Rusty – Mobile » 2009

Another excellent night out:

P.E.I. Mussels and burgers @ Kuma’s
A trip to Odd Obsession
Dairy Queen
Dead Snow at the Music Box

Last weekend I headed down to Tinley Park to see Slayer with Geoff, Cap, and Danny. I’ve added a few photos, as well as someone else’s video of the Chicago show below. You can barely see the back of our heads, since we were packed up at the very front of the left side of the stage.

I put some of my footage together last night before bed… and with Moonsorrow, apparently. HD is available this time. Here is the link to the original video if you’d like to watch outside my restrictive layout.

Oh my dear Lord.

I have only very recently come to enjoy and appreciate the rather violent (and sometimes alarmingly tranquil) lifestyle that is associated with death metal here in the city. This year’s Summer Slaughter Tour at the House of Blues ended up being mixed bag of genre confusion, gore, drugs and young people… I suppose I got what was coming to me. It did confirm my initial impression of the scene, however: that it is genuinely entertaining. I’m fortunate in that most of the people I go to concerts with are not sub-genre partisans, which comes in handy when you’re trying to justify heavy ticket prices for larger tours and summer festivals. While there was a rather diverse lineup for the tour as a whole, fortunately this time around it was safe to tuck most of the bands under the dark, talon-studded wing of death metal.

I bought my ticket months ago to see Ensiferum, a viking metal band who were tacked onto this year’s tour at the last minute, surrounded by death metal bands that I was only vaguely aware of. While the Ensiferum reception was actually much better than I anticipated, most of the other bands on the tour like Winds of Plague and Born of Osiris were mostly disappointing; they brought in such a bizarre concoction of hardcore, rap, and even grunge, that I had a very difficult time understanding where the scene was going. The metal melting pot was being stoked by people sometimes half my age, which was only encouraging in a very broad, “hey, they’re the next generation” sort of way. I’m glad I was patient enough to hold out until the amazing headliner, Necrophagist.

The internets inform me that in Greek their name means “death eater,” which may sound a little too close to Harry Potter villains for its own good. Indeed, like many German bands, with English as their second language, their lyrics come off as rather melodramatic. Unfortunately for them, English happens to be the first language of the heavy metal genre, which leads to all kinds of hilarity at these shows. It does end up working in their favor, most of the time, however. Many bands – especially folk metal bands – seem to revel in how entertained American metal heads are by European gimmicks. I met some guys who drove in from Chicago from Kalamazoo, who seemed more excited to see Ensiferum in their trademarked Finnish flag / skirt apparel than they were to hear their music. I joined them in that excitement, by the way. Right before Necrophagist took the stage, Troy and I ran into his doppelganger Rich, a guy we see at every show who is usually running wild and clotheslining smaller people in the circle pits. He seemed rather relaxed, and not even remotely drunk. It turns out that he was having girlfriend problems, and came off as subdued, even quiet. When I asked him if he was excited to see the headliner, he said yes, that he had seen them several times already, however, and that it wouldn’t be that big a deal. When I asked him if he would be getting in the shit, he assured me that he definitely would not.

5 minutes after Nerophagist took the stage, I saw him stomping around like a wild animal, his shirt already off, and playing what looked to be an air bass guitar in the middle of a massive circle pit, with guys probably one third his age (I believe he is nearly 40) swarming around him. After crowd surfing to the front, he barreled back into the middle of the pit, which was now slick with sweat and beer. He proceeded to make lewd gestures at a guy twice his size, who eventually charged him and knocked him flat on his back. If I had to describe it, his transformation was the opposite of The Howling: it was almost instantaneous.

And why not? Necrophagist were by far the most technical death metal band I’ve ever heard. At that point in the night I was completely overwhelmed, and there were points where I actually couldn’t believe what I was hearing. After a full day at a librarian conference, it was very satisfying to watch Rich tear the place apart, even as Troy and I stood back and tried not to get punched in the face. I never did end up making it to Maryland Deathfest this year, but I think I’ll pencil it in for 2010.

Enjoy this clip of Necrophagist from the same tour, two years ago. Try not to hurt anyone if you’re in a public place, like your local library. If you’re in your office, turn up the volume and click “HQ”.

If it is to be only
An element of a whole,
To hide behind others
And form the eclipse of mind.
Ignominious And Pale.

If it were to one
Having nothing to tell,
This would equal
A state of being the one,
Ignominious and pale.

Fallen in the abyss of indignity,
Doubt does not exist
Or come into being. Pale…

Incarceration of personality
Is the sad inception of self-denial.
The one that denies the inner self
Flees into deception.

The American Library Association’s annual conference was in Chicago this year. Apparently Neil Gaiman was there (!?), but no one else was allowed in line by the time I got there. My co- worker and I checked out some exhibits, then headed to China Town for lunch.