We’ve all been to shows where the band simply brought the roof down on the place. The amps were turned to 11, the band played with a raucous energy, the crowd was a constantly shifting, undulating mass of sweaty bodies. But Melbourne outfit Witchgrinder are one of very few bands with the distinction of actually having a venue roof collapse during one of their gigs.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t the band’s propulsive, hard-hitting mix of industrial and heavy metal that brought the roof down at Warrnambool’s Your Break pool hall on Friday night, but instead a lone fan who apparently thought it was a good idea to climb into the venue’s plasterboard roof.
“Someone, one of the people at the venue — I don’t know his name — climbed into the roof. I don’t know why — he must have thought he could get down into the main part of the venue through the roof, and it didn’t hold his weight, and the whole roof came in and collapsed,” the band manager Robyn Morrison told The Music.
“We didn’t actually know what was going on; it happened behind the band. Travis, Ryan [Potts], the guitarist, Walker [Hell], the bass player… they were all standing in front of the guy who fell through the roof. They actually didn’t know what was going on at first. Travis just saw somebody on stage and thought this guy had jumped on stage and the roof had collapsed.”
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According to Morrison, the band members and their gear were relatively unscathed and the band in fact played on following the incident, later joking that they were the ones responsible for bringing down the house.
“[Most of the] damage was [to] the roof itself,” Morrison explained. “Travis [Everett], the singer, had some very minor injuries. He had a bit of a black eye and a few cuts and scrapes on his arm… there was no damage to gear or other band members.”
Morrison said the staff at Your Break were “very cooperative” following the incident, taking great efforts to ensure the safety of the band and the audience, as well as quickly cleaning the area as much as possible in order for Witchgrinder to finish their performance.
“The venue was really good and got all the plasterboard off the stage really quickly… everyone was just checking that everyone was okay,” he said. “The police arrived and took some information… but we haven’t issued any charges, even though Travis had minor injuries. Everything was fine — it was just, ‘Holy shit, what happened to the roof?'”
