of landmark albums and EPs starting with Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables in 1980, but having already founded their own independent record label Alternative Tentacles to issue the "California Uber Alles" single in 1979, the imprint would become one of the pioneering imprints of the punk era. In addition to putting out records by the DKs, Alternative Tentacles became the early outlet for many Northern California punk bands like 7 Seconds and Flipper as well as groups from outside the region like the Butthole Surfers and T.S.O.L. Alternative Tentacles also released important compilations Let Them Eat Jellybeans! and Not So Quiet on the Western Front that helped document both the U.S. and Bay Area punk scenes.
Biafra would make headlines with a sarcastic run for San Francisco mayor, but a controversy surrounding a poster with inflammatory art by H.R. Geiger inserted in the band's 1985 effort Frankenchrist set off a long and draining court battle that eventually led to the dissolution of the Dead Kennedys.
While he would spend a good deal of the years that followed delivering marathon politically charged spoken word performances that commented on both national and global socio-political foibles, Biafra would release numerous high-profile collaborations in the decades that followed via AT. He teamed with the likes of Ministry's Al Jourgensen (in the group Lard) and Mojo Nixon and tracked classic albums with Canadian contemporaries NoMeansNo and D.O.A. (both of whom released material via Alternative Tentacles) in addition to recording and touring with grunge iconoclasts Melvins. The label also put out seminal recordings by such notable bands as Alice Donut, Neurosis and Victims Family into the '90s and continues to put out music by vital new bands to this day.
The label's Krampus Night celebration hosted by Biafra gathers four of AT's current bands for a night of subversive holiday shenanigans. One of the Bay Area's most unique and potent punk/metal bands, the action-rock heroes of ArnoCorps have been electrifying audiences for the better part of two decades. Founded back in 2000, the San Francisco sextet of musical combat veterans aims to take back the Austrian mythology and lore appropriated for American consumption by actor and former Governator of California, "Austrosploitation" figurehead Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Dealing out such spectacular rock anthems as "Terminator," "Predator," and "Total Recall," the dynamic outfit led by charismatic vocalist Graf Holzfeuer (pronounced holz-FOY-er) has built a rabid local base of fans while cultivating an international following with regular UK and European tours. In addition to 2015's reissue of the group's debut Greatest Band of All Time (made available on vinyl for the first time through Jello Biafra's Alternative Tentacles label), ArnoCorps also teamed with AT to release the "Two More" 7-inch single which featured the pump-inducing tributes to the Austrian bodybuilding fable that Schwarzenegger would plagiarize for his '70s film Pumping Iron.
In 2016, Holzfeuer and company announced the band's next recording project, The Unbelievable EP. Answering the longtime demand of their fans to take back some of the more humor-filled tales of the Austrian mythos exploited by Schwarzenegger during the 1990s like Kindergarten Cop, Twins and Jingle All the Way, a Kickstarter crowd-funding effort for the album was met with a resounding response as disciples contributed over $20,000 to the cause. The EP came out on Alternative Tentacles a year ago to solid reviews, but it is the outrageous spectacle of the band's dazzling live show complete with bass-case crowd surfing (ridden simultaneously by both bass players) and onstage demonstrations of physical strength and muscular symmetry by members and fans alike that has made ArnoCorps a longtime Bay Area concert favorite.
The band released a new 7-inch single through Alternative Tentacles in 2019, but shocked longtime fans later that year when it was announced that the dynamic rock crew would be going on a hiatus to allow Holzfeuer a chance to pursue other interests. Their last Bay Area performance at the two-day 40th anniversary celebration for AT featured an audience packed with face-painted heroes and sheroes gathered to experience Arnocorps one last time before the break.
Happily, the hiatus was fairly short-lived and happened to take place during the pandemic, which would have curtailed any planned onstage heroism regardless. Last fall, ArnoCorps regrouped to appear at the 2021 edition of the Wasteland Weekend, an unhinged, Mad Max-style post-apocalyptic celebration in the Southern California desert. The group has played a number of Bay Area shows since then, including a pair of its Halloween-themed shows in the band's "Arnocorpse" guise at the Bottom of the Hill.
For the Alternative Tentacles "Krampus Night" punk rock holiday party at the Great American Music Hall Sunday night, the group tops a four-band bill that includes Phoenix-based all-female '60s garage punk band the Darts who released their latest album Snake Oil on AT last year, Tijuana proto-punk reprobates DFMK, and unhinged North Bay experimental punks Moms With Bangs, who mix garage, surf, and psychedelia.
Alternative Tentacles' Krampus Night with ArnoCorps
Sunday, Dec. 10, 7 p.m. $22-$25
Great American Music Hall