This was probably going to be the last show of the year, no matter how China shook out, and it was definitely noteworthy. I was late driving down because I wasn't able to get the 4:30 train after Chinese class, and thus didn't get going from my apartment until past 6:30. I got in only a matter of minutes before Sanctity got on, though some of this was in finding parking; this show was brim-full up, even to the point where they had to open the balcony, a first for metal shows (that I've gone to, ofcourse) since I've been back full time. So I got my beer and paid out for merch from the undercard -- Bodom was going to be making their full share, and I'm not going to be the one letting Amon Amarth and Gojira go hungry -- and went on down to the last row above the floor; the floor was ofcourse packed, and having seen Amon Amarth from the front rail at Wacken, I didn't need to be hogging someone else's spot who hadn't.
Sanctity [5/7]: These guys had more than their share of problems with the sound, but it got better through the course of their set. Once the "mismixed PA noise" factor was dialed out, they were pretty much NWOSDM with some thrash grooves, which is a different feel for a Georgia band, but still pretty cool. Unfortunately, they didn't do a lot that was real distinctive, and the singer desperately needs to get some real vocal lesons; melodic vocals are fine and dandy, but you have to be able to stay on pitch consistently when you do them. Such was not the case here. They were decent enough, and improvement is definitely possible, but it's going to take a good deal of convincing to make me want to hear these guys again; we have quite a few better thrash and thrash/NWOSDM bands around this state.
Gojira [6/7]: These guys started up brutal, hit hard, and did not disappoint, delivering amply with both complexity and heaviness; a shorthand would probably be about equal parts Morbid Angel and Converge. The problem was that this made them both the most brutal and the most complicated band of the night, and in an auditorium full of people who want to hear Janne Warman play singsongy keyboard melodies, you're going to get a few literal "hate crew" yelling in undeserved abuse. However, most of the audience 'got' this band, and got into them as well, despite some of the oddities in arrangement and composition. They'd probably have done better, reaction-wise, on a more underground bill, or in areas of the country where this package is more underground, but they were still strongly appreciated.
Before Amon Amarth went on, we had a chance to contemplate their guitar sound during their soundcheck. Now, guitar tone, especially for metal bands, is often referred to as 'meaty', but this was something else. Amon Amarth's guitar tone sounds like MEAT itself, barely cooked meat dripping with juices, chopped and brought to the mouth with the same battle knife, and washed down with giant flagons of beer so thick and strong that you almost have to chew it as well. When Amon Amarth's guitar sound leaves the amplifiers, it soars out over the audience, then up into the heavens and across the Rainbow Bridge into Asgard, where it wraps itself around the bones of Thor's slaughtered goats, building the new flesh that is required to return them to life, so that they may be slaughtered anew the next night, to provide the Einherjer with the roasts and steaks for their feasting. That is what Amon Amarth's guitars sound like.
Amon Fucking Amarth [7/7]: I was prepared for a letdown. Of course, this turned out to be in vain, because they executed a thoroughly awesome performance, but since I'd last seen them at the world's biggest and best festival with the Jomsvikings, plus a bunch of selected totally awesome shows on Wrath of the Norsemen, I figured that I was due for an average Amon Amarth gig. Well, if 'average' for Amon Amarth is the same as 'massively awesome' for other bands, then yes, this was an average set. Despite some hardcore problems with Johan's mic crumpling up (understandable, the dude yells fucking hard), the sound was great, and the performance awesome. It weighted heavily towards the newer part of their catalog, and they didn't have enough time to work in "Victorious March", but this was still a high-class performance all the same.
I ran into Kenny from MPD back in the bar after their set and enthused significantly about Amon Amarth, but after I got back from the head, he was nowhere to be found, and so I just hung by the bar to get another beer. While in this spot, some guy in a Burzum longsleeve asked me if I was NS; I said no, and immediately started thinking, as I collared my Sam Adams and set off for the relative front, how he could have come to that conclusion.
The answer is that given certain gear on my jacket, it's quite possible to make the inference that it belongs to a rightist. My left shoulder is probably what he saw first, with the Slayer version of the Reichsadler as the top patch, and then behind that, on the same left side, are my Vinnland flag and an Iron Cross. Also on my back are a German flag and the Dresden city crest, all of which have meaning to people who choose to put political meanings to them. However, none of these means what suspicious people might think they mean.
The Slayer patch is just a Slayer patch, and gets its value not because of what it represents, but because it isn't available in the US. The Vinnland flag expresses, for European travel purposes, my pride in my homeland and my disagreement with many of its government's recent antics....and also highlights the fact that Type O don't have any good patches of their own. The Iron Cross is just there to look cool, like it is whenever Lemmy or bikers use it. I know enough German military history to realize that it's nothing special; by the end of both of their wars of aggression, it was basically only possible to avoid the Iron Cross Second Class by active insubordination or treason. The Dresden crest is to remember Dresden, yes, but the Dresden that I lived in for a year, not the Dresden that got burned down 35 years before I was born. It's a onetime home that I want to go back to, not a war memorial. And the German flag is just that: the flag of the democratic Germany that I like living in, and feel in many ways almost as comfortable in as my nominal homeland. It's a shame that so much German paraphrenalia 'belongs' to the right, but under no circumstances are other people's ideas going to make me cut stuff off my rig that I already feel belongs there.
As for rightists in general, my stance is basically the same as Amon Amarth's (who have had similar confusion in the past): I don't support them, but as long as they aren't stirring shit or starting trouble, they've got the right to their opinion too. At my age, extreme politics cuts into my sleeping time, and that's something to be avoided at all costs.
Ok, back to the show.
Children of Bodom [7/7]: Their performance wasn't quite at the level of Amon Amarth's, but it was very well-executed, the songs sounded great, and the visual presentation was staggering. They only had about half their festival gear for this run of indoor halls in North America, so the trucks and additional lighting trusses stayed home, but they did bring the lasers and the large metal backplates that spelled out the band's initials in mini-spots. They kept the crowd pumping in top form, which is admirable since it seriously seemed that Alexi had to change guitars after every other song. No idea if this was different tunings or the axes just getting driven out of tune, though I'll consider the latter more probable, since he was just pounding around the stage like a madman, throwing the guitar around his neck, crushing bends around, all the stuff that you expect from Alexi Laiho. After some brief and hoarse yelling, they came back out for a perfunctory two-song encore, then did some fan appreciation, and Alexi led the crowd in the chorus of the Beastie Boys' "Fight For Your Right" before spitting beer in the air and heading off for the last time. Good set, good gig, good way to end the year if this is how it goes.
No idea on when or what the next show is gonna be; nothing definite before God Forbid and Goatwhore up in Bedford.
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Thursday, December 14, 2006
not going to China after all
Someone seriously needs to explain to our East Asia manager what the 'non-refundable' in 'non-refundable airline ticket' means. This aside, I'm glad that I don't have to go to China next week, even though this does mean that I'm going to have to do normal Christmas shopping. This doesn't put any new shows on the dock, but it will probably mean more sleeping in the immediate future, more drama early next year, and more expense for Wacken later.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
SYWTGTW: Stuff I forgot
This is some other stuff about Germany that is good to know, but which I forgot to add in earlier into the customs thing.
Euro
Most Germans will understand if you pronounce their currency unit like it looks you should. But unless they check themselves, they may well say it back to you sounding like "oi row", as per the punk subgenre and the thing you do with a boat. Since you're going to be doing a lot of euro-spending for transit, merch, and provisions, this is something you should probably be prepared to hear.
Pfand
In Germany, the concept of 'disposable' is highly deprecated. All bottled and canned beer, all canned soft drinks, and almost all bottled soft drinks have some kind of return deposit on the containers, which is not included in the billed price. This return deposit, called Pfand, which you'd probably never associate as such, is also extended to drinks cups at gigs and festivals, at which Wacken is no exception. Thus your first beer will cost 4e, even though the beer is only 3e, because you also have to pay for the cup. If you trade the empty cup in for a full one, you're effectively paying 'only' for the beer inside, and it will be 3 euro. When you get a litermug of something, the deposit is 3.50e.
The upside of this, of course, is that you're allowed to keep the cups that you technically buy, and they're solid enough to make this worthwhile. Every year the logo design on the liter mug and hefeweizen glasses (from the beergarden) is different, and every year there are about 10 different designs used for the 0.4- and 0.3-liter cups used for beer and mixed drinks (respectively). If you are easily addicted to collectible-commodity games like Magic, Pokemon, or limited-edition vinyl, follow these with caution, because the effort of collecting the whole set will significantly obstruct your ability to actually see bands like you came to this festival to do.
Euro
Most Germans will understand if you pronounce their currency unit like it looks you should. But unless they check themselves, they may well say it back to you sounding like "oi row", as per the punk subgenre and the thing you do with a boat. Since you're going to be doing a lot of euro-spending for transit, merch, and provisions, this is something you should probably be prepared to hear.
Pfand
In Germany, the concept of 'disposable' is highly deprecated. All bottled and canned beer, all canned soft drinks, and almost all bottled soft drinks have some kind of return deposit on the containers, which is not included in the billed price. This return deposit, called Pfand, which you'd probably never associate as such, is also extended to drinks cups at gigs and festivals, at which Wacken is no exception. Thus your first beer will cost 4e, even though the beer is only 3e, because you also have to pay for the cup. If you trade the empty cup in for a full one, you're effectively paying 'only' for the beer inside, and it will be 3 euro. When you get a litermug of something, the deposit is 3.50e.
The upside of this, of course, is that you're allowed to keep the cups that you technically buy, and they're solid enough to make this worthwhile. Every year the logo design on the liter mug and hefeweizen glasses (from the beergarden) is different, and every year there are about 10 different designs used for the 0.4- and 0.3-liter cups used for beer and mixed drinks (respectively). If you are easily addicted to collectible-commodity games like Magic, Pokemon, or limited-edition vinyl, follow these with caution, because the effort of collecting the whole set will significantly obstruct your ability to actually see bands like you came to this festival to do.
Random Acts of Violence with Revocation, Deadlikedeath, and Medicine 4 Tim [Middle East Upstairs, Cambridge, 12/8/2006]
Sharp people who were actually there will go "wait, that's not the order, not the way it was on the bill or the way that you usually do review titles". Well, there's a reason for that, which will become clear as we look at the way the bands actually went down.
On getting in, I was struck really by how small this room is; despite being full way over capacity (194 yeah right) when I was down to see Sigh in 2002, I was almost sure that it was bigger. What the hell ever, it doesn't really matter. The order was somewhat surprising when considered in the abstract, but there are some concrete reasons why Revocation had to go on first.
Revocation [6/7]:
I'm not doing fractional ratings for this show (or any others that I can avoid), and so this stays a 6 rather than going up to a 7. Revocation still continues to get better and better every time I see them (so far, at about even two-week intervals), and with the newly finished "Ducttape and Buttrape" (the instrumental they debuted at the Skybar last time), they have enough material to do a full set of "7" material....albeit an extremely short set. To fill out their playing time, it's "5"-level stuff, and while this stuff is by definition solid, it comes off as down next to the absolutely brilliant stuff they're doing the rest of the time.
If you like thrash metal or prog-death, live in New England, and haven't taken it upon yourself to see these guys, you are missing out. To describe their sound accurately, I have to pull from my full range of cult knowledge: bits of Believer, Cynic, Atheist, mid-period Kreator, Imperium, and Converge all showed up last night, but it takes an experienced ear to discern the ingredients out of the surface impression, which is a totally original and totally awesome blend of basically everything good in technical metal since about 1985. Dave continues to pull out one or two guitar tricks that I didn't think were even possible every set, and Anthony continues to tease people with his occasional Choy/Patterson breaks when you'd normally expect him to be laying down rhythm behind Dave's soloing.
Bonus props to Anthony for his Out of the Dark... shirt -- I thought I was like the only person on this continent who had that EP.
So if these guys are so incredibly awesome, why are they opening this bill of local bands? The reason is simple: Phil is also on drums for RAOV, and as he has not yet been completely replaced with robot parts, he still needs to rest up between sets, and for as long as possible. He battled triumphantly through both sets, but if Revocation had gone on next-to-last, as they probably would have if they didn't share members with anyone else on the bill, about two hours behind the kit playing almost ceaselessly fast thrash metal would probably have taken an undue amount out of him.
Medicine 4 Tim [5/7]:
There's an unwritten rule in the NFL whereby black quarterbacks are compared only to other black quarterbacks, and white wide receivers only to other white wideouts, no matter how stupid or wrong the comparison is, or if there's a player whose attributes more closely match the guy with the exception of skin color. If we didn't have a similar "Female Vocalist Rule" in metal, it would be possible to state that this band sounds most like Pantera with a few gimmicks. Unfortunately, what people expect is more "Holy Moses crossed with Crisis". This is less true, but with so few female-fronted bands out there, comparisons are few and far between. M4T's style, apart from the bagpipe intro that their drummer blew while everyone else was setting up (usually a bonus for a Boston band, but here a little out of place because they didn't expand on it or anything), was somewhat mainstream-influenced thrash, not real technical or especially brutal, but still solidly delivered. The kilts, scally caps, and bagpipes suggested that there might be some trad-Irish influences at work, but there wasn't much to be heard after the intro. The weirdest part of the set, though, was when the vocalist took off her vinyl fetish-nurse costume and stripped down to a silver-lame' bikini top and hot pants. Again, some people may have found this hot, but to me it was just plain bizarre....though this may just be personal taste; 'skinny' is not a sell point on this end.
It seemed like their set got cut off short, either because they ran out of material or for some other reason; no idea over here. It just felt cut off is all, and this is probably accurate because of the circumstances that showed up later during RAOV.
Deadlikedeath [5/7]:
The organizers of this event, these guys played a nice, long, set of Boston hardcore that was just fun enough to take the edge off the length of it. Those more into hardcore probably enjoyed this a lot more, but for me, who's never been particularly into this scene, the set seemed to drag on a bit. It was uniformly well-executed, but there's only so many hardcore songs that I can stand to hear in a row, and DLD went over that number by about 3 or 4 on this set. Are they playing, though, for some git in a Hypocrisy jacket with Judas Priest studs on the shoulders? Hell no, and my personal reaction to this set shouldn't have a bearing on the assessment of the quality of the music that they delivered.
Random Acts Of Violence [7/7]:
Yes, this set was as good as advertised. The edge over Revocation here comes mostly from the general energy level, on stage and in the crowd. Where Revocation tries to blow your mind Atheist-style with technical brutality, RAOV mostly follows the Bay Area pattern of subordinating technicality to the groove, and just plain writing incredible songs, and the result is that it's easier for people to get into and get moving to. It certainly helped that the sound guys got their guitar sound right, because a lot of what they do depends on trading leads, and if the lead isn't cutting through the rhythm, a lot of stuff can get lost. Fortunately, almost all the leads cut straight in as they were supposed to, and the effect was truly transformative. There are still more than a few touches of their old hardcore style in their sound, but it's melded in with their melodic thrash attack almost seamlessly, providing just the right amount of color and shading to their sound. The next time these guys do a show with My Pet Demon, go, and watch out, because it's going to be a battle royale of melodic thrash leads, and neither band is going to be satisfied with coming off second best.
When you add it all up, it was a great show, especially for nine bucks, even if the mids were a little scooped set-order-wise. I picked up a RAOV shirt and buttons from them and Revocation, partly to support the bands and partly because I realized on Thursday while putting the Celtic Frost strip on my kutte that I had lost my Motorhead pig at Blind Guardian, and I needed something else to put in its place on the waist strap. The buttons are a temporary solution while I try to track down some similarly impressive chunk of tin from Slayer or someone, but will be moved up onto the collar and pocket areas once the new pin is in. These guys are awesome and deserving of a place on the jacket, and since neither band has put out patches (hint hint hint), buttons are how it has to go. They also look cool, which certainly doesn't hurt.
Next show is Bodom, Amon Amarth, Gojira, and Sanctity on Saturday, and then I'm going to China. This is much less fun than it sounds, trust me.
On getting in, I was struck really by how small this room is; despite being full way over capacity (194 yeah right) when I was down to see Sigh in 2002, I was almost sure that it was bigger. What the hell ever, it doesn't really matter. The order was somewhat surprising when considered in the abstract, but there are some concrete reasons why Revocation had to go on first.
Revocation [6/7]:
I'm not doing fractional ratings for this show (or any others that I can avoid), and so this stays a 6 rather than going up to a 7. Revocation still continues to get better and better every time I see them (so far, at about even two-week intervals), and with the newly finished "Ducttape and Buttrape" (the instrumental they debuted at the Skybar last time), they have enough material to do a full set of "7" material....albeit an extremely short set. To fill out their playing time, it's "5"-level stuff, and while this stuff is by definition solid, it comes off as down next to the absolutely brilliant stuff they're doing the rest of the time.
If you like thrash metal or prog-death, live in New England, and haven't taken it upon yourself to see these guys, you are missing out. To describe their sound accurately, I have to pull from my full range of cult knowledge: bits of Believer, Cynic, Atheist, mid-period Kreator, Imperium, and Converge all showed up last night, but it takes an experienced ear to discern the ingredients out of the surface impression, which is a totally original and totally awesome blend of basically everything good in technical metal since about 1985. Dave continues to pull out one or two guitar tricks that I didn't think were even possible every set, and Anthony continues to tease people with his occasional Choy/Patterson breaks when you'd normally expect him to be laying down rhythm behind Dave's soloing.
