A heavy metal gig in New Zealand descended into scenes nobody in the room is likely to forget after a fan defecated in the middle of the mosh pit, triggering a chain reaction of panic, vomiting and tears as the mess was spread across the dance floor.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!The incident happened during Devilskin’s show at the University of Otago’s Union Hall in Dunedin on Saturday, 25 July, where the veteran New Zealand band were performing as part of celebrations marking the 10-year anniversary of their album Be Like the River.
The night had reportedly been progressing as expected until a few songs into the set, when one audience member suffered what was later described as an accidental medical incident.
According to witnesses, the man was standing in the crowd when faeces fell from inside his trousers and landed in the pit, per the Otago Daily Times.
Gig-goer Damian Radburnd told Stuff that he became aware of the smell before fully understanding what had happened, with both him and his fiancée standing alarmingly close to the source.
“The guy who was directly in front of me proceeded to shake a log down his leg,” he recalled.
Rather than leaving the mess where it was, the man reportedly tried to move it away with his foot. That only made the situation worse, as he ended up stepping in it and helping spread the faeces across an area already packed with people jumping and moving around.
“We shuffled to the side a metre or three, then I realised that I needed to alert security. One guard came over, and verified with me the culprit and saw the offensive material on the floor,” Damian said.
By that point, however, other people had already stepped in it.
One unnamed concertgoer told the Otago Daily Times that the nature of the event meant the mess was quickly carried through the pit as people continued moving without immediately realising what was beneath them.
“It was a rock and metal concert, so there was a lot of jumping,” the attendee said. “And then eventually someone must have, like, looked down and noticed that there was just a huge mess of s**t, just completely spread all in the mosh pit, like, all over the floor.”
They added: “It’s on people’s feet. People are wearing skirts and s**t is up their legs and stuff, and then one girl went bleh — just vomited on the s**t — and then everyone else starts vomiting.”
The combination of the smell and the sight of other people being sick reportedly caused a wider reaction across the crowd, with one gig-goer suggesting the first wave of vomiting led to even more people doing the same.
“The smell triggered lots of people to then vomit,” she said, before describing how “people started spewing in response to that”.
On stage, Devilskin could see that something had gone badly wrong. Singer Jennie Skulander stopped to check on the crowd, asking: “Is someone sick?”
Damian said he then attempted to communicate what had happened from the audience by acting it out for the band.
He decided to “demonstrate the act so that Devilskin understood what had happened”, making clear that he was miming the incident rather than repeating it.
Once the scale of the problem became apparent, the performance was paused while staff dealt with what had effectively become a biohazard in the middle of the venue.
“Basically, once it was realized that there was a stinking biohazard on the ground, they actually paused the concert for a bit while some poor souls cleaned it all up,” one witness said.
The same person described emotional scenes away from the pit as audience members tried to recover from what they had just experienced. Continuing, they revealed: “When this was happening, there’s people in the foyer and you would have thought someone had died. They were just bawling their eyes out — they were just hysterical. There was one lady with vomit in her hair, s**t on her legs and just crying, crying, crying.”
The witness also insisted the mess was unmistakably genuine and described it as “huge” and “massive”.
“I haven’t seen one that big before,” the said. “I thought it was some guy’s shoe, it was so big. It was unbelievable.”
Another person at the gig said the incident was unlike anything they had previously witnessed at a live show.
“Honestly, I have never seen anything go down like that at a concert before. [It was] feral. The stink! There were heaps of people dry retching and someone else vomited on the dance floor. It was feral. I’ve been to a lot of gigs and never experienced that,” the concertgoer revealed.
The affected area was eventually cleaned and the concert resumed, although reports suggested very few people were willing to rush back into the same part of the mosh pit afterwards.
Security later identified the man involved, who was described as middle-aged, and he reportedly left the venue willingly. Local police were also said to have tracked him down, but no charges were filed.
The Otago University Students’ Association described what happened as “an unfortunate medical incident”, making clear that it was not believed to have been a deliberate act.
For Devilskin, the only real response was humour. The band later referenced the chaos on social media by promoting a joke product for future shows: the “diaper of doom”, an adult nappy supposedly designed to prevent any repeat performance.
Featured image credit: X (screenshot)
