saturday quick recap for those who missed out.

Diabolik

Diabolik

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Sep 30, 2005
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Again....this place was packed for Testament. Downfall was that you had the Ozzfest types who are there to mosh and get drunk. Poor AngelofMadness meet his new boyfreind tonight. How many times was that guy hugging you?

I thought doors opened at 5?? I guess I was wrong and was left standing in the cold too long.

Sacred Dawn opened up. I will write a more detailed review tomorrow. I have been trying to see these guys for a while now. I have heard nothing but really good things about them. I will say this....with such short notice, they had more heart and soul in thier set than Iced Earth did. They didnt waste time and seemed really eager to play. The crowd reacted really good for them. Unlike the crowd for all the bands on friday asides Iced Earth. I am truely glad they got to play instead of another metalcore act. Most of what I heard in the crowd....they were saying the same thing.

12th Gate...........Rob...I told you I was giving it one more chance. Like in baseball. 3 strikes and your out. Again, not my thing. Your singer sounded weaker this time around than when you guys opened for Edguy.

Suidakra. Great band. Great set. most of the knucklehead types who were there to mosh didnt get them at all. I loved hearing their comments. From what is this...sailor music to....you cant mosh to this, Ozzfest had better pits. I wish they chose some better songs to play live, but I am just grateful to have seen them. been waiting many years for this. Thanks Rob and Chris.

Darkane. Watched about half a song. Really not my thing. Hung out with forum members instead.

Testament. The place was packed beyond beleif. More than the Iced Earth night. The wait was way out of hand. Half hour past the time posted. Testament were tight as hell and so full of energy. Everyone was into them. Still wish they played some other songs than the ones they did. It was amazing to watch them. Really into it and happy to be playing.

Tonight was tons better than the friday night. It seemed that the crowd was more receptive this night. Maybe due to more metal acts playing than metalcore ones. It was so great to see everyone from the forum there. there was so many little funny things that happened. i will write more tomorrow...just way to tired.

Again...thanks Rob and Chris for doing this. It was an incredible weekend. I had a blast. Hell....I had so much fun on friday I can early on saturday. What does that tell you? It was also nice to see many of the beautiful ladies of this forum too:) I still wish there was enough time to talk to everyone. well next year. lets start getting those pics up.
 
Testament:

I agree that there were way too many meatheads in attendance tonight. I was all the way in the back and must have been hit from behind 15 times by big guys trying to shove their way through the crowd.

I ended up by the bar after wandering around for a nice spot and had a great view of Alex and Chuck for the rest of their set, aside from a handful of idiots. One drunk-ass kept windmilling his hair and nailing me and some women behind him. I finally had to grab his hair mid-headbang to get him to fucking stop biffing me in the face every 3 seconds.

Other than the abundance of idiots in the crowd, Testament absolutely killed. Iced Earth was my favorite of the 3 bands I saw full sets of.

Darkane was pretty cool to see - awesome music.
 
Complaining about a guy windmilling you? My god princess!

And did someone fill in for me and shout DragonLord songs to Eric? :lol:
 
Here's my recap to add to it all:

Sacred Dawn - Missed 'em. I've seen them before and have a good time, but I was catching up with friends over drinks & food

Twelfth Gate - Not sure why, but it didn't click for me this time. Maybe it was the song selection, or that some tunes seem a bit rearranged. I liked Aaron a lot the first time I saw him (at his first show, I think, at Legends?). That was a while ago, and it seemed like he hasn't gotten more comfortable in the role in the meantime. Rob, pour that man a six pack of confidence!

Suidakra - I heard some really interesting things in the music, but as is getting more and more common for me in my set-in-my-ways old age, the vocals ruin it for me.

Darkane - See above, but I liked Suidakra's music better.

Testament - To quote Chuck, "Fuck yeah." One of the tightest, heaviest shows I've seen. They were ON, and Chuck sounded incredible.
 
yesterday was awesome. Suidakra had a great set (too bad about the mic was not working for Tim) i thought they brought the crowd back into the show. Sacred Dawn was awesome! love to see them again!. and then Testament. fucking INSANE. at times i thought i was at a slayer show. great set list, great stage presence. i will go see them in August again!
 
Unlike the previous two nights, I showed up a bit later, around 7:30. This is because I knew that two scheduled bands, Chaoswave and The Autumn Offering wouldn't be playing. However, I had no idea if and how the schedule would be changing, or if any bands would be added, because not even the cancellations were mentioned officially (The Autumn Offering info was posted by a user on the Powerfest forum, and the Chaoswave rumor came solely through word of mouth the night before). I understand that the organizers are surely busy, but it takes less than 10 minutes to post a note on a forum or update a website with new information. But none of that was done, even though they must have known 48 hours in advance. I hate to say it, especially since the guys run a generally well-organized festival, but that's a seriously Koshick-like move, and that lack of communication should never happen in 2008.

Again, just the walk from the car gave hints as to what kind of night it would be. It was a much older crowd, both in age and school. And also much more mainstream. Black Label Society and Misfits t-shirts were popular ways to express support of the underground. After Darkane's set, I decided that I would stay up front to have a good spot for Testament, but when Pantera's 'Walk' started playing over the PA and this group of 10 people around me raised their cups and started singing every single word as if it was the awesomest thing ever, oh god, I had to make a beeline out of there. I'm sure that alcohol sales were more lucrative on this night than the night before!

Twelfth Gate:
I arrived in time to hear their last two songs, and didn't hear a single hook anywhere in either one of them. I guess I just don't understand the point of making music without hooks.

Suidakra:
They were easily my most anticipated non-Iced Earth band of the two nights, and they lived up to that expectation. Sound was a bit dodgy, particularly in the beginning, but eventually their melodies came through, even if the clean harmony vocals never quite caught up. This band could have been on the Paganfest, but one thing that separates them from those bands is that they have a more genuine extreme-metal background, so their music has an extra intensity to it. And when that intensity is combined with sing-along melodies, it's just awesome. Also, they have no special outfits; by their look they could have been an old-school thrash band. They did a bold move of playing an instrumental for their third song, but it was so hooky that it worked out great. An equally bold move was to walk offstage in preparation for an encore, even though they were two bands away from headliner status. Luckily for them, someone must have pushed them right back out, because no one in the audience had any idea that we were supposed to call for them! Question: did they play their song "Darkane Times" specially for the band who would be following them?

In contrast to the old folks, there were these two high-school aged couples going absolutely nuts for Suidakra, so after their set, I asked them, "so, I guess you guys really like that band?" "No we've never heard them before we just came here and this is awesome!!" The incongruous jumping up-and-down and ill-advised moshing continued through Darkane's set until one of the girls tried crowd surfing one too many times, which quickly brought an end to their night. Too bad, they were a nice contrast to crotchety Testament fans yelling "get off the stage" to Darkane. Like, really, is Darkane so far away in style from Testament that they're that intolerable, or is Testament truly the only music that they listen to? I can only imagine what they would have thought if they were there the night before!

Darkane:
I'm not too big of a fan, but I have their first album, so it was very nice of them to include the two "hits" from it, "Convicted" and "July 1999". The vocalist even did a good job of changing up his growl for those songs to match the style of the original guy. Beyond that, the songs near the end of the set worked out better for me than the earlier ones, partly because I think their sound got a bit better. Sonically they can be a bit of a mess on the fast stuff, so I imagine it helps to know their songs. But by presence, they were easily the biggest non-headliners of the weekend. They're a strolling band, meaning that all four guys up front constantly roam all around the stage, changing positions, which is actually fairly rare, but a simple way to make a performance seem more active. It also helps that they're Swedish, and thus, tall. Definitely a much better and more memorable performance than what I remember from seeing them at the Milwaukee Metalfest years ago.