Bonus props to Anthony for his Out of the Dark... shirt -- I thought I was like the only person on this continent who had that EP.
So if these guys are so incredibly awesome, why are they opening this bill of local bands? The reason is simple: Phil is also on drums for RAOV, and as he has not yet been completely replaced with robot parts, he still needs to rest up between sets, and for as long as possible. He battled triumphantly through both sets, but if Revocation had gone on next-to-last, as they probably would have if they didn't share members with anyone else on the bill, about two hours behind the kit playing almost ceaselessly fast thrash metal would probably have taken an undue amount out of him.
Medicine 4 Tim [5/7]:
There's an unwritten rule in the NFL whereby black quarterbacks are compared only to other black quarterbacks, and white wide receivers only to other white wideouts, no matter how stupid or wrong the comparison is, or if there's a player whose attributes more closely match the guy with the exception of skin color. If we didn't have a similar "Female Vocalist Rule" in metal, it would be possible to state that this band sounds most like Pantera with a few gimmicks. Unfortunately, what people expect is more "Holy Moses crossed with Crisis". This is less true, but with so few female-fronted bands out there, comparisons are few and far between. M4T's style, apart from the bagpipe intro that their drummer blew while everyone else was setting up (usually a bonus for a Boston band, but here a little out of place because they didn't expand on it or anything), was somewhat mainstream-influenced thrash, not real technical or especially brutal, but still solidly delivered. The kilts, scally caps, and bagpipes suggested that there might be some trad-Irish influences at work, but there wasn't much to be heard after the intro. The weirdest part of the set, though, was when the vocalist took off her vinyl fetish-nurse costume and stripped down to a silver-lame' bikini top and hot pants. Again, some people may have found this hot, but to me it was just plain bizarre....though this may just be personal taste; 'skinny' is not a sell point on this end.
It seemed like their set got cut off short, either because they ran out of material or for some other reason; no idea over here. It just felt cut off is all, and this is probably accurate because of the circumstances that showed up later during RAOV.
Deadlikedeath [5/7]:
The organizers of this event, these guys played a nice, long, set of Boston hardcore that was just fun enough to take the edge off the length of it. Those more into hardcore probably enjoyed this a lot more, but for me, who's never been particularly into this scene, the set seemed to drag on a bit. It was uniformly well-executed, but there's only so many hardcore songs that I can stand to hear in a row, and DLD went over that number by about 3 or 4 on this set. Are they playing, though, for some git in a Hypocrisy jacket with Judas Priest studs on the shoulders? Hell no, and my personal reaction to this set shouldn't have a bearing on the assessment of the quality of the music that they delivered.
Random Acts Of Violence [7/7]:
Yes, this set was as good as advertised. The edge over Revocation here comes mostly from the general energy level, on stage and in the crowd. Where Revocation tries to blow your mind Atheist-style with technical brutality, RAOV mostly follows the Bay Area pattern of subordinating technicality to the groove, and just plain writing incredible songs, and the result is that it's easier for people to get into and get moving to. It certainly helped that the sound guys got their guitar sound right, because a lot of what they do depends on trading leads, and if the lead isn't cutting through the rhythm, a lot of stuff can get lost. Fortunately, almost all the leads cut straight in as they were supposed to, and the effect was truly transformative. There are still more than a few touches of their old hardcore style in their sound, but it's melded in with their melodic thrash attack almost seamlessly, providing just the right amount of color and shading to their sound. The next time these guys do a show with My Pet Demon, go, and watch out, because it's going to be a battle royale of melodic thrash leads, and neither band is going to be satisfied with coming off second best.
When you add it all up, it was a great show, especially for nine bucks, even if the mids were a little scooped set-order-wise. I picked up a RAOV shirt and buttons from them and Revocation, partly to support the bands and partly because I realized on Thursday while putting the Celtic Frost strip on my kutte that I had lost my Motorhead pig at Blind Guardian, and I needed something else to put in its place on the waist strap. The buttons are a temporary solution while I try to track down some similarly impressive chunk of tin from Slayer or someone, but will be moved up onto the collar and pocket areas once the new pin is in. These guys are awesome and deserving of a place on the jacket, and since neither band has put out patches (hint hint hint), buttons are how it has to go. They also look cool, which certainly doesn't hurt.
Next show is Bodom, Amon Amarth, Gojira, and Sanctity on Saturday, and then I'm going to China. This is much less fun than it sounds, trust me.
Friday, December 08, 2006
wo bu gaoxing, chu zai zhongguo
.........keshi wo chu le. ;_;
I liked China the last time, but it's a hell of a lot of bother to go through, especially since this is going to involve holiday travel through Chicago. NOT A FAN.
There is also a lot of peripheral shit being stirred around this, but eventually if we go to bat for our Asian organization enough, they will come back to bat for us. Hopefully.
I should be able to get some neat presents, but this is a LONG way to go for Christmas shopping.
I liked China the last time, but it's a hell of a lot of bother to go through, especially since this is going to involve holiday travel through Chicago. NOT A FAN.
There is also a lot of peripheral shit being stirred around this, but eventually if we go to bat for our Asian organization enough, they will come back to bat for us. Hopefully.
I should be able to get some neat presents, but this is a LONG way to go for Christmas shopping.
Monday, December 04, 2006
SYWTGTW: Why not?
Why you SHOULDN'T go to Wacken -- or at least not this year
Sure, there are a whole bunch of reasons why you might want to go. However, there are also reasons why you might not want to go, and it's disingenuous to encourage people to go without mentioning them.
The first reason is that there's risks involved with any trip that involves as many transit changes as this one, and it's quite possible that despite the advice given here, you may miss a connection and find yourself lost in Germany. I've been lost in foreign countries where I didn't speak the language, and it can be pretty intimidating; it's tough enough just being somewhere where you don't speak the language, let alone when you don't know quite where you are. Add to that the risk of luggage getting lost, and it's clear that you have to be mentally tough and resilient enough to soldier on and get through in the case that something goes wrong.
Additionally, with this kind of financial commitment, you can't really just decide not to go if it's going to be a torrential downpour. My first Wacken was in 2005, the worst rain that the festival has ever seen, and while it was an awesome time, I got progressively colder and more miserable as everything in my gear got waterlogged. I planned smarter after that, but I did end up chucking out almost all of my camping gear because it had become unusable. Like on any other camping trip, the weather can get you down if you're not prepared for the foul-weather camping experience.
Also, this year Wacken is going to be changing. In 2006, the festival drew about 65,000 people and was more or less wall-to-wall people; there were additionally changes in the way that the camping/parking fee was handled that torqued off a lot of people. For 2007, the organizers are trying to work out the kinks in the Full:Metal:Bag system that caused the controversy, and they're also making radical changes to the infield layout, moving the Party Stage to accommodate more people. The campground will probably have to be expanded as well, but there's been little news on what the effect of this will be.
With that said, a lot of this stuff is kind of to be expected from a festival, and if the lineup is enough to make you want to incur the airfare expenses, you should consider this stuff in your plans, but not change them because of it. Pack a crash bag, put a box of trashbags in your main pack, and be decided to have a good time even hungry, cold, wet, exhausted, and drunk.
Sure, there are a whole bunch of reasons why you might want to go. However, there are also reasons why you might not want to go, and it's disingenuous to encourage people to go without mentioning them.
The first reason is that there's risks involved with any trip that involves as many transit changes as this one, and it's quite possible that despite the advice given here, you may miss a connection and find yourself lost in Germany. I've been lost in foreign countries where I didn't speak the language, and it can be pretty intimidating; it's tough enough just being somewhere where you don't speak the language, let alone when you don't know quite where you are. Add to that the risk of luggage getting lost, and it's clear that you have to be mentally tough and resilient enough to soldier on and get through in the case that something goes wrong.
Additionally, with this kind of financial commitment, you can't really just decide not to go if it's going to be a torrential downpour. My first Wacken was in 2005, the worst rain that the festival has ever seen, and while it was an awesome time, I got progressively colder and more miserable as everything in my gear got waterlogged. I planned smarter after that, but I did end up chucking out almost all of my camping gear because it had become unusable. Like on any other camping trip, the weather can get you down if you're not prepared for the foul-weather camping experience.
Also, this year Wacken is going to be changing. In 2006, the festival drew about 65,000 people and was more or less wall-to-wall people; there were additionally changes in the way that the camping/parking fee was handled that torqued off a lot of people. For 2007, the organizers are trying to work out the kinks in the Full:Metal:Bag system that caused the controversy, and they're also making radical changes to the infield layout, moving the Party Stage to accommodate more people. The campground will probably have to be expanded as well, but there's been little news on what the effect of this will be.
With that said, a lot of this stuff is kind of to be expected from a festival, and if the lineup is enough to make you want to incur the airfare expenses, you should consider this stuff in your plans, but not change them because of it. Pack a crash bag, put a box of trashbags in your main pack, and be decided to have a good time even hungry, cold, wet, exhausted, and drunk.
SYWTGTW: Navigation and Customs
Navigation
Getting around the town of Wacken is pretty easy. There are maps available on the official Wacken site, so you'll be able to find your way around the festival, and also to the exit. From there, it's basically a "turn left" deal: the town's center is uphill to the left of the festival entrance, so while it's a decent walk, it's also hard to miss. In town, you'll see the yellow sign for the Edeka on the opposite side of the road from the festival, and then a little further up the road you have the town's two banks, Sparkasse and Raiffeisen, which have their ATMs usually accessible. You'll also see a bit of local color with the signs advertising drinks and stuff in people's front yards, but the prices are barely better than the festival, and if you don't speak German, it may be a little difficult communicating. Here in what used to be West Germany, nearly everyone speaks at least some English, but in a little farming town like this one, they don't get a ton of practice. This is basically all you need; everything else is within the festival grounds.
Customs and other inside baseball
In Germany, people don't generally tip. This is because there is a 16.5% VAT (value added tax) included in the price of everything that you buy from a human being. This is why you don't see tipping at the infield bars. Also, you don't need to worry about figuring tax on stuff you buy from stores; all taxes are included, so the price you see is the price you pay. What we call a cellphone, people in Germany and Scandinavia call a 'handy'; there is a handy charging station at the festival main office (on the road up towards town), which you may not otherwise associate with mobile phones. Not that your phone is tremendously likely to work anyway; in Europe the cell standard is GSM, and most phones from North America still don't respond to this standard. Most people in Germany can discriminate between individual Americans (who are people like them) and the policies of the US government (which nearly everyone considers irrational and destabilizing), especially at Wacken where people who make their way from other continents get extra respect for their dedication, but it's still not smart to go running around in downtown Hamburg in an American-flag shirt yelling "USA! USA!". Act like a metalhead, not a tourist.
Getting around the town of Wacken is pretty easy. There are maps available on the official Wacken site, so you'll be able to find your way around the festival, and also to the exit. From there, it's basically a "turn left" deal: the town's center is uphill to the left of the festival entrance, so while it's a decent walk, it's also hard to miss. In town, you'll see the yellow sign for the Edeka on the opposite side of the road from the festival, and then a little further up the road you have the town's two banks, Sparkasse and Raiffeisen, which have their ATMs usually accessible. You'll also see a bit of local color with the signs advertising drinks and stuff in people's front yards, but the prices are barely better than the festival, and if you don't speak German, it may be a little difficult communicating. Here in what used to be West Germany, nearly everyone speaks at least some English, but in a little farming town like this one, they don't get a ton of practice. This is basically all you need; everything else is within the festival grounds.
Customs and other inside baseball
In Germany, people don't generally tip. This is because there is a 16.5% VAT (value added tax) included in the price of everything that you buy from a human being. This is why you don't see tipping at the infield bars. Also, you don't need to worry about figuring tax on stuff you buy from stores; all taxes are included, so the price you see is the price you pay. What we call a cellphone, people in Germany and Scandinavia call a 'handy'; there is a handy charging station at the festival main office (on the road up towards town), which you may not otherwise associate with mobile phones. Not that your phone is tremendously likely to work anyway; in Europe the cell standard is GSM, and most phones from North America still don't respond to this standard. Most people in Germany can discriminate between individual Americans (who are people like them) and the policies of the US government (which nearly everyone considers irrational and destabilizing), especially at Wacken where people who make their way from other continents get extra respect for their dedication, but it's still not smart to go running around in downtown Hamburg in an American-flag shirt yelling "USA! USA!". Act like a metalhead, not a tourist.
SYWTGTW: Food and Drink
This part of the guide will explain how to keep yourself fueled and thrashing through the festival, and help you navigate the maze of overpriced and often crappy food vendors.
General Rules:
Do not buy pizza in Germany. Do not buy doner at a metal festival.
The explanations for these are simple. Pizza in Germany, especially if you grew up in one of the Italian-heavy sections of the US, like I did, is simply and uniformly godawful. It is crappily made, and at Wacken, often poorly cooked. The doner are a slight improvement, but pale in comparison to the real thing from a real city donerladen. They're less likely to make you sick and will deliver more vitamins, but this is a very relative comparison, and you can pretty much put vitamins by for a week or so, can't you?
Breakfast:
Eat the set breakfast (Fertigfruhstuck) from the breakfast tent with either OJ or coffee, depending on how messed up you still feel. This includes two nice tough rolls, butter, cheese, salami, fruit preserves, and nutella. Eat all of this, though you can save the nutella for later. This will fuel you up with immediate energy as well as real nutrition and keep you going for an hour or two until the infield opens up and you can start eating from the Schwenkgrillen.
Infield Food:
While thrashing, you will burn energy and eventually get hungry. At that time, go get yourself a Krakauer Wurst. The Krakauer is moderately inexpensive (3 euro), and you get a foot-long, inch-thick sausage full of meat and some nice peppers that go well with the beer being served everywhere. They are one of the great reliables of Wacken, served simply on another roll, and as such they combine the complex carbs and protein that you'll need for long-duration energy release.
Also recommended are the Wiking Burger (everyone who goes to Wacken should have at least one, but they're expensive), the giant hotdog (loaded up with pickles and other veg, it's like a doner that doesn't suck as bad), and the famous Knobi-brot. This I tend not to favor because it's not quite real garlic bread. The grills where you will find the Krakauers are also the closest food to the most of the musical action and to the infield bars, making them the most efficient way of keeping your motor running whether you're rocking or drinking.
Edeka:
The cheapest place to get food (and alcohol) in Wacken is at the Edeka-market in town. This is a fair bit of a walk to get to, but will allow you to stock up on eats for your campsite if you consider the breakfast tent too expensive, or the beer to be a ripoff. Good options include fresh bread, which will keep more or less until Sunday morning if you buy it Thursday afternoon and eat it piecemeal in the mornings, and the ingredients for vodka-tea.
Making Vodka-tea:
This alcoholic beverage keeps your buzz on at a discount and keeps you hydrated as well, and you'll probably be able to bring it into the infield. To make it, you will need to bring to Wacken a small funnel and to buy at the Edeka two liters of vodka and five 1.5-liter tetrapaks (most non-carbonated drinks in Germany are sold in square cartons rather than bottles) of cheap iced tea, while someone else gets or brings a standard 0.4-liter Wacken cup.
From each tetrapak, pour out 0.4 liter of tea into the Wacken cup. You can drink this if you don't want it to go to waste, or just dump it if you don't care. Now, pour out a full 0.4-liter measure of vodka into the cup and put the funnel over the opening into the first tetrapak. Pour the vodka in, close the cap, shake it up a little, and obviously repeat for the remaining four boxes.
This should take care of a significant portion of your drinking needs for the three days of the festival, if you take one pack down on Thursday and two on each of Friday and Saturday. Tetrapaks are allowed into the infield as long as they aren't of alcoholic stuff, and you've got boxes of iced tea, not booze. The security doesn't check such very carefully, and at the tincture suggested above, the paks aren't going to be exuding an obvious booze stench that will cause the secus to take notice.
Beer:
Get a Mass as early as possible; this is the liter-mug, and they nearly all vanish very quickly. Out of the deal, you get a nifty souvenir mug (3 euro deposit) and the ability to significantly moderate your drinking. You'll be much more able to remember how many you've had, and when you got your last one, and the pure size of the vessel will make you pay a little more attention to how much beer you're putting down. The bands start at like noon on the two main days, and you don't want to be so totally trashed by 2 AM that you can't remember how the headliners were. It also becomes substantially braggable to the home folks who think of beer in 12-ounce increments: "THIS is how we drink in Germany!"
Budget:
Expect to spend about 40 euro on beer per day, and another 20 to 30 on food. This assumes that you are not being parsimonious, but eating and drinking like a Viking on his king's tab, which is overwhelmingly the case at Wacken. This makes about 180 euro in food and booze expenses (splitting the difference, and since Thursday is a short day), before we even get into merch. Plan accordingly! Don't be that guy running around on Saturday night with a sign begging for money to help with alcohol research or food!
With this in mind, you can moderate this by buying breakfast stuff from the market instead of the breakfast tent, and you can shave about 20% off your beer bill by using the vodka-tea recipe given above.
General Rules:
Do not buy pizza in Germany. Do not buy doner at a metal festival.
The explanations for these are simple. Pizza in Germany, especially if you grew up in one of the Italian-heavy sections of the US, like I did, is simply and uniformly godawful. It is crappily made, and at Wacken, often poorly cooked. The doner are a slight improvement, but pale in comparison to the real thing from a real city donerladen. They're less likely to make you sick and will deliver more vitamins, but this is a very relative comparison, and you can pretty much put vitamins by for a week or so, can't you?
