Maryland Deathfest 2012: Collected Works

Goddamnit! Fuck!! Wish I could've been there. I think I'll have a better financial situation next year. I will make it to at least one more MDF so help me God.

Did anyone meet krampus?
 
Everyone met me but I am so boring I didn't make any of the recaps.

Nah actually I was totally ADD and busy hanging out with my COOL LIVEJOURNAL FRIENDS. I wish I coulda hung out more. I went to bed by 2 every night and didn't do much to excess except smoke cigarettes. I did have the joy of sharing the frontish for Godflesh with everyone, and Tsjuder with drunk-V5 who got scolded by like 5 different people for getting too moshy.

I took the stupidly early flights in and out because they were almost $100 cheaper. Slept in the hotel lobby for 4 hours before my friends started trickling in.

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Thursday was not super remarkable for me perhaps as I was so tired; Absu and Eyehategod were pretty fun. Agalloch put me to sleep.

Friday saw more excitement. Hit up the Fresh Greens market salad bar HARD as well as the cooked-shrimp bar and generally ate like a goddamn king. Discovered the merits of PB&J flavored vodka in the $1.69 single-shooter bottle. When I got to the fest Demigod was on and UNGGGHHH they were EXCELLENT.

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(Demigod)

Bought a Pig Destroyer shirt with eyeballs. I caught some of Macabre, who were marginally interesting, and opted to see Negura Bunget while all my friends were at Artillery. NB was interesting - atmospheric ambience and panflutes and shit didn't woo the whole crowd over so during dramatic interludes you could hear people yapping. They closed with "Dacia Hiperboreana" and a gay tear rolled down my cheek.

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(Negura Bunget)

I rushed out, caught some of Napalm Death which was super!

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(ND)

We went to the other stage early to catch Godflesh. They opened with "Like Rats" and it literally melted my face off and I caught myself making the "horny man" biting-lower-lip flehmen face. Pretty much ran out of energy after that and retreated to the room and giggled a lot.

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(David's face!)

Saturday was a shitshow of fantastic. Put on my best Andrew Eldritch impression and sat in a window.

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More salad bar shenanigans pre-fest, including visible oranges.

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Got to the fest where I saw October 31 who were surprisingly a lot of fun, followed by Morbid Saint, Archgoat, Noothgrush, some of MORBID ABORTIONANGEL, and then Tsjuder.

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My friend Becca's awesome arm tattoo + Morbid Saint.

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Best. Shirt. Ever. Suck it aug!

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Sweet corpse paint brah

Caught a teeny bit of Haemmorhage and went back. I'm an old lady.

Sunday was, huh, WOW. After a fancy sushi lunch, my friend Sam went to interview Church of Misery for Metal Blast. Turns out their English is, huh, WOW, so my friend Becky and I jumped in with our mediocre Japanese skills and saved the day. They answered all the questions just like my high school students in Japan would - with goofy catch phrases and nervous giggling and "I can't speak English" tossed in there, so the interview ended up being conducted in mostly Japanese. Their performance was fucking BOMB, everyone was really into it, so much energy, and unfortunately Sam got dropped on his head in an unfortunate crowd surfing mishap and cracked it open.

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Just as Caesar says, "OVCH"

I got too overheated or something and left for a little while, missing Suffocation which I somewhat regret but I've seen 'em 3 times before. It rained and poured on us right before Electric Wizard. They killed it but thought they could have chosen a more uhh exciting opener. Still, the crowd energy and the light rain and the literal fuckton of greenery in my system made it memorable. My buddy Steve was up front and some drunk guy PEED on his leg and he made out with a random girl, so good for him.

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WIZARD

I caught a wee bit of Sargeist before BETHLEFUCKINGHEMUNGGGHHHH took the stage. They had some sound issues apparently due to a short changeover, and the guitar sounded a little sad, but I didn't give a fuck, I was up front. Some really pissed off roid-rage bro was fighting a bunch of people and got dragged out by security. I was bummed they didn't play "Schuld Uns'res Knoch'rigen Faltpferd" but they did play "Gestern Starb Ich Schon Heute" so I went home happy. I LOVE how all the fans were just throwing Rainer Landfermann screams around, myself included. UNGGHHHH.

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Haha I kind of forgot that I was that drunk during Tsjuder. I think I was trying to be metal and say hi to one of your friends and instead she was like FUCK OFF. Amusing.
 
Thursday: Since Andy and Jeremy were handling the rooms, we couldn't get in to until about 8 PM, despite arriving around 2. We basically dicked around for a while until we met up with our other friends from Illinois at a bar. We then went to their hotel room to drink, wherein I drank a metric fuckload of rum and warm beer in order to prepare for Absu.

