Part 2 of our Richmond, VA Metal Scene Round-Up Written by David Brockie.

Richmond has produced tons of kick-ass bands over the years, bands that that had both regional and international success, and always presented a variety of diverse styles that still had the influence of the Richmond community at the core of their music. Bands like UNSEEN FORCE, ABSENCE OF MALICE (another Bopst band), FOUR WALLS FALLING, SLIANG LAOS, THE DEAD POETS SOCIETY, STRIKE ANYWHERE…the list goes on and on.

Adam Green, longtime Richmond soundman, offers his take. “When bands like the ALTER-NATIVES starting doing their own thing, the very thing that made it interesting is that is was not emulating anything. It was original and as far as bands went, originality was what counted, even if you did not like or understand it, you respected it. And this is what helped produce so many really good musicians. Plus the scene was small enough that everyone was influenced by everyone else, so bands would be made up of other band members and this melting pot produced a great amount of diversity.”

One of the most notorious havens for young artists and musicians coming up in the scene was a hulking structure that dominated an entire city block in the middle of one of Richmond’s poorest and most crime-riddled neighborhoods. It was called “The Dairy”, or “The Milk Bottle”, named after the gigantic porcelain milk bottles that dominated the corners of the building.

Built like a fortress in the latter part of the 19th century, the structure had long served as Richmond’s main milk-bottling plant and distribution center for all things dairy. For many years, horse-drawn wagons shuttled to and fro from the buildings loading bays, providing local families with the stuff of life, before technology and economics spelt doom for the buildings original purpose. But it wasn’t long before people found other uses for its corridors and chambers–uses that would have made the buildings original occupants gag on their ice cream. For it was in the shadowy confines of this labyrinth that GWAR was born.

Around 1960 the building was bought by a local real-estate mogul who did nothing with the building except allow it to be overrun by an odd collection of hippies and rednecks that used the place to do everything from make t-shirts to experiment with a bizarre collection of electronic gadgetry. The place was littered with dusty transformers, vats of industrial solvent, and rusty milk-bottling equipment.

Said Bopst, an early dairy-dweller, “It looked like Frankenstein’s laboratory, and Frankenstein couldn’t drink enough milk. The dairy made everything possible. I rented out the dairy freezer. It allowed us to get together, someplace cheap, and allowed us to grow together. We could make noise all the time. Except for music, Richmond was painfully boring. You had to make your own entertainment. Making art and music was a great way to entertain yourself on the cheap. The dairy had a lot of effect on what goes on today.”

But like everything must, the Dairy died, a victim of “progress”, eventually becoming a trendy loft complex for yuppies. A chainsaw coming through my wall was a definite symbol that it was time to go. The artists who had filled the Dairy with life were dispersed to the winds, and many of them ended up congregating at or living in the area that had traditionally served as Richmond’s main party drag and center of the live music scene—Grace Street (“dis”-Grace St. to many).

Shark gives his perspective on traversing this arena of urban decay. “Walking down those few blocks of Grace St. was always an exercise in adventure for me. Would I get accosted by a creepy old man lurking outside the Lee X? Would I have to fight drunken hessians pouring out of Newgate Prison? Would I meet the Punk Rawk girl of my dreams at the Jade Elephant? Who the fuck knew? Only one thing was certain- SOMETHING would happen.”

A three-block strip of this tawdry boulevard was home to a profusion of bumping biker bars, nasty-ass strip clubs, and punk rock venues notorious for cheap alcohol, random violence, and endless shows. The GWAR “Slave Pit” was just around the corner, located in an old massage parlor right across the street from a building that transformed into no less than three clubs over a ten-year period.

GWAR members would get into their rubber suits and walk straight across the street to perform. It was along these scary blocks and inside the sweat-soaked clubs that lined them that today’s Richmond scene percolated, mutated, and was finally born amidst a hairy stew of stale beer, bloody fingers, and blasted eardrums. It was rock at it’s most primal, it’s most vital, and supplied today’s scene heavyweights with the perfect training ground to take their noise to the world of today.

Click here for the final part!