Breakfast:
Eat the set breakfast (Fertigfruhstuck) from the breakfast tent with either OJ or coffee, depending on how messed up you still feel. This includes two nice tough rolls, butter, cheese, salami, fruit preserves, and nutella. Eat all of this, though you can save the nutella for later. This will fuel you up with immediate energy as well as real nutrition and keep you going for an hour or two until the infield opens up and you can start eating from the Schwenkgrillen.
Infield Food:
While thrashing, you will burn energy and eventually get hungry. At that time, go get yourself a Krakauer Wurst. The Krakauer is moderately inexpensive (3 euro), and you get a foot-long, inch-thick sausage full of meat and some nice peppers that go well with the beer being served everywhere. They are one of the great reliables of Wacken, served simply on another roll, and as such they combine the complex carbs and protein that you'll need for long-duration energy release.
Also recommended are the Wiking Burger (everyone who goes to Wacken should have at least one, but they're expensive), the giant hotdog (loaded up with pickles and other veg, it's like a doner that doesn't suck as bad), and the famous Knobi-brot. This I tend not to favor because it's not quite real garlic bread. The grills where you will find the Krakauers are also the closest food to the most of the musical action and to the infield bars, making them the most efficient way of keeping your motor running whether you're rocking or drinking.
Edeka:
The cheapest place to get food (and alcohol) in Wacken is at the Edeka-market in town. This is a fair bit of a walk to get to, but will allow you to stock up on eats for your campsite if you consider the breakfast tent too expensive, or the beer to be a ripoff. Good options include fresh bread, which will keep more or less until Sunday morning if you buy it Thursday afternoon and eat it piecemeal in the mornings, and the ingredients for vodka-tea.
Making Vodka-tea:
This alcoholic beverage keeps your buzz on at a discount and keeps you hydrated as well, and you'll probably be able to bring it into the infield. To make it, you will need to bring to Wacken a small funnel and to buy at the Edeka two liters of vodka and five 1.5-liter tetrapaks (most non-carbonated drinks in Germany are sold in square cartons rather than bottles) of cheap iced tea, while someone else gets or brings a standard 0.4-liter Wacken cup.
From each tetrapak, pour out 0.4 liter of tea into the Wacken cup. You can drink this if you don't want it to go to waste, or just dump it if you don't care. Now, pour out a full 0.4-liter measure of vodka into the cup and put the funnel over the opening into the first tetrapak. Pour the vodka in, close the cap, shake it up a little, and obviously repeat for the remaining four boxes.
This should take care of a significant portion of your drinking needs for the three days of the festival, if you take one pack down on Thursday and two on each of Friday and Saturday. Tetrapaks are allowed into the infield as long as they aren't of alcoholic stuff, and you've got boxes of iced tea, not booze. The security doesn't check such very carefully, and at the tincture suggested above, the paks aren't going to be exuding an obvious booze stench that will cause the secus to take notice.
Beer:
Get a Mass as early as possible; this is the liter-mug, and they nearly all vanish very quickly. Out of the deal, you get a nifty souvenir mug (3 euro deposit) and the ability to significantly moderate your drinking. You'll be much more able to remember how many you've had, and when you got your last one, and the pure size of the vessel will make you pay a little more attention to how much beer you're putting down. The bands start at like noon on the two main days, and you don't want to be so totally trashed by 2 AM that you can't remember how the headliners were. It also becomes substantially braggable to the home folks who think of beer in 12-ounce increments: "THIS is how we drink in Germany!"
Budget:
Expect to spend about 40 euro on beer per day, and another 20 to 30 on food. This assumes that you are not being parsimonious, but eating and drinking like a Viking on his king's tab, which is overwhelmingly the case at Wacken. This makes about 180 euro in food and booze expenses (splitting the difference, and since Thursday is a short day), before we even get into merch. Plan accordingly! Don't be that guy running around on Saturday night with a sign begging for money to help with alcohol research or food!
With this in mind, you can moderate this by buying breakfast stuff from the market instead of the breakfast tent, and you can shave about 20% off your beer bill by using the vodka-tea recipe given above.
SYWTGTW: Gear, Packing, and Documents
Now, you know how to get to Wacken. What you may not know yet is what you'll need for gear once you're there. The following is a general guide to Wacken equipment that I did a while back.
Wacken-gear for the international traveler
---
BIG STUFF
---
- frame or military pack
You don't want to be stuck dragging a suitcase around the campground, looking for somewhere to pack your tent out. Your pack should be big enough to stow all your gear, and have enough straps or lashing points to allow you to tie other stuff onto it. It also should have well-padded shoulder straps and some kind of hip belt. This allows you to carry your gear easily around without breaking any part of your body.
If you haven't ever backpacked before, do some practice walking around with your pack under its full load to get a feel for it. You will likely have to carry your pack about a kilometer to get to somewhere where you can tent.
- light tent
If possible, make friends in Germany or other European countries who are going to be driving, and share a tent with them, as they'll be able to bring in a larger sleeping structure, and it's one less thing you have to pack. If this isn't possible, or if you don't feel comfortable in such a situation, you need your own light tent. This should have, if possible, a plastic tarp bottom in order to prevent leaks to the underside, and a moderate degree of waterproofing. Those two-second tents are good for anyone who is not flying, but will usually be destroyed in a typical airplane.
Your tent should be small enough to fit into your pack with the other gear. When you set it up, be sure to also set up the rain fly. Most of the time, the weather is fine, but when it rains, it fucking pours.
- sleeping bag
This should be rated to about freezing, and should pack up into as small a space as possible. Compressibilty is probably more important unless you catch cold easily. At night in this part of Germany, a 40-degree (Fahrenheit) bag will not cut it, but you don't really want the weight or expense of a full winter-weight bag in your backpack.
- ground pad
This is not strictly essential (I did my first Wacken without one), but going without will tie your back in knots, and you'll need to be a lot drunker to get to sleep. There are pads out now that will auto-inflate on being unrolled; I had one of these and it was a perfect solution, compressing small and light for packing in and out while being nice and soft to sleep on. Anyone who claims that sleeping outside on anything other than the hard ground and/or a cloak is unmetal has never tried to do so in real life.
CLOTHES
--
- longsleeve t-shirt or patchjacket
Most of the time, Wacken is too hot for most people to wear a kutte over their normal black shirt. However, once it gets dark, it's fucking cold if you're in a shortsleeve t-shirt. With a longsleeve, you can push the sleeves up for daytime operations, then pull them down after dark. This is probably the optimum solution; a full patchjacket is comfortable at night, but will probably induce too much heat during the day.
I built a patchjacket instead of a kutte because that's where my inclinations lay, and it's that jacket that I wear to Wacken, because it also provides better weather protection, and my first Wacken was 2005; weather protection accordingly looms large in my mind. The heat is more or less bearable.
- cargo shorts
If you think you can get by with the normal allotment of pockets and no straps, go ahead and try. However, if you aren't wearing a kutte or some other jacket, you're going to need the extra pockets to store cups, running order sheets, free CDs, your camera, your phone, your lighter and cigs or rolling accessories, etc, etc, etc in addition to your wallet, passport, and normal accessories which normally travel in your pockets. It is for this reason that most other people you see, especially natives, will be in a black longsleeve and cutoff military pants. Blend in, it's optimal! The other option is to wear a mini-pack, but then there is the risk of getting beaten up as a fucking Eastpak metalcore emo, which they also have in Germany and like just as little.
- boots
If you don't normally wear boots or other heavy footgear, start doing so to toughen up your legs. If you aren't used to wearing boots, they will drag on you and wear out your legs long before the end of the day. Most of the time, boots are not necessary, but they make you more sure-footed when carrying your pack to and from the campsite, and they will be a lifesaver if there is significant rain and the ground starts dissolving. Because Wacken is held on a field that is normally a cow pasture, there are not a lot of really deep roots, and the trampling of 30-60,000 metalheads rapidly destroys any structure in the soil. At Wacken 2005, where it rained basically without letup, the organizers laid down several tons of straw in front of the stages every morning, and the infield was still ground to a fine paste by mid-afternoon. The campgrounds, especially those in lower-lying areas, were in places more or less underwater by the end of the festival, and many more cars had to be towed out by tractor than got out under their own power. This is not a usual situation, but it's always possible.
My boots are all-leather-top Chippewas with Vibram soles and ten-inch uppers. Boots less tall will probably not provide sufficient ankle support. If you won't be using these as everyday footwear, you can buy a pair of army-surplus jungle boots for about $20, but you should be prepared to discard them after the festival; I tried wearing surplus boots once, and completely destroyed them in the space of five weeks. Rotten for sustained use, but they will probably do good service over your break-in period plus the festival weekend.
- extras
Pack one pair of underwear for each day you're going to be at the festival, and 2 extra pairs of sturdy socks. You should accordingly be sure that you've got at least 3 pairs of hiking socks before going overseas; regular socks will not stand up if you're going to be on your feet thrashing for 10+ hours a day. Similarly, have at least one extra shirt in case you don't find anything cool at the merch stands. You won't need spare shorts, but you should be mentally prepared to discard your shorts on returning home if they become too destroyed.
The reasons for these are as follows. Your underwear will likely smell like concentrated butt and gym locker after you've been out and sweating into it all day when you first strip down to go to sleep. Your immediate and correct instinct will be to tie it off in a plastic bag and bury it at the bottom of your backpack. If it's wet out, it's not smart to put socks on wet. The proper technique is to spread out the previous day's socks out to dry on your pack and put on a new pair; on the following day, you can swap the wet socks for the dried-out ones, leaving one dry pair in reserve. Spare shirts are less essential because they can be easily bought on location; these will be dry and won't stick cold wet compresses to your torso. Spare shorts are unnecessary because they won't be in constant contact with your body, and the area they're on isn't as sensitive as your torso. This allows you to get out of bringing spares.
SURVIVAL
--
- 2 tarps
Pack two tarps with you; if you've got a change of flight, one should go in your crash bag. One of these tarps will go under your tent as a ground cloth to be extra-sure that water won't get into it, and the other can be used as an emergency supplement to your rain fly if things get bad enough. The tarp in your crash bag has an additional use.
- crash bag
If you have to change planes at any point, there is the chance, though slight, that your luggage could be lost. If this happens, you will be without tent or other camping gear -- unless you buy some in Germany at inflated prices, reducing your cash supply for merch, food, and beer, or unless you brought a crash bag for a carryon. My crash bag is a messenger-bag style design that when I'm not on the airplane can be strapped easily to the top of my pack; this year at Wacken it carried one tarp, six all-purpose wire tent stakes, one fleece blanket, a coil of nylon rope, a roll of duct tape, and my camera and notebook. If I had landed in Germany without my field pack, I would have purchased a knife and a lighter locally, then used the tarp to make an open shelter, staked down with the stakes and tied down with lengths of rope cut and sealed to length and held open at the head end with a stick support found and shaped on location.
The crash bag, if you use one, should contain the absolute minimum of stuff needed to shelter yourself at Wacken. In the event that you have to use it, you should also be prepared to leave everything you brought in it in-country so that you can use it to carry back merch and other souvenirs. If your main pack makes it, it should be possible to pack in all your crash bag stuff so that you can also use it to make sure your Wacken souvenirs get home in one piece, even if your backpack is a little delayed.
- garbage bag
Bring at least one sturdy plastic garbage bag to put over the foot of your sleeping bag. This is the part that is most likely to come in contact with the side of the tent, accordingly the part that is most likely to get wet, and the part that you most strongly do not want to get wet, because your bare feet will be in close contact with it all over. The garbage bag will keep the water out as long as your tent doesn't flood.
- plastic shopping bags
These will hold your laundry, which will in many cases (as mentioned above) be unbearably stinky. They will contain the stench and isolate it from other parts of your kit.
TRICKS AND LUXURIES
--
- carabiner
The most cost-effective way to drink at Wacken is from the highly souvenirable liter-mug (Massbier). However, these are usually impossible to put in a pocket, and if you've got one in your hand all day, it can get tiresome and awkward. A decorative carabiner attached to a belt or tool loop on your shorts will allow you to keep your mug to hand wthout it actually being in your hand the whole time. Tip the mug over so that the open end faces down; this will prevent it from inadvertently catching other people's cigarette ashes, which is always a good thing.
- camera
You will be able to get into the infield with any camera that looks sufficiently non-professional, and of course you ought to, in order to get pictures for the home folks. These can be a powerful inducement to get people to come the following year, and ofcourse more is always merrier (as long as the organizers are prepared for it, which they usually are). Shoot cool one-of-a-kind pictures that you won't get in the metal mags, and they'll know that you were really there at the world's greatest metalparty instead of just banging hookers in the Reeperbahn.
- cap
More people wear boonie hats than caps, though there are some in attendance. However, one won't just make you look like a metalcore kid, it can actually be useful. When you pass a drinking water tank in the campground, draw yourself a hatfull and drink it on the way down to the festival grounds. This gives you some refreshment and also a cool towel on your head that will prevent the early heat from getting to you as much.
This assumes, of course, that you're a normal metalhead and using some variant of an army or painter's cap rather than a baseball-style hat that has holes in the top. This will still cool you off, but is kind of useless as a drinking vessel. Trucker caps are right out and will probably get you beaten up for a fucking emo anyways.
- pellet chocolate candy
This may be underestimated, but it can make a definite difference if you need a quick shot of energy. Before any significant trip on which I may need such instant power boosts, I lay in a pound or so bag of peanut butter M&Ms; nothing else is quite as effective at pure get-up-and-go delivery, as they contain both sugar and chocolate for an immediate hit and fats in the peanut butter to sustain the burn a little. Peanut stuffs, especially peanut butter stuffs, are probably the best; those who have peanut allergies are I guess kind of screwed.
This should about cover it; it's nearly everything you're likely to need and it should be eminently air-portable.
Of course, you have to be able to get onto the airplane for any of the foregoing to be useful. For that, since this is an international connection, you will need a passport, and if you're one of the nine in ten Americans who don't hold a currently-valid US passport, you're going to need to get one. You can fill out the forms at many post offices, and if your local post office won't let you do this, they will know where you have to go to do them. In addition to the paperwork, you're going to need to submit two standard photos, which you can probably get taken at any photo-supply shop. Ask about passport photos; if they don't do them, they'll probably know somewhere that does. The post office, if they do passport applications, will also usually know of a couple places to get photos taken.
Adult passport applications cost a $45 processing fee (check payable to the State Department) and generally take about six weeks. Do this right now if you think you might want to go to Wacken any time in the next decade; some airlines require a passport to be able to purchase international tickets. As alluded, your freshly minted passport will be good for ten years from date of issue, and will get you into most countries that you might want to go to without an additional visa.
Wacken-gear for the international traveler
---
BIG STUFF
---
- frame or military pack
You don't want to be stuck dragging a suitcase around the campground, looking for somewhere to pack your tent out. Your pack should be big enough to stow all your gear, and have enough straps or lashing points to allow you to tie other stuff onto it. It also should have well-padded shoulder straps and some kind of hip belt. This allows you to carry your gear easily around without breaking any part of your body.
If you haven't ever backpacked before, do some practice walking around with your pack under its full load to get a feel for it. You will likely have to carry your pack about a kilometer to get to somewhere where you can tent.
- light tent
If possible, make friends in Germany or other European countries who are going to be driving, and share a tent with them, as they'll be able to bring in a larger sleeping structure, and it's one less thing you have to pack. If this isn't possible, or if you don't feel comfortable in such a situation, you need your own light tent. This should have, if possible, a plastic tarp bottom in order to prevent leaks to the underside, and a moderate degree of waterproofing. Those two-second tents are good for anyone who is not flying, but will usually be destroyed in a typical airplane.
Your tent should be small enough to fit into your pack with the other gear. When you set it up, be sure to also set up the rain fly. Most of the time, the weather is fine, but when it rains, it fucking pours.
- sleeping bag
This should be rated to about freezing, and should pack up into as small a space as possible. Compressibilty is probably more important unless you catch cold easily. At night in this part of Germany, a 40-degree (Fahrenheit) bag will not cut it, but you don't really want the weight or expense of a full winter-weight bag in your backpack.
- ground pad
This is not strictly essential (I did my first Wacken without one), but going without will tie your back in knots, and you'll need to be a lot drunker to get to sleep. There are pads out now that will auto-inflate on being unrolled; I had one of these and it was a perfect solution, compressing small and light for packing in and out while being nice and soft to sleep on. Anyone who claims that sleeping outside on anything other than the hard ground and/or a cloak is unmetal has never tried to do so in real life.
CLOTHES
--
- longsleeve t-shirt or patchjacket
Most of the time, Wacken is too hot for most people to wear a kutte over their normal black shirt. However, once it gets dark, it's fucking cold if you're in a shortsleeve t-shirt. With a longsleeve, you can push the sleeves up for daytime operations, then pull them down after dark. This is probably the optimum solution; a full patchjacket is comfortable at night, but will probably induce too much heat during the day.
I built a patchjacket instead of a kutte because that's where my inclinations lay, and it's that jacket that I wear to Wacken, because it also provides better weather protection, and my first Wacken was 2005; weather protection accordingly looms large in my mind. The heat is more or less bearable.