Absu: Fucking incredible, nothing more, and definitely nothing less. They boldly opened with the first two songs from The Sun of Tiphareth, eating up half their set in the meantime: an expected albeit welcome deliberation on their part. The rest of the set was perfect and I was screaming along to virtually every track.

After them, I skipped Eyehategod to meet up with some folks at the hotel and have more beer. I went down for Agalloch, who was entrancing, and ended up front row for Autopsy, who put on a stellar performance despite what I perceived to be a bad mix for the first few songs (other people I talked to didn't seem to catch this). The show ended around 2 AM at the behest of the Baltimore fuzz, so we all went back to the hotel to indulge in some libations. Since I'm a broke fuck, my drink of choice was Steel Reserve the entire weekend; and I incessantly double-fisted them with impunity throughout the night. This was the heaviest I drank throughout the course of the entire weekend, as I blacked out around 4 despite the vivid memory of singing along to the Olorin demo with Andy and Schmidt around 5:30.

A mere seven hours after this endeavor, our room was jostled from its deep slumber by the knocking of Cody/KafkaX, who promptly forced beer into our hands literally seconds after the great awakening. I drank a couple of those, did some grocery shopping, then went down to see Demigod. I saw them at Rites of Darkness this previous December, and the only thing that keeps their display in Texas as the superior of the two was the problematic mix at MDF that exalted the bass above everything else for the first few songs in addition to a virtual absence of lead guitar that is absolutely integral to the band's sound. One positive was that they played through Slumber of Sullen Eyes in the actual order that the tracks follow on the album: something that cannot be said of their Texas performance. They still managed to put on one of my favorite sets of the weekend. Macabre followed and put on a good show despite a rather unpleasant mix. At this point, I'm pretty sure I absconded to the hotel to drink more, and just hung out until I went down to secure a front-row spot for Godflesh.

Godflesh: One of the most incredible live acts I've had the pleasure of witnessing. Justin Broadrick's stage presence is the absolute embodiment of contempt for all things living, and the sounds of Streetcleaner provide a nice aural supplement to this. They also played a few tracks from Pure and a track from Slavestate and Selfless, respectively. As Jeremy said, the backdrop of Bosch and shots from Un Chien Andalou only served to heighten the despondent atmosphere.

I skipped all of the bands after Godflesh and hung out for a while in the company of swell chaps and copious amounts of alcohol. A highlight comes in the form of Andy, David, and me making a trip down to 7-11 at 4 AM and making a joke about David Vincent that literally had Andy ROFLing; he previously thought the notion of rolling on the floor in laughter was a mythological creation of the internet, but this night demonstrated the very real nature of the ROFL. We returned to the hotel and talked about our internet history until 8 AM. I noted the slightly ironic nature of the conversation seeing as how this weekend marks the only time in the entire year we see each other, yet we elected to discuss our online personae.

I stupidly woke up around noon on Saturday to drink more. More hanging-out took place until I was about 12 drinks in and ready to see Morbid Saint. They flew through Spectrum of Death in its entirety in what I consider a nigh-perfect fashion. Much moshing took place; and I made my lone crowd-surfing debut during "Damien". I then immediately went inside to catch The Devil's Blood, who was fantastic. I'm hoping the warm reception of such acts leads them to move in the direction they did this year with more unorthodox selections for an "extreme" metal festival. Archgoat was up next, who was also great. There isn't much to say; very little extra-musical dialogue tainted their quite straightforward apotheosis of Lucifer.

The next band I watched was Morbid Angel, who was fucking horrible. I'm probably one of the biggest Morbid Angel fans that attended the festival, as the first two albums are among the very limited handful of musical creations that I can say vastly impacted my life and continue to do so. The way in which they have fallen from grace and completely pissed on their once untouchable legacy is sickening to me, and I would honestly rather see them play nothing but the Rob Zombie remix tracks from the new album, since those seem to be the ones they feel that they're breaking new musical grounds with; it would at least remain consistent with the philosophy of individualism espoused on Blessed are the Sick. However, as expected, they stuck with the "classics", absolutely butchering them, and stuck with the two safest vapid death metal tracks from the newest album. One dick move on my part that I didn't intend was taking off my homemade "Kill-A Cop Cop" shirt and accidentally hitting Destructhor in the chest with it. I meant to throw it on stage in between Vincent and he, but I guess I underestimated my strength and underestimated my aim.

I skipped the rest of the bands and hung out at the hotel, drinking beer. A bunch of people went to the bars, and I had to opt out due to me being underage. Around 2:30 I got a call from Rob telling me to get to their hotel because there was booze that wasn't going to drink itself. When I got there, the rest of the Northern Illinois Metal Contingent was preparing for bed, so Rob and I went to see his friend Matt, the host of the rooftop party. We had a couple of beers on the rooftop and wanted to hang out up there for a while longer, so I suggested we return to our room to grab some beer. We ended up coming back to a packed room that I expected to be empty, and everybody was enthusiastic about joining us in our elevated excursion. As has been told by others, we basically chilled on the roof of Matt's hotel until the sun came up. It was amazing.

