Tera Nova Zarra: Press

BRANDON SEIFERT - WILLAMETTE WEEK

It’s late October, the last days of East Burnside’s Outlaws Music Hall, and the club’s green room is full of people pulling on costumes, applying eyeliner and doing warm-up stretches. It’d be easy to mistake this for a play, but it’s not. It’s a rock show.

Tera Nova Zarra, the lead singer, is going over a props list when I come in (they’re missing fake blood). She hands me some plastic roses—apparently I’m going to be part of the show. My bit comes later, onstage, after one of the band’s admirers is slain, comes back as a werewolf, and shoots a bow and arrow with her feet while doing a handstand. As the next song starts, I give Zarra the roses and she bats her eyelashes at me.

“You are a repeat offender,” Zarra sings, “in matters of the heart. You want my sweet surrender, but I’ll never surrender,” she continues—as the bassist holds up a two-by-four, “’cuz I’m a ninja!”

Zarra punches the board in half with her fistful of flowers, and throws the bouquet into the cheering crowd. Then she starts headbanging.


(photo by Tom Oliver)

PETER SCHROEDER - REED COLLEGE

Fist of Dishonor is kind of like one of those old monster movies: You think ninjas are cool, so you go, but really you're just expecting some guys in rubber suits shouting gibberish that might sound Japanese. But when you get there, you find out that the ninjas are actually ninja, and they brought along their friends from the werewolf and zombie movies as well, and really everything is just completely awesome, and the only thing preventing you from totally rocking out is the worry that you might miss seeing something. I can't wait to bring them back.

Peter Schroeder
Co-Producer/Director
Weapons of Mass Distraction

BRANDON SEIFERT - WILLAMETTE WEEK

From a city with enough ninja-inspired rock outfits to lay siege on a small village (or a rock concert, à la Satyricon's Ninja Rock Festival last November) comes a mysterious band. A band that does the shtick right. A band that writes songs about the ninja lifestyle and battles colorfully costumed opponents on a blue tumbling mat at the front of the stage. A band called Fist of Dishonor.


(photo by Brandon Seifert)

BRANDON SEIFERT - WILLAMETTE WEEK

I could tell it was going to be an awesome concert when I saw the table full of Mexican wrestlers.

They stood out in Ash Street Saloon, because the other patrons were dressed as ninjas, kung fu masters, or spacemen—the night’s theme was Aliens vs. Ninjas, after all. But the guys in luchador masks, sitting surly at a corner table the pinball machines, brought the whole scene over the top into WTF-land. Later, I’d learn that they were Caliente and his gang Los Diablos Guapos, here to challenge Fist Of Dishonor’s lead singer to a wrestling match.


(photo by Brandon Seifert)

ANDY KRYZA - WILLAMETTE WEEK
Best Up-and-Coming Persona Band

Portland loves persona bands. We've got pirates (Sunken Chest and Captain Bogg & Salty), banshees (Iron Maidens) and drag queens from hell (Sissyboy). Now ninjas are rising. Fist of Dishonor (www.fistofdishonor.com), a five-piece outfit of hooded, nunchaku-toting killers, churns out metallic pop about dirty fights and randy senseis while leader Missy Jitsu attacks enemies in the audience using "Rock Star Kung Fu" (watch out for the Pete Townshend Toosh-Over-Teakettle Defense). As guitar solos rip and the bodies of fallen enemies pile up (seriously), the sonic boom of a rock show blends with the violent fun of an assassin's tango. Think Kill Bill: The Musical.