- cargo shorts
If you think you can get by with the normal allotment of pockets and no straps, go ahead and try. However, if you aren't wearing a kutte or some other jacket, you're going to need the extra pockets to store cups, running order sheets, free CDs, your camera, your phone, your lighter and cigs or rolling accessories, etc, etc, etc in addition to your wallet, passport, and normal accessories which normally travel in your pockets. It is for this reason that most other people you see, especially natives, will be in a black longsleeve and cutoff military pants. Blend in, it's optimal! The other option is to wear a mini-pack, but then there is the risk of getting beaten up as a fucking Eastpak metalcore emo, which they also have in Germany and like just as little.
- boots
If you don't normally wear boots or other heavy footgear, start doing so to toughen up your legs. If you aren't used to wearing boots, they will drag on you and wear out your legs long before the end of the day. Most of the time, boots are not necessary, but they make you more sure-footed when carrying your pack to and from the campsite, and they will be a lifesaver if there is significant rain and the ground starts dissolving. Because Wacken is held on a field that is normally a cow pasture, there are not a lot of really deep roots, and the trampling of 30-60,000 metalheads rapidly destroys any structure in the soil. At Wacken 2005, where it rained basically without letup, the organizers laid down several tons of straw in front of the stages every morning, and the infield was still ground to a fine paste by mid-afternoon. The campgrounds, especially those in lower-lying areas, were in places more or less underwater by the end of the festival, and many more cars had to be towed out by tractor than got out under their own power. This is not a usual situation, but it's always possible.
My boots are all-leather-top Chippewas with Vibram soles and ten-inch uppers. Boots less tall will probably not provide sufficient ankle support. If you won't be using these as everyday footwear, you can buy a pair of army-surplus jungle boots for about $20, but you should be prepared to discard them after the festival; I tried wearing surplus boots once, and completely destroyed them in the space of five weeks. Rotten for sustained use, but they will probably do good service over your break-in period plus the festival weekend.
- extras
Pack one pair of underwear for each day you're going to be at the festival, and 2 extra pairs of sturdy socks. You should accordingly be sure that you've got at least 3 pairs of hiking socks before going overseas; regular socks will not stand up if you're going to be on your feet thrashing for 10+ hours a day. Similarly, have at least one extra shirt in case you don't find anything cool at the merch stands. You won't need spare shorts, but you should be mentally prepared to discard your shorts on returning home if they become too destroyed.
The reasons for these are as follows. Your underwear will likely smell like concentrated butt and gym locker after you've been out and sweating into it all day when you first strip down to go to sleep. Your immediate and correct instinct will be to tie it off in a plastic bag and bury it at the bottom of your backpack. If it's wet out, it's not smart to put socks on wet. The proper technique is to spread out the previous day's socks out to dry on your pack and put on a new pair; on the following day, you can swap the wet socks for the dried-out ones, leaving one dry pair in reserve. Spare shirts are less essential because they can be easily bought on location; these will be dry and won't stick cold wet compresses to your torso. Spare shorts are unnecessary because they won't be in constant contact with your body, and the area they're on isn't as sensitive as your torso. This allows you to get out of bringing spares.
SURVIVAL
--
- 2 tarps
Pack two tarps with you; if you've got a change of flight, one should go in your crash bag. One of these tarps will go under your tent as a ground cloth to be extra-sure that water won't get into it, and the other can be used as an emergency supplement to your rain fly if things get bad enough. The tarp in your crash bag has an additional use.
- crash bag
If you have to change planes at any point, there is the chance, though slight, that your luggage could be lost. If this happens, you will be without tent or other camping gear -- unless you buy some in Germany at inflated prices, reducing your cash supply for merch, food, and beer, or unless you brought a crash bag for a carryon. My crash bag is a messenger-bag style design that when I'm not on the airplane can be strapped easily to the top of my pack; this year at Wacken it carried one tarp, six all-purpose wire tent stakes, one fleece blanket, a coil of nylon rope, a roll of duct tape, and my camera and notebook. If I had landed in Germany without my field pack, I would have purchased a knife and a lighter locally, then used the tarp to make an open shelter, staked down with the stakes and tied down with lengths of rope cut and sealed to length and held open at the head end with a stick support found and shaped on location.
The crash bag, if you use one, should contain the absolute minimum of stuff needed to shelter yourself at Wacken. In the event that you have to use it, you should also be prepared to leave everything you brought in it in-country so that you can use it to carry back merch and other souvenirs. If your main pack makes it, it should be possible to pack in all your crash bag stuff so that you can also use it to make sure your Wacken souvenirs get home in one piece, even if your backpack is a little delayed.
- garbage bag
Bring at least one sturdy plastic garbage bag to put over the foot of your sleeping bag. This is the part that is most likely to come in contact with the side of the tent, accordingly the part that is most likely to get wet, and the part that you most strongly do not want to get wet, because your bare feet will be in close contact with it all over. The garbage bag will keep the water out as long as your tent doesn't flood.
- plastic shopping bags
These will hold your laundry, which will in many cases (as mentioned above) be unbearably stinky. They will contain the stench and isolate it from other parts of your kit.
TRICKS AND LUXURIES
--
- carabiner
The most cost-effective way to drink at Wacken is from the highly souvenirable liter-mug (Massbier). However, these are usually impossible to put in a pocket, and if you've got one in your hand all day, it can get tiresome and awkward. A decorative carabiner attached to a belt or tool loop on your shorts will allow you to keep your mug to hand wthout it actually being in your hand the whole time. Tip the mug over so that the open end faces down; this will prevent it from inadvertently catching other people's cigarette ashes, which is always a good thing.
- camera
You will be able to get into the infield with any camera that looks sufficiently non-professional, and of course you ought to, in order to get pictures for the home folks. These can be a powerful inducement to get people to come the following year, and ofcourse more is always merrier (as long as the organizers are prepared for it, which they usually are). Shoot cool one-of-a-kind pictures that you won't get in the metal mags, and they'll know that you were really there at the world's greatest metalparty instead of just banging hookers in the Reeperbahn.
- cap
More people wear boonie hats than caps, though there are some in attendance. However, one won't just make you look like a metalcore kid, it can actually be useful. When you pass a drinking water tank in the campground, draw yourself a hatfull and drink it on the way down to the festival grounds. This gives you some refreshment and also a cool towel on your head that will prevent the early heat from getting to you as much.
This assumes, of course, that you're a normal metalhead and using some variant of an army or painter's cap rather than a baseball-style hat that has holes in the top. This will still cool you off, but is kind of useless as a drinking vessel. Trucker caps are right out and will probably get you beaten up for a fucking emo anyways.
- pellet chocolate candy
This may be underestimated, but it can make a definite difference if you need a quick shot of energy. Before any significant trip on which I may need such instant power boosts, I lay in a pound or so bag of peanut butter M&Ms; nothing else is quite as effective at pure get-up-and-go delivery, as they contain both sugar and chocolate for an immediate hit and fats in the peanut butter to sustain the burn a little. Peanut stuffs, especially peanut butter stuffs, are probably the best; those who have peanut allergies are I guess kind of screwed.
This should about cover it; it's nearly everything you're likely to need and it should be eminently air-portable.
Of course, you have to be able to get onto the airplane for any of the foregoing to be useful. For that, since this is an international connection, you will need a passport, and if you're one of the nine in ten Americans who don't hold a currently-valid US passport, you're going to need to get one. You can fill out the forms at many post offices, and if your local post office won't let you do this, they will know where you have to go to do them. In addition to the paperwork, you're going to need to submit two standard photos, which you can probably get taken at any photo-supply shop. Ask about passport photos; if they don't do them, they'll probably know somewhere that does. The post office, if they do passport applications, will also usually know of a couple places to get photos taken.
Adult passport applications cost a $45 processing fee (check payable to the State Department) and generally take about six weeks. Do this right now if you think you might want to go to Wacken any time in the next decade; some airlines require a passport to be able to purchase international tickets. As alluded, your freshly minted passport will be good for ten years from date of issue, and will get you into most countries that you might want to go to without an additional visa.
SYWTGTW: Travel
So now that you've gotten your airfare money set up and ordered your ticket from Metaltix, you need to set up your trip logistically. The important decision is when you want to go over, and when you want to come back. If you can't get much time off work, you'll want to fly out Wednesday after work; given the flight time and that Germany is six hours ahead of the East Coast, you'll get in to Hamburg in the morning on Thursday and over to the festival in time to get set up before the bands go on. Similarly, you'll probably be able to get a flight back from Hamburg by Sunday evening, which will allow you to at least technically get back to work on Monday.
The problem with this is that if you don't sleep on the plane, you will be dead from jetlag and almost definitely miss some bands on Thursday night. If you don't care about Thursday's bands, fine; if not, and if you have enough vacation time, you may want to try flying over after work Tuesday. You'll have a better chance at a good tenting spot, and also get some time to acclimate to the timezone and/or see TSV Wacken get their butts kicked by the St Pauli Old-Time All-Stars. Of course, the appeal of this game is limited for people who aren't familiar with German soccer, but there is beer and cool music, and it's a decent way to get an advance look at the culture of the festival. Similarly, if you can take Monday off and have a little room in your budget, you may want to put up for a hotel room in Hamburg and catch up on your sleep before you fly back -- and also to wash all the grime and grit of the festival off. There are washing facilities onsite so that you don't make your transit vehicles totally unlivable, but they're nothing like the real thing.
Ok, so let's say that you've got all your travel arrangements lined up. You find yourself in Hamburg, but Wacken is actually in a whole different federal state, more than an hour to the north by rail and road. This is how you get there.
We'll assume you start from the airport in Hamburg. After you clear customs and immigration (notes on the passport process will follow later), find an ATM to get out your first allotment of cash. Look for a sign like this:
Now that you have your weirdly-colored Euros, follow the directions to the bus to the main train station. Directions are posted in English as well as German, but the bus sign may not be; the huge German word to look for is 'Hauptbahnhof'. This may be abbreviated 'Hbf' elsewhere, but this bus is a special that just goes to the train station, so it'll be spelled out. This bus costs 5 euros and is the simplest way to get over.
When the bus drops you at the train station, go inside and start looking around the tracks for groups of metalhead-looking people. These long-haired, black-shirted crazies are your natural compadres, even if their native language is German, and more importantly, they know which trains are going the way you need them to. If you find yourself on your own, you'll need to look for a train going through Itzehoe, or, failing that, any train stopping in Altona. Itzehoe is the station stop for Wacken, and Altona is another train station in Hamburg that handles most of the regional connections from the north. At Altona, look for a train going through Itzehoe. It should be noted that going through Altona, you'll be on regional rail rather than an inter-city express, which will naturally be cheaper. Depending on train and travel class, the ride from Hamburg to Itzehoe will cost between 10 and 25 euros; get in a car with a 2 on it if there are numbers on them. These are second-class accomodations and cheaper. You may have to change trains at a place called Elmsdorf; in this case, just wait for the Itzehoe train. This town is pronounced almost exactly like "it's a ho", so if you're listening, it's tough to miss. The inter-city avoids the train change.
Ok, let's assume that you've overcome the German rail system and gotten off at Itzehoe. When you walk out the front, there should be a sign along the road to your right in the shape of the famous steer's head, and probably a clot of metalheads standing around waiting for the shuttle bus. This bus will take you right to the festival gate, and costs 3 euros. Now all you have to do is join the lineup and get your wristband and the swag bag that goes with your camping fee. For the latest on how this is going to be managed, see the official Wacken site; there was kind of a clusterfuck with the bag/fee situation in 2006, so there may be changes going into the festival.
Going home, you pretty much just reverse field: on Sunday morning, you take the Wacken-bus to Itzehoe, then take the train to Hamburg, usually changing at Elmsdorf and then again at Altona. From the main station, you can take the airport shuttle back to HAM, or make connections to wherever you need to go. The bus will probably say 'Airport Express'.
The problem with this is that if you don't sleep on the plane, you will be dead from jetlag and almost definitely miss some bands on Thursday night. If you don't care about Thursday's bands, fine; if not, and if you have enough vacation time, you may want to try flying over after work Tuesday. You'll have a better chance at a good tenting spot, and also get some time to acclimate to the timezone and/or see TSV Wacken get their butts kicked by the St Pauli Old-Time All-Stars. Of course, the appeal of this game is limited for people who aren't familiar with German soccer, but there is beer and cool music, and it's a decent way to get an advance look at the culture of the festival. Similarly, if you can take Monday off and have a little room in your budget, you may want to put up for a hotel room in Hamburg and catch up on your sleep before you fly back -- and also to wash all the grime and grit of the festival off. There are washing facilities onsite so that you don't make your transit vehicles totally unlivable, but they're nothing like the real thing.
Ok, so let's say that you've got all your travel arrangements lined up. You find yourself in Hamburg, but Wacken is actually in a whole different federal state, more than an hour to the north by rail and road. This is how you get there.
We'll assume you start from the airport in Hamburg. After you clear customs and immigration (notes on the passport process will follow later), find an ATM to get out your first allotment of cash. Look for a sign like this:
Now that you have your weirdly-colored Euros, follow the directions to the bus to the main train station. Directions are posted in English as well as German, but the bus sign may not be; the huge German word to look for is 'Hauptbahnhof'. This may be abbreviated 'Hbf' elsewhere, but this bus is a special that just goes to the train station, so it'll be spelled out. This bus costs 5 euros and is the simplest way to get over.
When the bus drops you at the train station, go inside and start looking around the tracks for groups of metalhead-looking people. These long-haired, black-shirted crazies are your natural compadres, even if their native language is German, and more importantly, they know which trains are going the way you need them to. If you find yourself on your own, you'll need to look for a train going through Itzehoe, or, failing that, any train stopping in Altona. Itzehoe is the station stop for Wacken, and Altona is another train station in Hamburg that handles most of the regional connections from the north. At Altona, look for a train going through Itzehoe. It should be noted that going through Altona, you'll be on regional rail rather than an inter-city express, which will naturally be cheaper. Depending on train and travel class, the ride from Hamburg to Itzehoe will cost between 10 and 25 euros; get in a car with a 2 on it if there are numbers on them. These are second-class accomodations and cheaper. You may have to change trains at a place called Elmsdorf; in this case, just wait for the Itzehoe train. This town is pronounced almost exactly like "it's a ho", so if you're listening, it's tough to miss. The inter-city avoids the train change.
Ok, let's assume that you've overcome the German rail system and gotten off at Itzehoe. When you walk out the front, there should be a sign along the road to your right in the shape of the famous steer's head, and probably a clot of metalheads standing around waiting for the shuttle bus. This bus will take you right to the festival gate, and costs 3 euros. Now all you have to do is join the lineup and get your wristband and the swag bag that goes with your camping fee. For the latest on how this is going to be managed, see the official Wacken site; there was kind of a clusterfuck with the bag/fee situation in 2006, so there may be changes going into the festival.
Going home, you pretty much just reverse field: on Sunday morning, you take the Wacken-bus to Itzehoe, then take the train to Hamburg, usually changing at Elmsdorf and then again at Altona. From the main station, you can take the airport shuttle back to HAM, or make connections to wherever you need to go. The bus will probably say 'Airport Express'.
SYWTGTW: Finances parts 1&2
The first and most major part of getting to Wacken is the finances. The ticket is going to cost you 100 euros after everything is added in: camping fee, Metaltix's service charge, etc. This is going to work out to about $130, but will include your accomodations, so it's going to be significantly cheaper than going to a multi-day festival in the US and paying for several hotel nights. However, the killer is airfare. No matter how you cut it, getting a flight in to Hamburg is going to run you about $1000. Experienced travelers might be able to get a flight into one of the other major cities in north-west Germany and then get over on the Deutsche Bahn, but if you don't speak German, it's best to minimize your time in the German rail system, and the costs will probably come out pretty similar. Book your flight well in advance, and you'll save a little bit of money, but the best way to handle this is just to budget well. A good time at Wacken, counting flights, ticket, food, beer, and merch, is going to run in the neighborhood of $1500, which is a stiff bill for most metalheads, but usually manageable. Remember, you've got a year to save up, and there'll be a few little tricks later on to save money at the festival.
The second important part of finances is on-site cash. DO NOT bring US money over and try to convert it. The dollar is critically weak with regard to the euro, and "assraping" is too kind to describe the shenanigans that go on at the exchange counters. If you've got an ATM card that's on one of the major ATM networks, it'll work just fine in Germany, and most ATMs, including those in the village of Wacken itself, have the option to display instructions in English. This way, you pay only your normal transaction fee instead of getting screwed out of 10-15 percent of your beer and merch money. Be sure to check with your bank on your daily overseas withdrawal limit before you go over: this will determine how much cash you're able to have on hand. If you try to withdraw more than this on any single transaction, the ATM will complain, and you will neither get any cash on that transaction OR for the rest of the day. This can ROYALLY fuck you up, so take care. I got messed up by this when I was trying to pile up the cash to make my apartment deposit, and I had to sleep on the floor at the office for a couple days before I got the cash together.
The second important part of finances is on-site cash. DO NOT bring US money over and try to convert it. The dollar is critically weak with regard to the euro, and "assraping" is too kind to describe the shenanigans that go on at the exchange counters. If you've got an ATM card that's on one of the major ATM networks, it'll work just fine in Germany, and most ATMs, including those in the village of Wacken itself, have the option to display instructions in English. This way, you pay only your normal transaction fee instead of getting screwed out of 10-15 percent of your beer and merch money. Be sure to check with your bank on your daily overseas withdrawal limit before you go over: this will determine how much cash you're able to have on hand. If you try to withdraw more than this on any single transaction, the ATM will complain, and you will neither get any cash on that transaction OR for the rest of the day. This can ROYALLY fuck you up, so take care. I got messed up by this when I was trying to pile up the cash to make my apartment deposit, and I had to sleep on the floor at the office for a couple days before I got the cash together.
So You Want To Go To Wacken
So, you want to go to Wacken. You've maybe heard me gush on about the experience, or you maybe saw Headbanger's Journey and were obsessed by it, or maybe you just saw the billing for this year, and said, fuck, this is awesome, I gotta be there. This is good; though sometimes the hype is a little excessive on the "Holy Land" angle, Wacken is like no other festival in the world, and if you're a truly dedicated metalhead, you should eventually make the pilgrimage at least once in your life. However, just as some Muslims get fucked up on their once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca, it's quite possible for you to get fucked over at some point in the transit to Wacken, especially if you don't speak German or don't know how things work in Germany. This is where I come in; I've been to Wacken twice, and I lived in Germany for the better part of a year as a normal citizen, so I'm going to try and explain how things go so that you, also, can be smart and prepared and have your once-in-a-lifetime trip go so well that it threatens to be come a once-a-year addiction.
This post is the first in a series, and as the other posts go in, this one will be edited to reflect links to the new parts.
SYWTGTW: Finances parts 1&2
SYWTGTW: Travel
SYWTGTW: Gear, Packing, and Documents
SYWTGTW: Food and Drink
SYWTGTW: Navigation and Customs
SYWTGTW: Why not?
SYWTGTW: Stuff I forgot
These may be updated later, and definitely will be edited in response to any questions, so fire away.
This post is the first in a series, and as the other posts go in, this one will be edited to reflect links to the new parts.
SYWTGTW: Finances parts 1&2
SYWTGTW: Travel
SYWTGTW: Gear, Packing, and Documents
SYWTGTW: Food and Drink
SYWTGTW: Navigation and Customs
SYWTGTW: Why not?
SYWTGTW: Stuff I forgot
These may be updated later, and definitely will be edited in response to any questions, so fire away.
Blind Guardian with Leaves' Eyes [Worcester Palladium, 12/1/2006]
In contrast to normal shows, this one formed up with a sort of posse: me, my brother, one of his friends who was up from DC, and two other friends, Ryan and Danny, who also happened to be 2/5 of Ruin -- the now-defunct Massachusetts band, not the one from Maine that's still around. Pat McNeil from My Pet Demon was supposed to be in the crew as well, but Ryan kind of forgot to invite him. In the mist that turned into annoying rain, we set off for Worcester with Danny at the wheel, leaving Ryan and James to trade ridiculous stories about some of their gay (both out and in total denial) and/or stupid friends, which made the drive in decently enjoyable despite the weather and other Massachusetts drivers on the road.
We got in about 15 minutes before doors, and came around the uphill side of the Palladium to find that there was an actual lineup. What the hell? This was seriously the first time I've seen any kind of lineup for a normal show at the Palladium, and it was so long that after security forced us down the block instead of wrapping bag up to the gate, the end was seriously almost all the way down to the DCU Center. We ended up at the front of the "second line" behind the buses; James ran into one of his frat buddies, who ended up hanging with us inside, and we shot the shit with the security guy monitoring the gate, who was buddies with All That Remains and had a couple stories about DragonForce's outlandish road drinking habits to pass along. (Another DragonForce moment, eariler: Random parking attendant: "So, what does this band sound like tonight?" Ryan: "Power metal. Par excellence." RPA: "Oh, like DragonForce?" James: "Kind of, but less gay.")
Eventually, we got in, got beer, got merch, and got down onto the floor, waiting for Leaves' Eyes to start, so that they could finish so that the Guardians could go on. The audience was pretty well mixed, not only over age and gender but also in metalness level: there were quite a few people who looked as though this was probably the only show they went to all year, and that this bill would be the only one that would get them out and onto the floor, and then there were the usual stalwarts that I see at every show that I go to, and in pictures on RTTP from all the shows that I don't go to. While we were standing around, I got engaged in conversation by this kid who was the perfect stereotype of the introverted power metal fan: overweight, unkempt, wearing a tye-died T-shirt with an upraised arm holding a sword on it; he commented on my jacket and my Swashbuckle shirt (I thought I was being original, but I saw at least 3 other people in Swashbuckle kit at this gig -- here's hoping it's a general trend and a bigger label picks them up), and I responded to be nice, even showing off the back design, but he lost interest and tried to start up with some other people. When the pit started (more on this later), he cleared off the floor, and I thought I had seen the last of him.
However, before you write this kid off as a pathetic fish-out-of-water nerd, you need to hear the end of the story. I did see him again, later, throwing down in the pit for BG, hitting and getting hit, passively getting the kind of acceptance for just being that he'd been actively looking for earlier. There is a moral in this story, and it's about the transformative and redemptive power of heavy metal. Will this dude get into the underground and go to more shows, listen to Swashbuckle and start getting into heavier music? Who knows, but the seeds for such are there. In the abstract, metal does not automatically make people better people, but it will make them different people, and the change from the perspective of the person changing is usually a positive.
Anyway, Leaves' Eyes started, and they played their own music, despite some idiot (who is also writing this showreview) yelling at them to do Todessehnsucht.
Leaves' Eyes [4.5/7]
They were better than I expected, but I had some catastrophically low expectations. Their boring material was somewhat less boring live, but outside of "Farewell Proud Men" (which they opened with) and "Elegy" (which they closed with, and which was actually good for a change), there was nothing at all distinctive about it. One could ask what the hell is wrong with Alex Krull to consistently choose to make lamer and more boring music over the course of his career, but this is probably a lost cause at this point; instead, ask what the hell is wrong with him to let his wife use the bedroom voice on the audience. This may have come off as hot to some people, but to me it was freakin' creepy. If there was a unilateral good point to this set, it was the bassist, who laid down a real barrage of thumbslaps in places; the tops of his 24th and 23rd frets were hammered so flat that they caught the light differently, and if he didn't have that silver thumb ring, his knuckle would probably have gone just to pieces a long time ago. Fuckin' brutal.
Speaking of fuckin' brutal, we need to address the pit that developed during this band, which went more or less continuously despite the fact that they played a total of maybe five minutes of moshable material, salted in 30- to 60-second bursts through the 45-minute set. There were a lot of fists and elbows extended out from the pit wall in this case, and while I don't advocate harming people for expressing themselves, I also don't advocate moshing for moshing's sake, especially during a gothic metal band that isn't particularly possible to mosh to. I can understand if you don't want to listen to the music and want to do something else, but you have to understand that the rest of us don't want to listen to them either, and if we have to be stuck listening to them, we'd rather not do it while having to keep our arms up to football-block some idiot who's dancing around like it was Slayer up on stage. This is a moshing country and a particularly moshing scene here in the northeast, but really, show some sense -- and save your energy for Blind Guardian's thrash metal flashbacks.
So Leaves' Eyes finished, and we cheered because they were going away and the Guardians were coming, and then it was time to stand around in the press of the floor, waiting for them to finish re-dressing the set. The high excitement level and low average attention span led to some fun spontaneous outbursts of European soccer chants, bandname yelling (GUAR-DIAN!, Euro-style, as well as the more American GUAR-DI-AN!), and a LOT of warmups for later singalongs. Of course, the lack of general vocal skills meant that this a capella stuff could not last really long, and presently we were in the situation that Ryan described as such:
"When I finally die and go to hell for all those sins I did, this is what it's going to be like. I'll be standing in the middle of a crowd of smelly, sweaty men, and they'll be playing Van Halen over the PA. And I'll be waiting for Blind Guardian to go on, but they'll never go on. Ever." Fortunately, though, this was not precisely our situation, because eventually they did go on.
Blind Guardian [7/7]
I was forward, though not at the front, and got caught up in the press that immediately developed as soon as the band came onstage, let alone hit into "Into The Storm". It was an amazing experience, but a thoroughly stressful one for a 250-lb man with two bad knees who has been to several Euro festivals, including this year's Wacken where Children of Bodom caused this effect over the whole infield, and who accordingly can't keep himself from thinking "OH SHIT ROSTOCK" when he is lifted from his feet by crowd pressure. I hung with it through "Born In A Mourning Hall", but realized that in my condition and the crowd circumstance, injury was a question of "when", not "if". I ducked out through the pit to the more-breathing-room area behind it and spent the rest of the gig tossing people back in -- and of course totally rocking out.
This was not the best set I've ever seen. However, it was completely stupendous, and the reason I'm not disappointed that they didn't do anything off Tales is that everything else was so incredible. This set was everything you'd expect from Blind Guardian and more besides: singalongs, including the Euro-typical take of "The Bards' Song" where Hansi doesn't really have to sing, and intense moshing on the old blasters ("Valhalla" was just plain sick), but also spontaneous folkdancing in "Skalds and Shadows" and true chills running all the way down your body during "Iron Hill" and "And Then There Was Silence". This performance set a high, high standard for their headlining slot at this year's Wacken to live up to; I'm hoping they beat it, but I can't help thinking that they won't beat it by much: in large measure, Blind Guardian took this American club audience and brought them out onto the plains of Germany over this set, and cut off a small but vital slice of what it's like to be out under the sky, united in metal. Does it get better than that? Maybe it does, but I don't know who'd be disappointed if it doesn't.
On the way back, it was more drunk camping stories, a listen through the new Haunted record (which had Ryan jizzing all over the back seat), and some Slayer-reminiscing as we came down the home stretch. I also talked up Wacken a bit, which made it three times on the day that I encouraged people to go to the festival. Doing this without providing full information, though, is a little disingenuous, because while I have the cultural and logistical knowhow to just get on a plane and go to the show, it's not this easy for most people, and if there's something that they don't know that they ought to, it might royally fuck them up. So I'm going to try and write a guide to Wacken travel for Northeast Corridor metalheads, which will be applicable to other American headbangers with the added initial instruction "move to the Northeast Corridor". Or just "get there", but seriously, it's easier to live here, because there's more shows year-round and both MDDF and NEMHCF are within reasonable driving distance. The Wacken guide will take form in a series of posts a little later.
We got in about 15 minutes before doors, and came around the uphill side of the Palladium to find that there was an actual lineup. What the hell? This was seriously the first time I've seen any kind of lineup for a normal show at the Palladium, and it was so long that after security forced us down the block instead of wrapping bag up to the gate, the end was seriously almost all the way down to the DCU Center. We ended up at the front of the "second line" behind the buses; James ran into one of his frat buddies, who ended up hanging with us inside, and we shot the shit with the security guy monitoring the gate, who was buddies with All That Remains and had a couple stories about DragonForce's outlandish road drinking habits to pass along. (Another DragonForce moment, eariler: Random parking attendant: "So, what does this band sound like tonight?" Ryan: "Power metal. Par excellence." RPA: "Oh, like DragonForce?" James: "Kind of, but less gay.")
Eventually, we got in, got beer, got merch, and got down onto the floor, waiting for Leaves' Eyes to start, so that they could finish so that the Guardians could go on. The audience was pretty well mixed, not only over age and gender but also in metalness level: there were quite a few people who looked as though this was probably the only show they went to all year, and that this bill would be the only one that would get them out and onto the floor, and then there were the usual stalwarts that I see at every show that I go to, and in pictures on RTTP from all the shows that I don't go to. While we were standing around, I got engaged in conversation by this kid who was the perfect stereotype of the introverted power metal fan: overweight, unkempt, wearing a tye-died T-shirt with an upraised arm holding a sword on it; he commented on my jacket and my Swashbuckle shirt (I thought I was being original, but I saw at least 3 other people in Swashbuckle kit at this gig -- here's hoping it's a general trend and a bigger label picks them up), and I responded to be nice, even showing off the back design, but he lost interest and tried to start up with some other people. When the pit started (more on this later), he cleared off the floor, and I thought I had seen the last of him.
However, before you write this kid off as a pathetic fish-out-of-water nerd, you need to hear the end of the story. I did see him again, later, throwing down in the pit for BG, hitting and getting hit, passively getting the kind of acceptance for just being that he'd been actively looking for earlier. There is a moral in this story, and it's about the transformative and redemptive power of heavy metal. Will this dude get into the underground and go to more shows, listen to Swashbuckle and start getting into heavier music? Who knows, but the seeds for such are there. In the abstract, metal does not automatically make people better people, but it will make them different people, and the change from the perspective of the person changing is usually a positive.
Anyway, Leaves' Eyes started, and they played their own music, despite some idiot (who is also writing this showreview) yelling at them to do Todessehnsucht.
Leaves' Eyes [4.5/7]
They were better than I expected, but I had some catastrophically low expectations. Their boring material was somewhat less boring live, but outside of "Farewell Proud Men" (which they opened with) and "Elegy" (which they closed with, and which was actually good for a change), there was nothing at all distinctive about it. One could ask what the hell is wrong with Alex Krull to consistently choose to make lamer and more boring music over the course of his career, but this is probably a lost cause at this point; instead, ask what the hell is wrong with him to let his wife use the bedroom voice on the audience. This may have come off as hot to some people, but to me it was freakin' creepy. If there was a unilateral good point to this set, it was the bassist, who laid down a real barrage of thumbslaps in places; the tops of his 24th and 23rd frets were hammered so flat that they caught the light differently, and if he didn't have that silver thumb ring, his knuckle would probably have gone just to pieces a long time ago. Fuckin' brutal.
Speaking of fuckin' brutal, we need to address the pit that developed during this band, which went more or less continuously despite the fact that they played a total of maybe five minutes of moshable material, salted in 30- to 60-second bursts through the 45-minute set. There were a lot of fists and elbows extended out from the pit wall in this case, and while I don't advocate harming people for expressing themselves, I also don't advocate moshing for moshing's sake, especially during a gothic metal band that isn't particularly possible to mosh to. I can understand if you don't want to listen to the music and want to do something else, but you have to understand that the rest of us don't want to listen to them either, and if we have to be stuck listening to them, we'd rather not do it while having to keep our arms up to football-block some idiot who's dancing around like it was Slayer up on stage. This is a moshing country and a particularly moshing scene here in the northeast, but really, show some sense -- and save your energy for Blind Guardian's thrash metal flashbacks.
So Leaves' Eyes finished, and we cheered because they were going away and the Guardians were coming, and then it was time to stand around in the press of the floor, waiting for them to finish re-dressing the set. The high excitement level and low average attention span led to some fun spontaneous outbursts of European soccer chants, bandname yelling (GUAR-DIAN!, Euro-style, as well as the more American GUAR-DI-AN!), and a LOT of warmups for later singalongs. Of course, the lack of general vocal skills meant that this a capella stuff could not last really long, and presently we were in the situation that Ryan described as such:
"When I finally die and go to hell for all those sins I did, this is what it's going to be like. I'll be standing in the middle of a crowd of smelly, sweaty men, and they'll be playing Van Halen over the PA. And I'll be waiting for Blind Guardian to go on, but they'll never go on. Ever." Fortunately, though, this was not precisely our situation, because eventually they did go on.
Blind Guardian [7/7]
I was forward, though not at the front, and got caught up in the press that immediately developed as soon as the band came onstage, let alone hit into "Into The Storm". It was an amazing experience, but a thoroughly stressful one for a 250-lb man with two bad knees who has been to several Euro festivals, including this year's Wacken where Children of Bodom caused this effect over the whole infield, and who accordingly can't keep himself from thinking "OH SHIT ROSTOCK" when he is lifted from his feet by crowd pressure. I hung with it through "Born In A Mourning Hall", but realized that in my condition and the crowd circumstance, injury was a question of "when", not "if". I ducked out through the pit to the more-breathing-room area behind it and spent the rest of the gig tossing people back in -- and of course totally rocking out.
This was not the best set I've ever seen. However, it was completely stupendous, and the reason I'm not disappointed that they didn't do anything off Tales is that everything else was so incredible. This set was everything you'd expect from Blind Guardian and more besides: singalongs, including the Euro-typical take of "The Bards' Song" where Hansi doesn't really have to sing, and intense moshing on the old blasters ("Valhalla" was just plain sick), but also spontaneous folkdancing in "Skalds and Shadows" and true chills running all the way down your body during "Iron Hill" and "And Then There Was Silence". This performance set a high, high standard for their headlining slot at this year's Wacken to live up to; I'm hoping they beat it, but I can't help thinking that they won't beat it by much: in large measure, Blind Guardian took this American club audience and brought them out onto the plains of Germany over this set, and cut off a small but vital slice of what it's like to be out under the sky, united in metal. Does it get better than that? Maybe it does, but I don't know who'd be disappointed if it doesn't.
On the way back, it was more drunk camping stories, a listen through the new Haunted record (which had Ryan jizzing all over the back seat), and some Slayer-reminiscing as we came down the home stretch. I also talked up Wacken a bit, which made it three times on the day that I encouraged people to go to the festival. Doing this without providing full information, though, is a little disingenuous, because while I have the cultural and logistical knowhow to just get on a plane and go to the show, it's not this easy for most people, and if there's something that they don't know that they ought to, it might royally fuck them up. So I'm going to try and write a guide to Wacken travel for Northeast Corridor metalheads, which will be applicable to other American headbangers with the added initial instruction "move to the Northeast Corridor". Or just "get there", but seriously, it's easier to live here, because there's more shows year-round and both MDDF and NEMHCF are within reasonable driving distance. The Wacken guide will take form in a series of posts a little later.
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Fear Factory with Suffocation, Hypocrisy, and Decapitated [Worcester Palladium, 11/17/2006]
If you live with a reasonable drive of central New England and missed this show, your loss; front to back, this was one of the best gigs I can remember.
It was a good thing that I was uncertain when doors were (thanks, random RTTP poster with incorrect information!), as I ended up leaving for this show a few minutes after 5, and needed every minute of it to get down by doors, allowing me to get down right on the railing (not exactly front and center, but I had to get a beer to wash the stale hard taste of car-filtered air out of my mouth -- this was some hard driving from 128 onto the Pike). I wasn't hugely up for Decapitated, but it'd be cool to see them up close, and I would have no chance of getting a decent spot for Hypocrisy (well, without throwing elbows around like a dick) if I didn't. Fortunately, they didn't disappoint, and set the tone strongly for the underground portion of the bill to come.
Decapitated [6/7]:
As with practically every opening band at the Palladium, their sound was a little off, but they made the best of it and also turned the crowd around. The energy was a little low at first because it was only the real diehards who were down front, but it built steadily through the set thanks to an extremely solid performance. Some of this is probably due to the music; Decapitated's style is built around fairly avant-garde guitar leads, without a rhythm guitar to help the bass set up the riff structure, and this can be tough to get into live until you get a feel for how they're playing it tonight, and they didn't have quite the PA support for their ridiculous technicality that Suffocation did, which confused the music a little until the soundboard got them somewhat dialed in. The pit was fairly calm, but those of us who were up front were into it, and overall this was a kickass performance that should have been better. "Should have been better" solely because it should have been longer; they got barely half an hour, which is one of the leading arguments for the contention that I'm going to make at the end of this review.
Hypocrisy [7/7]:
This is what I came for, and Peter et al delivered more or less exactly as anticipated. Their sound was better than for Decapitated, but this may have been more of an artifact of style; Hypocrisy is strongly groove-oriented rather than focusing exclusively on technical fireworks, and this demands somewhat less out of the PA setup. Of course, I was in the fourth or fifth row (from the stagefront, I was right on the rail but spread out wide to the side stage right) and thus getting most of the sound straight out of the backline rather than from the PA, which was going mostly over my head, but still. The set was pretty much greatest-hits material (as listed below, no "Carved Up" or "Buried" and nothing off Fourth Dimension), but when you have only 45 minutes to distill a 15-year career into, you'd fucking better play greatest-hits, or your fans are going to throw eggs at the headliner's tour bus for screwing them out of their favorites, and they'll blame you. Still, of course, it was incredible; I mean, come on, it's fucking HYPOCRISY. I'm still hoping to see them at Wacken one of these years (probably this year or next given their history with the fest), but this was still a tremendous, tremendous experience.
Hypocrisy's setlist:
Fractured Millennium (surprised they didn't open with War Path, it's a badass opener as well as from the current record)
Adjusting The Sun (pit went bananas from the first riff)
Eraser
Osculum Obscenum (only pre-Abducted song)
War Path
Roswell-47 (lots of people singing on this one)
The Final Chapter (no idea why they didn't swap this and Knife, it's just about the best death metal set closer ever written)
Let The Knife Do The Talking (new song, so the crowd didn't wholly catch on to the "kill...kill...kill..." bit right away)
Suffocation [7/7]:
There were slightly fewer people down front for them as opposed to Hypocrisy, but this just meant more room for the pit. People were going balls-out; on a couple songs there were at least two independent pits going on, including at least one basically in the front row. I spent about a quarter of the set facing basically into the crowd, acting as a shock absorber to keep people from being thrown into the railing. Good times. Also, Suffo's sound was FUCKING UNBELIEVABLE, incredibly thick and sharp, probably the best and cleanest that I've heard live, and at least the best that I can remember. The band was really on their game, and Frank, pressed for time (again, same situation as Hypocrisy, they got about 45 minutes), at last kept his jabbering between songs down to a reasonable level. The only pick points on this one were that at the start, the bass was a little too loud and Terrance Hobbs' guitar wasn't really cutting through on his solos on my side (he was stage left most of the show), but they fixed this and gave Mike a little more power on his toms, and all was good. Actually, all was FUCKING INCREDIBLE, but that's what happens when you give a great band on a peak night great sound and an enthusiastic crowd.
During some of the more psycho parts, I and a few other people were helping prevent someone's kid brother -- looked like 11 or 12 -- from getting totally killed by the encroaching pit. There were a couple other kids in the floor crowd as well, which was cool, though unusual, as it really calls into question the sanity of the people who brought them in there. We don't need security standing on the stairs, next to a sign that says "You must be THIS tall to go on the floor", but for the sake of common sense, if you're gonna bring a kid onto the floor at a brutal show, GET THEM ON THE DAMN RAIL! From the first row, they can see the band without us six-foot, 250-pound behemoths in the way, and they additionally are in significantly less danger of getting seriously injured by someone breaking through the pit wall, or trampled accidentally by someone trying to keep the wall where it's supposed to be. By all means, bring your sprogs and younger siblings to the show, but don't put them in the middle of the floor until they've gotten their main growth spurt.
Funniest moment from Suffocation: Frank calls out shout-outs to the other bands on the bill. "All the way from Poland -- DECAPITATED!!!" The front of the house yells a lot. "Our good friends from Sweden -- HYPOCRISY!!!" The front of the house yells more and throws the horns a lot. "We are from Lon Giland Noo Yawk, and we are SUFFOCATION!!!" The front of the house yells a lot and throws the horns some more. "And coming up, FEAR FACTORY!!!" A giant roar goes up from the BACK of the house, and some people up front clap some.
Fear Factory [5.5/7]:
This ought to give the lie to any developing impression that national headliners automatically get great scores just for showing up. A seven is a seven is a seven, whether by a local band at a local show or an international legend headlining Wacken, and this set, despite being by a recognized band headlining a major club, would still have pulled a 5.5 whether it was delivered at O'Brien's or on the Party Stage. If I had to pick three words to describe this set, they would be "competent", "loud", and "boring"; some of this is probably lingering aftereffects of the underground portion of the bill, but seriously, Decapitated played a couple songs that were themselves more technically challenging than Fear Factory's entire set. Hell, HYPOCRISY played some songs that were more technical than Fear Factory's entire set, and they're hardly known for being bruisingly technical as a death metal band. Of course, music need not be technical to be good, but Fear Factory here was trying to play nontechnical music while still coming off as technical and brutal by virtue of pure volume. Unfortunately, they were too loud for the hall and crushed their actual sound, while still not managing to cover up the fact that Christian would go for minutes at a time without changing his fingering, just changing where on the neck his hand was. If I could actually be bothered to learn to play Fear Factory songs, even I could do that; emulating the other instrumentalists on this bill would require a significant talent transplant and approximately five thousand years of practice.
The pit was nice and turbulent for Fear Factory, but I wasn't in it, and there was precious little especially appealing about their set. It was well-executed, and the band was on their game, but the standard of execution here is necessarily lower because the songs are a lot easier to play. It was still a good performance, but it followed a long night of balls-out incredible performances by the nominal openers, and necessarily felt like somewhat of a letdown. This leads into the contention in the next paragraph, but first it must be mentioned that before going on, they played Iron Maiden's "The Number Of The Beast" in its entirety. Nu-metal is officially dead and buried; I thought they were going to just steal the Vincent Price intro, but no, they stole Iron Maiden's thunder and their complete whole classic to get the crowd up for them. I was singing along and lolling inside, much the same as the other undergrounders around me who had pulled up onto the carpeted area to give the FF fans the floor.
The core contention here is that Fear Factory maybe shouldn't have played this at all. Granted, I'm not sure that either Suffocation or Hypocrisy could have filled the Palladium on their own, and there isn't really a club between that and the Middle East in size for them to play in Massachusetts, but as far as Hypocrisy's catalog goes, there's a lot of stuff that just plain got left out, and the way Suffocation was just crushing along, they could have gone on for two hours and no one would have really cared. This was a kickass show, but it would have been flat incredible with one or two local openers, Decapitated getting 45 minutes, and Hypocrisy and Suffo coheadlining at about an hour each, flip a coin while the local guys are going on to decide who's closing the show. The lesson of course out of this is to PUMP UP THE FUCKING UNDERGROUND, so that a tour like this is economically viable. Continue supporting brutal music, and make sure the bands know that we want them to stay heavy, stay underground.
Even so, it's fairly admirable of Fear Factory to put together a package like this; it shows both their confidence in their own ability to control the attentions of their fans, to provide a good experience so that their people will still see them as a highlight even when they get technically shelled by the support, and their continuing commitment to the brutal underground, because no matter how much they try to call themselves "heavy alternative", it's still metal fans buying their albums. As Seth Putnam's said in the past, "face it, you're a metal band". Fear Factory are facing up to this, and also showing some integrity by paying back dues to the brutal bands who were around with them when they got their start. Good intentions didn't necessarily make their set any better, but they deserve credit for it all the same.
Working hard on the second book, which is going to be less metal but more brutal; next show is probably Blind Guardian due to family holiday commitments.
It was a good thing that I was uncertain when doors were (thanks, random RTTP poster with incorrect information!), as I ended up leaving for this show a few minutes after 5, and needed every minute of it to get down by doors, allowing me to get down right on the railing (not exactly front and center, but I had to get a beer to wash the stale hard taste of car-filtered air out of my mouth -- this was some hard driving from 128 onto the Pike). I wasn't hugely up for Decapitated, but it'd be cool to see them up close, and I would have no chance of getting a decent spot for Hypocrisy (well, without throwing elbows around like a dick) if I didn't. Fortunately, they didn't disappoint, and set the tone strongly for the underground portion of the bill to come.
Decapitated [6/7]:
As with practically every opening band at the Palladium, their sound was a little off, but they made the best of it and also turned the crowd around. The energy was a little low at first because it was only the real diehards who were down front, but it built steadily through the set thanks to an extremely solid performance. Some of this is probably due to the music; Decapitated's style is built around fairly avant-garde guitar leads, without a rhythm guitar to help the bass set up the riff structure, and this can be tough to get into live until you get a feel for how they're playing it tonight, and they didn't have quite the PA support for their ridiculous technicality that Suffocation did, which confused the music a little until the soundboard got them somewhat dialed in. The pit was fairly calm, but those of us who were up front were into it, and overall this was a kickass performance that should have been better. "Should have been better" solely because it should have been longer; they got barely half an hour, which is one of the leading arguments for the contention that I'm going to make at the end of this review.
Hypocrisy [7/7]:
This is what I came for, and Peter et al delivered more or less exactly as anticipated. Their sound was better than for Decapitated, but this may have been more of an artifact of style; Hypocrisy is strongly groove-oriented rather than focusing exclusively on technical fireworks, and this demands somewhat less out of the PA setup. Of course, I was in the fourth or fifth row (from the stagefront, I was right on the rail but spread out wide to the side stage right) and thus getting most of the sound straight out of the backline rather than from the PA, which was going mostly over my head, but still. The set was pretty much greatest-hits material (as listed below, no "Carved Up" or "Buried" and nothing off Fourth Dimension), but when you have only 45 minutes to distill a 15-year career into, you'd fucking better play greatest-hits, or your fans are going to throw eggs at the headliner's tour bus for screwing them out of their favorites, and they'll blame you. Still, of course, it was incredible; I mean, come on, it's fucking HYPOCRISY. I'm still hoping to see them at Wacken one of these years (probably this year or next given their history with the fest), but this was still a tremendous, tremendous experience.
Hypocrisy's setlist:
Fractured Millennium (surprised they didn't open with War Path, it's a badass opener as well as from the current record)
Adjusting The Sun (pit went bananas from the first riff)
Eraser
Osculum Obscenum (only pre-Abducted song)
War Path
Roswell-47 (lots of people singing on this one)
The Final Chapter (no idea why they didn't swap this and Knife, it's just about the best death metal set closer ever written)
Let The Knife Do The Talking (new song, so the crowd didn't wholly catch on to the "kill...kill...kill..." bit right away)
Suffocation [7/7]:
There were slightly fewer people down front for them as opposed to Hypocrisy, but this just meant more room for the pit. People were going balls-out; on a couple songs there were at least two independent pits going on, including at least one basically in the front row. I spent about a quarter of the set facing basically into the crowd, acting as a shock absorber to keep people from being thrown into the railing. Good times. Also, Suffo's sound was FUCKING UNBELIEVABLE, incredibly thick and sharp, probably the best and cleanest that I've heard live, and at least the best that I can remember. The band was really on their game, and Frank, pressed for time (again, same situation as Hypocrisy, they got about 45 minutes), at last kept his jabbering between songs down to a reasonable level. The only pick points on this one were that at the start, the bass was a little too loud and Terrance Hobbs' guitar wasn't really cutting through on his solos on my side (he was stage left most of the show), but they fixed this and gave Mike a little more power on his toms, and all was good. Actually, all was FUCKING INCREDIBLE, but that's what happens when you give a great band on a peak night great sound and an enthusiastic crowd.
During some of the more psycho parts, I and a few other people were helping prevent someone's kid brother -- looked like 11 or 12 -- from getting totally killed by the encroaching pit. There were a couple other kids in the floor crowd as well, which was cool, though unusual, as it really calls into question the sanity of the people who brought them in there. We don't need security standing on the stairs, next to a sign that says "You must be THIS tall to go on the floor", but for the sake of common sense, if you're gonna bring a kid onto the floor at a brutal show, GET THEM ON THE DAMN RAIL! From the first row, they can see the band without us six-foot, 250-pound behemoths in the way, and they additionally are in significantly less danger of getting seriously injured by someone breaking through the pit wall, or trampled accidentally by someone trying to keep the wall where it's supposed to be. By all means, bring your sprogs and younger siblings to the show, but don't put them in the middle of the floor until they've gotten their main growth spurt.
Funniest moment from Suffocation: Frank calls out shout-outs to the other bands on the bill. "All the way from Poland -- DECAPITATED!!!" The front of the house yells a lot. "Our good friends from Sweden -- HYPOCRISY!!!" The front of the house yells more and throws the horns a lot. "We are from Lon Giland Noo Yawk, and we are SUFFOCATION!!!" The front of the house yells a lot and throws the horns some more. "And coming up, FEAR FACTORY!!!" A giant roar goes up from the BACK of the house, and some people up front clap some.
Fear Factory [5.5/7]:
This ought to give the lie to any developing impression that national headliners automatically get great scores just for showing up. A seven is a seven is a seven, whether by a local band at a local show or an international legend headlining Wacken, and this set, despite being by a recognized band headlining a major club, would still have pulled a 5.5 whether it was delivered at O'Brien's or on the Party Stage. If I had to pick three words to describe this set, they would be "competent", "loud", and "boring"; some of this is probably lingering aftereffects of the underground portion of the bill, but seriously, Decapitated played a couple songs that were themselves more technically challenging than Fear Factory's entire set. Hell, HYPOCRISY played some songs that were more technical than Fear Factory's entire set, and they're hardly known for being bruisingly technical as a death metal band. Of course, music need not be technical to be good, but Fear Factory here was trying to play nontechnical music while still coming off as technical and brutal by virtue of pure volume. Unfortunately, they were too loud for the hall and crushed their actual sound, while still not managing to cover up the fact that Christian would go for minutes at a time without changing his fingering, just changing where on the neck his hand was. If I could actually be bothered to learn to play Fear Factory songs, even I could do that; emulating the other instrumentalists on this bill would require a significant talent transplant and approximately five thousand years of practice.
The pit was nice and turbulent for Fear Factory, but I wasn't in it, and there was precious little especially appealing about their set. It was well-executed, and the band was on their game, but the standard of execution here is necessarily lower because the songs are a lot easier to play. It was still a good performance, but it followed a long night of balls-out incredible performances by the nominal openers, and necessarily felt like somewhat of a letdown. This leads into the contention in the next paragraph, but first it must be mentioned that before going on, they played Iron Maiden's "The Number Of The Beast" in its entirety. Nu-metal is officially dead and buried; I thought they were going to just steal the Vincent Price intro, but no, they stole Iron Maiden's thunder and their complete whole classic to get the crowd up for them. I was singing along and lolling inside, much the same as the other undergrounders around me who had pulled up onto the carpeted area to give the FF fans the floor.
The core contention here is that Fear Factory maybe shouldn't have played this at all. Granted, I'm not sure that either Suffocation or Hypocrisy could have filled the Palladium on their own, and there isn't really a club between that and the Middle East in size for them to play in Massachusetts, but as far as Hypocrisy's catalog goes, there's a lot of stuff that just plain got left out, and the way Suffocation was just crushing along, they could have gone on for two hours and no one would have really cared. This was a kickass show, but it would have been flat incredible with one or two local openers, Decapitated getting 45 minutes, and Hypocrisy and Suffo coheadlining at about an hour each, flip a coin while the local guys are going on to decide who's closing the show. The lesson of course out of this is to PUMP UP THE FUCKING UNDERGROUND, so that a tour like this is economically viable. Continue supporting brutal music, and make sure the bands know that we want them to stay heavy, stay underground.
Even so, it's fairly admirable of Fear Factory to put together a package like this; it shows both their confidence in their own ability to control the attentions of their fans, to provide a good experience so that their people will still see them as a highlight even when they get technically shelled by the support, and their continuing commitment to the brutal underground, because no matter how much they try to call themselves "heavy alternative", it's still metal fans buying their albums. As Seth Putnam's said in the past, "face it, you're a metal band". Fear Factory are facing up to this, and also showing some integrity by paying back dues to the brutal bands who were around with them when they got their start. Good intentions didn't necessarily make their set any better, but they deserve credit for it all the same.
Working hard on the second book, which is going to be less metal but more brutal; next show is probably Blind Guardian due to family holiday commitments.
Monday, November 13, 2006
Hirax with Mouth Sewn Shut, Random Acts of Violence, Hirudinea, and Reverend Grundarr and the Unholy Trinity [Middle East, Cambridge, 11/12/2006]
Two shows in one weekend is a lot for an old dude who still has something fucked up with his back, as well as a book to write and a shitload of Chinese homework to do, but it got accomplished, and it was a hell of a lot of fun. Katon needs to start having better judgement about promoters so that Hirax can stop having 60% of their tour cancelled, so that everyone can get a chance to experience something like this.
Of course, the show didn't start out nearly as smooth as it finished. This was a Sunday show, and not everyone has the ability to just take the next day off and rock out, so the hall (downstairs, there were some punk/core/emo [no idea] bands playing upstairs) wasn't completely full, and most of the openers played to pretty much a handful of fans. The overall turnout for the openers was similar to Saturday at the Skybar, but with the vital difference that many more of us in the audience here, in both absolute and relative terms, were not in bands on the bill.
Reverend Grundarr and the Unholy Trinity [5/7]:
Maybe it was the better sound from the music-hall (as opposed to bar) PA, maybe it was because I wasn't half as drunk, or maybe because they were opening up the show rather than following Swashbuckle, but these guys sounded a lot better here than they did at O'Brien's two weeks ago. Unfortunately, this is somewhat restricted information, because the number of people in front of the stage watching them was somewhat desperately limited. After I got down to the front, becoming the fifth audience member, I was going to say something about it being okay to start, now that there were more people in the audience than onstage, but didn't, because I don't really know any of the band members personally, and the only thing worse than playing to a next-to-empty floor is when the next-to-empty floor is also making smartass comments. They persevered, though, showing off the diversity in their writing and composition that often tends to get fuzzed out by the sound equipment of the venues they normally play, even some Bay Area touches that I didn't recall being able to pick out on their CD, and we responded on par with the complement of Henry Rollins' old maxim: if a band, no matter how small, is there playing a show and rocking out, you have a responsibility as an audience to rock hard as well, to show appreciation for their hard work. More people came down during the set, and it had to be counted as a success, but this isn't really the kind of band that's best seen behind a huge metal railing; despite the debits to sound clarity, it's probably better to catch them somewhere where they can set up on the floor in the middle of the audience.
Hirudinea [5/7]:
I could say that this band put together a strong set of blackened death/thrash, but then someone would certainly say that this statement actually doesn't carry any information at all. Both parts of the above are certainly correct; Hirudinea's sound is mostly thrash with a few death metal turns and some black metal shadings, but just saying so doesn't really give any indication of what this makes them sound like. It probably helps to note that their current release is the A side of a split with Watchmaker, and that they covered the Cro-Mags and some early Mayhem in this set with about equal power and punch. They have good execution and intensity, and their overall sound is plenty cool, but they seemed to need just that little more on their original stuff to make them really stand out. Maybe it's on the CD (which I haven't listened to yet, that's on the plate for tomorrow), or maybe it's still ahead; regardless, these guys are playing good brutal thrash right now, and it's quite worth going up front for if they're opening a show you're at. The only disappointment was that they had to stop right after doing "Deathcrush"; it felt like they were only just getting fired up.
Random Acts of Violence [6/7]:
These guys have played a lot of shows with My Pet Demon, but I somehow hadn't managed to actually see them before this show. In contrast to the rest of the bill, including the headliners, they showed off a much more melodic thrash style, more "North Shore" than "South Shore", which has got to be one of the silliest scene splits out there. It wasn't just the change of pace that set these guys apart; there were some serious skills being shown off here, in the context of a bunch of good music. Their CDs are also on deck for tomorrow, at which point I'll have made a significant knowledge turnaround on yet another "should know more but don't" band; if you don't know these guys yet, you should also do likewise.
Mouth Sewn Shut [5/7]:
Abstractly, these guys were pretty cool; brutal hardcore changed up with reggae, which at least is different and which in this case was executed pretty well. Concretely, though, you really have to wonder what the HELL they were doing on this bill, as they had almost nothing in common with either the headliners or the other local support. They were a nice oddity and had some good music, but they felt a little out of place here, and didn't really endear themselves to anyone by running over their scheduled timeslot and pushing Hirax later. This is a band that you really have to see yourself to decide an opinion on; their mix of the intense and the laid back will appeal to some people, but others will hate it with even greater intensity.
Hirax [7/7]:
If you've got an illustrated dictionary (to pull out and mock people with when they go back to that old stereotype of metalhead == retarded), and it doesn't have a picture for AWESOME, Aaron has plenty of pictures from this set that you can print out and just paste in next to the definition; almost anything will do. Seriously, this set was something to behold; not as packed down front as this hall was for Vital and Dismember last month, but this just gave the pit more room to be absolutely insane, and the front row was still so thickly stuffed that Katon was able to surf out off the railing on several occasions. The band's intensity and firepower was further amplified by some deft showmanship; the thrash metallers were full up for a rare Hirax date from the start, but they lit a royal fire under the hardcore segment with a punishing cover of "Hostile Territory", and in doing so got everyone's energy up even further. The end of the set -- until the encore, where we had to stop and roar the band back onstage -- was kind of a blur mostly from that point, as I was banging around, throwing moshers -- including this little ~40-year-old-guy who could teach any dozen Palladium tough guys a thing or two about totally insane thrashing -- back into the pit, and much more feeling the music than listening to it. Still, AWESOME. Opeth, you lean back and listen; Hirax, you charge forward and feel. Rumor is that the band will be coming back around "soon", or maybe just "next year", and it's not totally impossible that someone in Rhode Island could get a backline and some axes together for the band and get the Providence date on the 16th uncancelled; whatever the opportunity that avails itself, you should take advantage and check these guys out.
My stack of patches that I still haven't put on my jacket increases; I got one of Hirax's good (as opposed to the more common "crummy plain cloth") patches in addition to the Barrage of Noise EP, and may have time to sew it up on Friday before Hypocrisy (yes, Suffocation and Fear Factory are nominally above them on the bill, but my jacket should speak amply for my mind on the matter), if I'm not doing Chinese homework or typesetting the book. This'll be the only show next weekend; someone's getting up a gig at Mark's on Saturday, but there is officially No Fucking Way I miss Michigan battle Ohio State effectively for the national title. GO BLUE!!!
Of course, the show didn't start out nearly as smooth as it finished. This was a Sunday show, and not everyone has the ability to just take the next day off and rock out, so the hall (downstairs, there were some punk/core/emo [no idea] bands playing upstairs) wasn't completely full, and most of the openers played to pretty much a handful of fans. The overall turnout for the openers was similar to Saturday at the Skybar, but with the vital difference that many more of us in the audience here, in both absolute and relative terms, were not in bands on the bill.
Reverend Grundarr and the Unholy Trinity [5/7]:
Maybe it was the better sound from the music-hall (as opposed to bar) PA, maybe it was because I wasn't half as drunk, or maybe because they were opening up the show rather than following Swashbuckle, but these guys sounded a lot better here than they did at O'Brien's two weeks ago. Unfortunately, this is somewhat restricted information, because the number of people in front of the stage watching them was somewhat desperately limited. After I got down to the front, becoming the fifth audience member, I was going to say something about it being okay to start, now that there were more people in the audience than onstage, but didn't, because I don't really know any of the band members personally, and the only thing worse than playing to a next-to-empty floor is when the next-to-empty floor is also making smartass comments. They persevered, though, showing off the diversity in their writing and composition that often tends to get fuzzed out by the sound equipment of the venues they normally play, even some Bay Area touches that I didn't recall being able to pick out on their CD, and we responded on par with the complement of Henry Rollins' old maxim: if a band, no matter how small, is there playing a show and rocking out, you have a responsibility as an audience to rock hard as well, to show appreciation for their hard work. More people came down during the set, and it had to be counted as a success, but this isn't really the kind of band that's best seen behind a huge metal railing; despite the debits to sound clarity, it's probably better to catch them somewhere where they can set up on the floor in the middle of the audience.
Hirudinea [5/7]:
I could say that this band put together a strong set of blackened death/thrash, but then someone would certainly say that this statement actually doesn't carry any information at all. Both parts of the above are certainly correct; Hirudinea's sound is mostly thrash with a few death metal turns and some black metal shadings, but just saying so doesn't really give any indication of what this makes them sound like. It probably helps to note that their current release is the A side of a split with Watchmaker, and that they covered the Cro-Mags and some early Mayhem in this set with about equal power and punch. They have good execution and intensity, and their overall sound is plenty cool, but they seemed to need just that little more on their original stuff to make them really stand out. Maybe it's on the CD (which I haven't listened to yet, that's on the plate for tomorrow), or maybe it's still ahead; regardless, these guys are playing good brutal thrash right now, and it's quite worth going up front for if they're opening a show you're at. The only disappointment was that they had to stop right after doing "Deathcrush"; it felt like they were only just getting fired up.
Random Acts of Violence [6/7]:
These guys have played a lot of shows with My Pet Demon, but I somehow hadn't managed to actually see them before this show. In contrast to the rest of the bill, including the headliners, they showed off a much more melodic thrash style, more "North Shore" than "South Shore", which has got to be one of the silliest scene splits out there. It wasn't just the change of pace that set these guys apart; there were some serious skills being shown off here, in the context of a bunch of good music. Their CDs are also on deck for tomorrow, at which point I'll have made a significant knowledge turnaround on yet another "should know more but don't" band; if you don't know these guys yet, you should also do likewise.
Mouth Sewn Shut [5/7]:
Abstractly, these guys were pretty cool; brutal hardcore changed up with reggae, which at least is different and which in this case was executed pretty well. Concretely, though, you really have to wonder what the HELL they were doing on this bill, as they had almost nothing in common with either the headliners or the other local support. They were a nice oddity and had some good music, but they felt a little out of place here, and didn't really endear themselves to anyone by running over their scheduled timeslot and pushing Hirax later. This is a band that you really have to see yourself to decide an opinion on; their mix of the intense and the laid back will appeal to some people, but others will hate it with even greater intensity.
Hirax [7/7]:
If you've got an illustrated dictionary (to pull out and mock people with when they go back to that old stereotype of metalhead == retarded), and it doesn't have a picture for AWESOME, Aaron has plenty of pictures from this set that you can print out and just paste in next to the definition; almost anything will do. Seriously, this set was something to behold; not as packed down front as this hall was for Vital and Dismember last month, but this just gave the pit more room to be absolutely insane, and the front row was still so thickly stuffed that Katon was able to surf out off the railing on several occasions. The band's intensity and firepower was further amplified by some deft showmanship; the thrash metallers were full up for a rare Hirax date from the start, but they lit a royal fire under the hardcore segment with a punishing cover of "Hostile Territory", and in doing so got everyone's energy up even further. The end of the set -- until the encore, where we had to stop and roar the band back onstage -- was kind of a blur mostly from that point, as I was banging around, throwing moshers -- including this little ~40-year-old-guy who could teach any dozen Palladium tough guys a thing or two about totally insane thrashing -- back into the pit, and much more feeling the music than listening to it. Still, AWESOME. Opeth, you lean back and listen; Hirax, you charge forward and feel. Rumor is that the band will be coming back around "soon", or maybe just "next year", and it's not totally impossible that someone in Rhode Island could get a backline and some axes together for the band and get the Providence date on the 16th uncancelled; whatever the opportunity that avails itself, you should take advantage and check these guys out.
My stack of patches that I still haven't put on my jacket increases; I got one of Hirax's good (as opposed to the more common "crummy plain cloth") patches in addition to the Barrage of Noise EP, and may have time to sew it up on Friday before Hypocrisy (yes, Suffocation and Fear Factory are nominally above them on the bill, but my jacket should speak amply for my mind on the matter), if I'm not doing Chinese homework or typesetting the book. This'll be the only show next weekend; someone's getting up a gig at Mark's on Saturday, but there is officially No Fucking Way I miss Michigan battle Ohio State effectively for the national title. GO BLUE!!!
Sunday, November 12, 2006
The Accursed with Revocation, Extinction Agenda, Graveheart, and Mechannibal [Skybar, Somerville, 11/11/2006]
O'Brien's in Allston is, effective Monday, closed until February for renovations/deshittification, so the Boston scene has to find another hole to hibernate in for the winter. If Saturday night is any indication, the Skybar will do just fine. Of course, any bar that sells beer at reasonable prices and will put up with people crowding the floor with equipment would probably do just as well; it was the bands, not the venue (though it definitely has its attractions, described later), that made this show so awesome.
For once, the drive in was reasonable, and the directions were pretty much ok...modulo having to get through Harvard Square, which as always is messily arranged, and having to guess my way around the rotary at the end. I got in a little after doors, but this turned out not to matter so much because the bar's sound guy was late, and the show was delayed a little, letting me drink down a couple beers, soak up the atmosphere, and catch the Michigan score, which I'd missed due to Chinese class. Next week may be rough due to such factors, but class gets out at 4, and there's a bar like, right next door to BLI.
Anyway:
Mechannibal [5/7]:
This was one of their first shows, and it showed to a certain degree as they started slow, but finished strong. People on RTTP have been comparing their grind-thrash sound to all kinds of bands, but for me, the consonance was strongest to something like early Hirax and/or classic Napalm Death. Short, riff-driven, highly focused songs with a lot of power, though the band is clearly still working on their identity. With further development, they could be really good, though it's by no means a lock that every promising new band will achieve that promise. The guitarist/vocalist of Reverend Grundarr and the Unholy Trinity is on the drums here, and quite impressive; unfortunately, they don't have anything recorded yet as far as I know, but they're really just getting their footing as a band, and this may change in coming months. Good stuff, good set.
Graveheart [6/7]:
Formerly Blistered Earth, this band not only pulled off a very cool and tight set of thrash, but also really pointed up several things about both the genre and how to listen to it in this kind of setting. While this band is most simply described as thrash, "blended thrash" may be more accurate; a lot of their sound is inherited from NWOSDM and its descendants, but it's strongly mixed with a thick dose of the old Bay Area sound. The result is really cool, but the way to get it, at least for the present, is live only; they're going to be doing their first recording this coming week. I should have asked about any Blistered Earth material that they need to unload, but they were really impressive here and I'll probably at some point be seeing them again.
Of course, it was only this impressive because I recognized early that you have to watch the guitarist's hand action if they're playing a solo and you're standing in front of the rhythm guitarist, a problem throughout here with two-guitar acts. The solo guitar really needs to be turned up to slice through the riff that the rhythm guitar and the bass are laying down, but a lot of the time in a small venue, where the PA is getting totally ruled by the musicians' cabs, it just doesn't happen. This is where CDs make a difference, and let you know who you need to be burned up about them not getting support slots in larger halls.
Extinction Agenda [5/7]:
This band was noted as "German-influenced thrash" on the flyers that I saw, and the early Kreator sound was apparent from the first riff -- as if the singer's Tormentor shirt wasn't enough of a giveaway. (If there's another Tormentor that has never had Mille Petrozza in their lineup, let me know, but this is my context.) This was some good stuff, but unfortunately they also had a few organizational problems with their arrangements that were also reminiscent of some of Kreator's first work. It was a good set despite the slack or weirdly-structured parts, and this may just have been a down night for them, but for me this is no more than a suspicion: I haven't seen them before, and I wasn't able to get a CD. This is all my fault, though, because instead of immediately hunting down the band to get their demo, I went next door for some Chinese food, and by the time I was in merch-buying mode, they had gone back to New Hampshire.
These are the principal advantages of the Skybar over other venues: unlimited reentry, and a decent Chinese restaurant next door. Of course, I should have eaten before drinking rather than after, but at least it worked out. I devoured my zhongguatsai and got back in plenty of time for Revocation.
Revocation [6/7]:
If you want, you can call this a 6.5. This was an even better performance than two weeks ago, with a much better and cleaner guitar sound, despite Dave snapping his D string in the middle of the second or maybe third song. He finished the song, swapped out for his backup axe, and continued to devastate. As before, it's no coincidence that members of this band consistently wear Dark Angel shirts to their gigs; the influence is strong, but it is consistently getting more difficult to talk rationally about Revocation without mentioning the A-word. You know, the A-word from Florida that's irrationally awesome and ends in "theist". Of course, they're not quite at Atheist's level yet, but the influence is obvious, and the degree of development, even from their recent demo, is similarly undeniable. Definitely a band to watch; they debuted a new song without lyrics at the end of their set, and if this is an accurate foretoken of their next recording, it's going to be really stellar.
The Accursed [6/7]:
Though they weren't as technically outstanding as Revocation, they definitely brought a long share of intensity in their mix of thrash and melodic death, though things were a little slack at first. This was probably because most of the crowd was either outside or on their way home after Revocation, but a good number did make it back in and thrash it up. It was a good performance, with a lot of participation from the guys who'd traveled up from New Bedford for them in the front row, including a special-guest performance on guitar, giving one of their guys a break for a song. It was a cool set, but it did necessarily lose something to the hometown heroes; I still picked up their merch, as they were one of two bands with stuff generally available, and I had already picked up basically one of everything from Revocation two weeks ago.
Hirax tonight with another strong slate of local openers; review will be up tomorrow or so, and the book will probably be finished by Wednesday.
For once, the drive in was reasonable, and the directions were pretty much ok...modulo having to get through Harvard Square, which as always is messily arranged, and having to guess my way around the rotary at the end. I got in a little after doors, but this turned out not to matter so much because the bar's sound guy was late, and the show was delayed a little, letting me drink down a couple beers, soak up the atmosphere, and catch the Michigan score, which I'd missed due to Chinese class. Next week may be rough due to such factors, but class gets out at 4, and there's a bar like, right next door to BLI.
Anyway:
Mechannibal [5/7]:
This was one of their first shows, and it showed to a certain degree as they started slow, but finished strong. People on RTTP have been comparing their grind-thrash sound to all kinds of bands, but for me, the consonance was strongest to something like early Hirax and/or classic Napalm Death. Short, riff-driven, highly focused songs with a lot of power, though the band is clearly still working on their identity. With further development, they could be really good, though it's by no means a lock that every promising new band will achieve that promise. The guitarist/vocalist of Reverend Grundarr and the Unholy Trinity is on the drums here, and quite impressive; unfortunately, they don't have anything recorded yet as far as I know, but they're really just getting their footing as a band, and this may change in coming months. Good stuff, good set.
Graveheart [6/7]:
Formerly Blistered Earth, this band not only pulled off a very cool and tight set of thrash, but also really pointed up several things about both the genre and how to listen to it in this kind of setting. While this band is most simply described as thrash, "blended thrash" may be more accurate; a lot of their sound is inherited from NWOSDM and its descendants, but it's strongly mixed with a thick dose of the old Bay Area sound. The result is really cool, but the way to get it, at least for the present, is live only; they're going to be doing their first recording this coming week. I should have asked about any Blistered Earth material that they need to unload, but they were really impressive here and I'll probably at some point be seeing them again.
Of course, it was only this impressive because I recognized early that you have to watch the guitarist's hand action if they're playing a solo and you're standing in front of the rhythm guitarist, a problem throughout here with two-guitar acts. The solo guitar really needs to be turned up to slice through the riff that the rhythm guitar and the bass are laying down, but a lot of the time in a small venue, where the PA is getting totally ruled by the musicians' cabs, it just doesn't happen. This is where CDs make a difference, and let you know who you need to be burned up about them not getting support slots in larger halls.
Extinction Agenda [5/7]:
This band was noted as "German-influenced thrash" on the flyers that I saw, and the early Kreator sound was apparent from the first riff -- as if the singer's Tormentor shirt wasn't enough of a giveaway. (If there's another Tormentor that has never had Mille Petrozza in their lineup, let me know, but this is my context.) This was some good stuff, but unfortunately they also had a few organizational problems with their arrangements that were also reminiscent of some of Kreator's first work. It was a good set despite the slack or weirdly-structured parts, and this may just have been a down night for them, but for me this is no more than a suspicion: I haven't seen them before, and I wasn't able to get a CD. This is all my fault, though, because instead of immediately hunting down the band to get their demo, I went next door for some Chinese food, and by the time I was in merch-buying mode, they had gone back to New Hampshire.
These are the principal advantages of the Skybar over other venues: unlimited reentry, and a decent Chinese restaurant next door. Of course, I should have eaten before drinking rather than after, but at least it worked out. I devoured my zhongguatsai and got back in plenty of time for Revocation.
Revocation [6/7]:
If you want, you can call this a 6.5. This was an even better performance than two weeks ago, with a much better and cleaner guitar sound, despite Dave snapping his D string in the middle of the second or maybe third song. He finished the song, swapped out for his backup axe, and continued to devastate. As before, it's no coincidence that members of this band consistently wear Dark Angel shirts to their gigs; the influence is strong, but it is consistently getting more difficult to talk rationally about Revocation without mentioning the A-word. You know, the A-word from Florida that's irrationally awesome and ends in "theist". Of course, they're not quite at Atheist's level yet, but the influence is obvious, and the degree of development, even from their recent demo, is similarly undeniable. Definitely a band to watch; they debuted a new song without lyrics at the end of their set, and if this is an accurate foretoken of their next recording, it's going to be really stellar.
The Accursed [6/7]:
Though they weren't as technically outstanding as Revocation, they definitely brought a long share of intensity in their mix of thrash and melodic death, though things were a little slack at first. This was probably because most of the crowd was either outside or on their way home after Revocation, but a good number did make it back in and thrash it up. It was a good performance, with a lot of participation from the guys who'd traveled up from New Bedford for them in the front row, including a special-guest performance on guitar, giving one of their guys a break for a song. It was a cool set, but it did necessarily lose something to the hometown heroes; I still picked up their merch, as they were one of two bands with stuff generally available, and I had already picked up basically one of everything from Revocation two weeks ago.
Hirax tonight with another strong slate of local openers; review will be up tomorrow or so, and the book will probably be finished by Wednesday.
Friday, November 10, 2006
I'm not in Metal Church's new video
Back at the start of the day on Saturday at Wacken 2006, Metal Church shot most of the footage that went into their new video for "Mirror Of Lies". I was in the front row and did a nice gonzo grimace into the handheld camera that they had walking through the photo pit, but did not make it into the final cut. Just the way it goes, ya know?
This weekend may generate a record two show reviews -- make that will, because with Hirax cancelling 60% of their tour, there's slim chance that I'm going to see them in the near future if I don't crack my back into shape from the local show tomorrow and get down to the Middle East Sunday.
This weekend may generate a record two show reviews -- make that will, because with Hirax cancelling 60% of their tour, there's slim chance that I'm going to see them in the near future if I don't crack my back into shape from the local show tomorrow and get down to the Middle East Sunday.
Monday, November 06, 2006
Celtic Frost with Goatwhore and Frozen [Worcester Palladium, 11/5/2006]
Taking a break from working on the book to post this one, partly because I need to make sure that it gets done, and partly because I twisted up my back Saturday and aggravated it at the show, making sustained concentration a little difficult. I'm half-done, and still going to try to get 3 or 4 thousand more words today; I may post a sample chapter here later.
Doors were a little later for this one, so the roads were more or less clear coming in, and I got in actually ahead of doors....which just meant more sitting around, waiting for the bands to go on. Maybe because it was Sunday, or maybe because they are just egregious nits, the Palladium jacked their beer prices up (or just ditched the specials), which sucked mightily. What is the point of charging $5.25 at an event where everything else is in round dollars again? You're just busting up the bands' merch earnings, never mind also encouraging people to bring flasks in with this dickish nickel-and-diming.
So, content with my tour shirt and poorly manufactured superstrip (there's got to be a good reason why this one cost an order of magnitude more than Reverend Grundarr's similarly underfinished patch that I picked up at their release show which is not based on assumptions that Celtic Frost fans are suckers) and discontent with my oddly overpriced Sam, I sat around where I usually do, and my kutte happened to draw the attention of some of the guys in Temeluchus, who gave me their demo (number 15 out of 50). Take heed; even if you're not really anyone in the scene, if you have a really well-built jacket, people may occasionally give you free stuff. The CD is fairly good, some nice ritualistic black metal (as far as I can piece out, this is 'true black metal' with slow tempos and keyboards), so if you're also one of those people who have Death's intro to "Freezing Moon" from the Live in Leipzig set memorized and tend to croak it out whenever anyone asks you about black metal preferences, you ought to look it up.
After a longish while, the bands started. At first, this was not immediately percieved as a good thing.
Frozen [5/7]
Despite the name, the show they were opening, and the fact that they had a keyboardist, this was not a black metal band. They certainly sounded like it in the first song, though, at least on the true black metal axis of "mix sucks and you can't fucking hear anything". Fortunately, not only did the sound board get them dialed in by the second or third song, but they got stronger going through their set. Their sound is a little hard to define, probably because it's still in the process of formation, but let's go out on a limb and declare these guys one possible direction of post-metalcore. At the start of their set, this was pretty unambiguous, as they came off as either a heavy band trying to cover Killswitch Engage, or Killswitch somehow trying to play underground metal. As the set drew on, though, a sound a lot more reminiscent of Evergrey started to emerge, until it was ludicrously obvious by the last song. Prog-thrash is the next step out of metalcore when you take it in the metal direction, but it's still somewhat unclear whether the band is actually trying to move out from under the umbrella. This became a good set after starting rotten, but with the balance of the bill the way it was, it's not immediately obvious how these guys got this slot. Their sound being what it was, it's understandable to have them opening for Celtic Frost, but maybe not so much for Celtic Frost and Goatwhore, where the sound was leaning heavily to black/death, and these guys had barely a sliver of death metal in their sound.
These things are true: the lead guitarist is a beast on the frets, even if he sometimes comes off a little underused, and if Jon Schaffer is looking for someone who sounds more like Matt Barlow to take over for Tim "can't write lyrics without pounding his face repeatedly with a brick" Owens, he needs to give this band's singer a call. The resemblance was almost a little disturbing at times, though there are a hell of a lot worse models to take after among singing vocalists.
Goatwhore [5.5/7]
I hate giving out split ratings, but this one had to go here for reasons described below. I went down to the floor just as they were starting up, and from there got a much better view of the band -- and of the bassist and guitarist's spiked shin guards, which actually didn't look overdone in context. When black metal enters into the equation, the standards of ridiculousness get shifted ever so slightly, but they're still there, and the costuming is most often excused by the quality of the performance around it. Goatwhore did a very solid job, kicking out a thick set of black/death blasts that hearkened back to the Greek black metal school that came from Celtic Frost more directly, rather than the Norwegian scene that took its cues from Bathory and now dominates the idea of black metal. Things got pretty turbulent for them, though I managed to stay mostly out of it -- my back was binding up, and there were relatively few enough people that those who wanted to mosh had a fair degree of open space to do it in without getting anyone else involved.
Now, the difficulty with the split rating. Goatwhore put out a very strong, very solid set, but it was also very even, without too many real sharp points where the band really jumped out and hit you in the face. It was a very good performance, though not quite great, and thus I find myself splitting hairs on the score. Most people with sense, though, will know enough to chuck ratings as more than an excessively quick summary. The final takeaway is that this band is quite good live, though still nothing real revolutionary.
Celtic Frost [6.5/7]
I floated around for a while on this fucking score as well, because this was an unevenly great performance that, while it met my expectations, didn't really meet everyone else's. CF on this date was slower, doomier, and slightly more pedestrian than most people seemed to anticiplate, and they didn't do an encore either, despite the degree of yelling done across. It was still a good performance, and the crowd got absolutely insane on some of the faster old material -- "Into The Crypt of Rays" was the definite high point of the night -- but people seemed to expect the old CF without considering either how Monotheist sounds, or the stuff that Tom G.'s been doing since the band was last really active. The doom plod and neo-gothic sounds have always been an integral part of Celtic Frost, and this is mostly what we got; the rawness of their first couple records doesn't really resonate with the band members now 20 years older. It was, within a few degrees, basically the same set that we got at Wacken, and just as well-delivered...though what was delivered wasn't exactly what was expected. I was also on the floor for CF, but further back due to larger numbers of people.
It was, all in all, a decent night out, though a little expensive and the venue was out of line with how they set their beer prices up. Unlike the recent Palladium shows that I've been to, this wasn't thoroughly packed, which may have contributed to the lower energy level in places. Not totally awesome, but still decent, and if you go to a lot of shows, you're going to get a few that are basically just kind of there. Still a cool time, but I'm probably not going to be raving about this one to random people.
Doors were a little later for this one, so the roads were more or less clear coming in, and I got in actually ahead of doors....which just meant more sitting around, waiting for the bands to go on. Maybe because it was Sunday, or maybe because they are just egregious nits, the Palladium jacked their beer prices up (or just ditched the specials), which sucked mightily. What is the point of charging $5.25 at an event where everything else is in round dollars again? You're just busting up the bands' merch earnings, never mind also encouraging people to bring flasks in with this dickish nickel-and-diming.
So, content with my tour shirt and poorly manufactured superstrip (there's got to be a good reason why this one cost an order of magnitude more than Reverend Grundarr's similarly underfinished patch that I picked up at their release show which is not based on assumptions that Celtic Frost fans are suckers) and discontent with my oddly overpriced Sam, I sat around where I usually do, and my kutte happened to draw the attention of some of the guys in Temeluchus, who gave me their demo (number 15 out of 50). Take heed; even if you're not really anyone in the scene, if you have a really well-built jacket, people may occasionally give you free stuff. The CD is fairly good, some nice ritualistic black metal (as far as I can piece out, this is 'true black metal' with slow tempos and keyboards), so if you're also one of those people who have Death's intro to "Freezing Moon" from the Live in Leipzig set memorized and tend to croak it out whenever anyone asks you about black metal preferences, you ought to look it up.
After a longish while, the bands started. At first, this was not immediately percieved as a good thing.
Frozen [5/7]
Despite the name, the show they were opening, and the fact that they had a keyboardist, this was not a black metal band. They certainly sounded like it in the first song, though, at least on the true black metal axis of "mix sucks and you can't fucking hear anything". Fortunately, not only did the sound board get them dialed in by the second or third song, but they got stronger going through their set. Their sound is a little hard to define, probably because it's still in the process of formation, but let's go out on a limb and declare these guys one possible direction of post-metalcore. At the start of their set, this was pretty unambiguous, as they came off as either a heavy band trying to cover Killswitch Engage, or Killswitch somehow trying to play underground metal. As the set drew on, though, a sound a lot more reminiscent of Evergrey started to emerge, until it was ludicrously obvious by the last song. Prog-thrash is the next step out of metalcore when you take it in the metal direction, but it's still somewhat unclear whether the band is actually trying to move out from under the umbrella. This became a good set after starting rotten, but with the balance of the bill the way it was, it's not immediately obvious how these guys got this slot. Their sound being what it was, it's understandable to have them opening for Celtic Frost, but maybe not so much for Celtic Frost and Goatwhore, where the sound was leaning heavily to black/death, and these guys had barely a sliver of death metal in their sound.
These things are true: the lead guitarist is a beast on the frets, even if he sometimes comes off a little underused, and if Jon Schaffer is looking for someone who sounds more like Matt Barlow to take over for Tim "can't write lyrics without pounding his face repeatedly with a brick" Owens, he needs to give this band's singer a call. The resemblance was almost a little disturbing at times, though there are a hell of a lot worse models to take after among singing vocalists.
Goatwhore [5.5/7]
I hate giving out split ratings, but this one had to go here for reasons described below. I went down to the floor just as they were starting up, and from there got a much better view of the band -- and of the bassist and guitarist's spiked shin guards, which actually didn't look overdone in context. When black metal enters into the equation, the standards of ridiculousness get shifted ever so slightly, but they're still there, and the costuming is most often excused by the quality of the performance around it. Goatwhore did a very solid job, kicking out a thick set of black/death blasts that hearkened back to the Greek black metal school that came from Celtic Frost more directly, rather than the Norwegian scene that took its cues from Bathory and now dominates the idea of black metal. Things got pretty turbulent for them, though I managed to stay mostly out of it -- my back was binding up, and there were relatively few enough people that those who wanted to mosh had a fair degree of open space to do it in without getting anyone else involved.
Now, the difficulty with the split rating. Goatwhore put out a very strong, very solid set, but it was also very even, without too many real sharp points where the band really jumped out and hit you in the face. It was a very good performance, though not quite great, and thus I find myself splitting hairs on the score. Most people with sense, though, will know enough to chuck ratings as more than an excessively quick summary. The final takeaway is that this band is quite good live, though still nothing real revolutionary.
Celtic Frost [6.5/7]
I floated around for a while on this fucking score as well, because this was an unevenly great performance that, while it met my expectations, didn't really meet everyone else's. CF on this date was slower, doomier, and slightly more pedestrian than most people seemed to anticiplate, and they didn't do an encore either, despite the degree of yelling done across. It was still a good performance, and the crowd got absolutely insane on some of the faster old material -- "Into The Crypt of Rays" was the definite high point of the night -- but people seemed to expect the old CF without considering either how Monotheist sounds, or the stuff that Tom G.'s been doing since the band was last really active. The doom plod and neo-gothic sounds have always been an integral part of Celtic Frost, and this is mostly what we got; the rawness of their first couple records doesn't really resonate with the band members now 20 years older. It was, within a few degrees, basically the same set that we got at Wacken, and just as well-delivered...though what was delivered wasn't exactly what was expected. I was also on the floor for CF, but further back due to larger numbers of people.
It was, all in all, a decent night out, though a little expensive and the venue was out of line with how they set their beer prices up. Unlike the recent Palladium shows that I've been to, this wasn't thoroughly packed, which may have contributed to the lower energy level in places. Not totally awesome, but still decent, and if you go to a lot of shows, you're going to get a few that are basically just kind of there. Still a cool time, but I'm probably not going to be raving about this one to random people.
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