With another 8 AM bedtime under my belt, I got a surprise called from Ray/cook-ta around 1:30 saying that he was on his way and that he's be at the hotel in about 45 minutes. This was a very pleasant surprise, as I had no idea he was coming and he's consistently one of the coolest dudes at these festivals (he, Brandon/swizzlenuts, and Nick/TheGreatDeceiver comprised our main hangout group at Rites of Darkness). I hung out with him the majority of the first half of Sunday, and he kept insisting that I let him buy me Yuenglings at the festival; swell fucking guy. We caught Disma, one of my most anticipated bands, that, as Andy said, had some of the best sound of the entire weekend. Every instrument was mixed in the most proper fashion to capture the monolithic, sepulchral, and abyssal essense that the album exudes so perfectly. After them, Ray and I chose to return to the hotel to relax until Ulcerate. I'm not familiar with them, but they put on a pretty good set. We then went to watch Pentagram, who was much better than I expected from a newly-reformed 80s demo band.

Pentagram ended their set, and a bunch of us waited up front for Saint FUCKING!!! Vitus. They were nothing short of amazing, and the first two rows were singing along to most of their set. We got a glimpse at divinity as it started to rain at the perfect time during the closing trio of "Mystic Lady", "Dying Inside", and "Born too Late". Following this, I went back to the hotel to relax/take a mini-nap, and eat pizza. I wanted to see Sargeist but I was far too exhausted to make it back down to the venue. One of my biggest regrets of the weekend was my physical state during Mortuary Drape. They were one of the bands I wanted to see the most, but I could only make it through 4 songs before I couldn't pay attention any longer due to physical ailments. I went back to the hotel and took it easy for the rest of the night.

That was fairly long, as expected; all typed in a stream-of-consciousness fashion. I know I missed a bunch, but that's just too fucking bad. Everyone reading this needs to come next year.
 
I'll probably die without ever going :( Also, I wanted to see Sargeist. And I would do some very horrible things to damno during that set. MMmmmMMMMMMmmmmMmMMMm.
 
Where to begin...

First things first, I need to apologize for my drunken asshole of a friend...When he drinks, he feels the need to be a prick to pretty much everyone...His bullshit is what cut short my time to chill with you guys because, well, I didnt want him to put his bullshit into anyone else's mdf atmosphere. Next year, Im fucking staying back at the Tremont. Most of the fun comes from chillin with you fuckers that I dont get to chill with, except at MDF. That being said, the time I was able to chill with you guys, was fucking badass. Especially waking you guys up with beer. WIN.

So as far as music goes...

The best acts of the fest for me:
Electric Wizard
Negura Bunget
Agalloch
Castevet
Tsjunder
Ulcerate
Godflesh

The wiz, well, doesnt need an explaination...It was like Neurosis MDF 2011 for me, fucking comatosed with weed...I dont remember a god damn thing other than smoking spliffs with Nicole the whole time.

Negura Bunget was fucking transcendental. Words cannot begin to describe my spiritually induced experience through their live show. FUCK.

Agalloch...Holy fuck...I could not get into them on record for years so I was a bit hesitant to even catch their show...But I am happy I did. This live show, with out a doubt, changed my life. Fucking phenomenal. Now, I fucking love them on record.

Castevet, fucking owned...While, I agree with Andy's point about the singer, I was expecting it so it didnt piss me off...I mean, listen to mounds of ash and he never shuts up lol...Still rocked out, hard...Apparently a little too hard because Dan said the dude behind me was getting pissed my dreads were smacking him in the face...Fuck him.

Tsjunder...Wow. Easily my favorite black metal act of the fest (I dont count Negura black metal). Walked around taking a lot of pictures of them until I ran into Andy, who I drunkenly moshed and headbanged with, pissing off more people.

Ulcerate, fucking sick. Holy hell, I wish I couldve caught more of their set.

Godflesh...One word...Shitfaced.

There werent too many acts I was disappointed with...My only real complaint is about Nasum...I knew almost every song they played, but just couldnt get into it for some reason...Every time I opened my mouth to sing along, it seemed forced...I dunno what was going on but I couldnt get into it...I think I went into their MDF appearance with EXTREMELY HIGH expectations, being that they are my favorite grindcore band.

All in all, it was a great fest. Holy fuck there were so many hot dreadlocked women, holy shit. The numbers increased drastically from last year, hopefully it will continue in the same fashion.

Next year, the only thing Im gonna change is that I'll be at the Tremont so I dont have to babysit my drunk friend. Shit got old real quick, and just pissed me off every night.

P.S. Jon & Schmidt, you both better fucking be there next year. :kickass: