Black Sabbitch

Kanteena. Lancaster. 18th of May, 2023.

Upsettingly, I've been working sporadically on this post for the last several weeks and have just discovered that none of it saved. Fuck. There's still quite a few gigs I've been to in the last two months, and I'd like to make posts about them; with more gigs lined up throughout the summer, I'll need to speed through this backlog in a bit less detail than I'd like, but it is what it is.

So here I go, writing this post again from scratch. 😡

I'll spare you the details on how we got to the gig; all you need to know is that it was in Lancaster at this cool venue called Kanteena, which I'd been to only a couple of times before. It's a big warehouse with indoor and outdoor bars, and a stage at one end of the room. When we got there, we were already decently tipsy. At the doors, we found a sweet, sleepy dog.

After petting him for a while, we got our hands stamped and went in.

Kanteena is a decently sized venue, but when we got there, there were only about ten people hanging around. Apparently, Kanteena is not too good on advertising for smaller gigs like this. Still, I was excited: we'd only found out about the gig the day before, on a Wednesday, and I was looking forward to seeing what the night had in store. Black Sabbitch are an all-female Black Sabbath tribute band from Los Angeles (I didn't realize this until they started speaking throughout the set). They've received recognition from big names like Dave Grohl and the big man Ozzy Osbourne himself, and they've got a ton of festivals and shows under their belts of course, having been going for over a decade.

Soon after we'd arrived, they started playing, still with only a handful of people in the audience. They started with "War Pigs" and carried on with a bunch of songs from the earlier Sabbath albums, things like "Fairies Wear Boots", "Electric Funeral", and "N.I.B.". They sounded great, and the singer even looked a bit like Ozzy in the early 70s. As I watched them, I found myself more and more inspired by them; I'm pretty sure we were the ones headbanging the hardest in the crowd (a few more people had arrived and the room had filled out a little bit better after a few songs).

In between songs, the band recounted their previous shows on the tour, driving around the UK and loving Primark, buying little gas station trinkets (note the dog/pompom thing hanging from Emily Burton's guitar) and coming all the way from L.A. to play for us in England. After a few songs, Angie Scarpa (drummer), had an announcement: "We're gonna play a couple more songs, and then we're gonna take a break, you're gonna go do coke in the parking lot - or car park, as you call it here - and then we'll come back and do some more songs". We carefully pondered these instructions as they launched into "Snowblind".

I won't discuss the events that transpired during the break; you'll have to use your imagination to fill in the gaps. All I'll say is that the night only got better after that. When we came back into the main room, they were playing "The Wizard", one of my absolute favorite Sabbath tracks. If we were the hardest headbangers at the start, we were determined to keep that title, and with chemical aid, this was not a problem.

This next bit was the cherry on top: at a certain point, singer Alice Austin started to introduce the next song. "We always love seeing women in our audience, and tonight we'd like to dedicate a song to the girl with the Dio patch on her jacket."

Wait a minute, that's me! 😳

"We don't normally play Dio's Sabbath songs... We played 'Sign of the Southern Cross' at our last gig for the anniversary of Dio's death, but that was supposed to be a one-time thing. Not because we don't like Dio, we all love Dio, we just don't play his songs. But tonight we're gonna make an exception for this girl in the audience."

Something along those lines, anyway. It's been three months since the gig, so honestly I don't remember what the exact wording was, but that's the gist, and it made me unbelievably happy to have these cool rock n' roll ladies acknowledge me among the crowd. So I listened blissfully as they broke their no-Dio rule and played the beautiful track that is "Sign of the Southern Cross".

After the show, we got to talk to them at the merch table, where I was able to impart on them that I, too, am a fellow red-blooded American. As I said before, both Owen and I were fairly intoxicated at this point. I felt like Rodney Dangerfield in "Caddyshack", always rocking around and never standing still. I had a good chat with the Black Sabbitch ladies, and we ended up getting various bits of memorabilia: a tank top for me, a couple of patches, and a drum head signed by all four Sabbitches along with a really well-drawn Black Sabbitch logo. It is now hanging up in our own home rock bar, and it looks excellent.

All in all, a really fabulous night, one of the best ones I've had this year. I'm so glad we caught them in Lancaster, and though they mainly seem to tour in the US, I'll continue to keep an eye out for future gigs.