Testament:
I'm only a mild fan, but if I was as big a fan of them as I am of Iced Earth, then I'm sure this performance would have equaled Iced Earth's for me. As it was, I just hung way back and enjoyed it in the sweat-free zone. It was difficult to gauge since I was in a different location both nights, but the crowd sizes seemed pretty similar, and the only way to move up would be to bash my way through. Testament's sound was amazingly good, their lights far surpassed anything Iced Earth had, and their presence was excellent. I had just listened to 'Live At The Fillmore' before heading out to the venue, so it turned out that I recognized most of the songs that they played. Best for me were the two I knew the best, "Low" and "Trail of Tears". Chuck Billy introduced the latter with a plea for human rights and environmental awareness, for which he received an enormous collective "meh" from the crowd of heshers. Some of the other singers in the fest could really take a lesson from him in how to make the most out of a limited vocal range, because he really sounded good (it helped to have a very active soundman, who would jack up the reverb in time with his growls). Oh, and they could take a lesson from him in stage presence too. Actually all the guys in the band were quite fun to watch, although it seemed like Skolnick was going a bit overboard on the solos (or maybe I'm just not used to listening to music where guitar solos are such a focus?) On the other hand, one of my favorite parts was when the whole band was doing some improvisational jamming during the sing-along call-and-response of "Alone In The Dark". It would have been cool to hear more of that. All in all, it was an impressive, headlining performance. And I now see that when the place is packed, including the balcony, it can be a pretty fun place for even "big" bands to play.

Overall, it was a great three nights of metal. Though for me, "nights" is a bit of a stretch, because the success of each night (excluding Paganfest) was heavily dependent on the headliners. And I think that I even got a lot more out of the undercard than many people there, who seemed to come *solely* to see the headliners. So, quite a different approach than last year, and a vastly different result in terms of attendance. Hopefully that also translated into a vastly different result for CRJ. I have a hard time imagining that they'd get as lucky with headliners next year, but if they do, it really calls into question the role of the undercard...I just can't imagine that the attendance would have been much different if Iced Earth and Testament had been the only bands playing the last two nights. But maybe the imbalance this year was just an anomaly.

The only organizational issues were the above-mentioned lack of communication, and the line for the (men's!) bathroom. It never really affected me, but it's unbelievable that a venue with the Pearl Room's capacity has only one smallish bathroom available. It's like when they built it, they never expected they'd actually get a crowd to fill the place. The security seemed reasonable, succeeding at keeping crowd surfing to an absolute minimum, while still allowing freedom in the mosh pits. Occasionally they would take a shockingly active role in the pit, but hey, some of those guys probably deserve to be flung down to the ground anyhow.

So hopefully this was good enough for the guys to keep it going, because I look forward to next year!
 
skyrefuge said:
In contrast to the old folks, there were these two high-school aged couples going absolutely nuts for Suidakra, so after their set, I asked them, "so, I guess you guys really like that band?" "No we've never heard them before we just came here and this is awesome!!" The incongruous jumping up-and-down and ill-advised moshing continued through Darkane's set until one of the girls tried crowd surfing one too many times, which quickly brought an end to their night. Too bad, they were a nice contrast to crotchety Testament fans yelling "get off the stage" to Darkane. Like, really, is Darkane so far away in style from Testament that they're that intolerable, or is Testament truly the only music that they listen to? I can only imagine what they would have thought if they were there the night before!



Overall, it was a great three nights of metal. Though for me, "nights" is a bit of a stretch, because the success of each night (excluding Paganfest) was heavily dependent on the headliners. And I think that I even got a lot more out of the undercard than many people there, who seemed to come *solely* to see the headliners. So, quite a different approach than last year, and a vastly different result in terms of attendance. Hopefully that also translated into a vastly different result for CRJ. I have a hard time imagining that they'd get as lucky with headliners next year, but if they do, it really calls into question the role of the undercard...I just can't imagine that the attendance would have been much different if Iced Earth and Testament had been the only bands playing the last two nights. But maybe the imbalance this year was just an anomaly.

The only organizational issues were the above-mentioned lack of communication, and the line for the (men's!) bathroom. It never really affected me, but it's unbelievable that a venue with the Pearl Room's capacity has only one smallish bathroom available. It's like when they built it, they never expected they'd actually get a crowd to fill the place. The security seemed reasonable, succeeding at keeping crowd surfing to an absolute minimum, while still allowing freedom in the mosh pits. Occasionally they would take a shockingly active role in the pit, but hey, some of those guys probably deserve to be flung down to the ground anyhow.

So hopefully this was good enough for the guys to keep it going, because I look forward to next year!
Click to expand...

I saw those kids you were talking about. One girl was wearing that red cut up 80's outfit? they were annoying the hell out of me. Glad they actually liked the music. Great point about the headliners and the undercard. I really think the crowd would have been more into stuff like Twisted Tower Dire, Cresant Sheild, Nov Doom and tons others than who played. Hopefully it is a lesson learned. I hope we get a next year but the line up and mic's need fixing.
 
Diabolik said:
Poor AngelofMadness meet his new boyfreind tonight. How many times was that guy hugging you?
Click to expand...


That was weird @_@

But yeah I had a great time last night, it was fantastic, especially Suidakra and Testament, it was nice seeing Testament play some stuff off of Low, The Gathering etc. (No Demonic though :/)
 
I hardly spent any time watching the bands last night. .. I kind of mingled and chit chatted with people ... Bob, Jason .. great talking with you guys. Time got away from me last night, and I missed Suidakra .. who I intended to see. I wasn't interested in the previous bands, so I just snuck in a few more drinks over at Beggars pizza (great thin crust pizza, and $5 pitchers).

Darkane didn't really interest me .. just not my thing. I watched some of Testament from horrible viewing angles, and then sat down and listened to some of it. I'm not a big fan of theirs, but it sounded like they were putting on a real good show. The people seemed to be into it, and the band sounded pretty tight. I was amazed at the large number of attendees on all the nights. Paganfest had a nice turnout, but Iced Earth and Testament brought in a lot of people. I thought there would be a drop in attendance from IE to Testament .. didn't happen .. similar sized crowds it seemed.

Britt
 
I ate the front-left rail all three nights of the fest (got there around 3 each day) and got the crap crushed out of me (two bruised knees and two bruised hips to show for it), but it was completely worth it. I thought Iced Earth delivered a 10/10 performance, and Testament completely crushed them with an amazing sounding performance that had great presence. And watching Skolnick solo and Chuck Billy sing right there was absolutely amazing.
 
Vegetaman said:
Yeah, I can't believe we missed Bob and Jason. It was nice chatting with you guys at both ends of the hall.
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Dude, it bothers me to no end that I didn't end up seeing you and Lee.
Ask Bob, I stuck around as long as we could on Friday night to try to find you guys. Then we went to the Super 8 with Vito and his pal to meet up with folks. We ended up hanging with Britt (Invisible Guest), War Ensemble, Pat (Mr Kaschie), and others....

My situation was a bit unplanned as most of you know.
I was very happy to make it even for the little bit that I did.

Glad you guys all had a blast on Sat.
I look forward to seeing Testament on the big tour this summer.
 
I missed seeing a lot of people, too; I sort of gave up on trying to find people except on the perimeter / by the bar & stairs on those times I wandered around. So of the regional regulars, I ran into Bob a couple of times, saw Britt, Pat, Vito, most of Eden's Fall among others. I saw Pate and Veggie in line on the first day, but after that the only time I saw either of them was from the balcony. Jose and I figured Veggie has some Zen thing going on, allowing him to remain in the same place with no change in facial expression or apparent movement of a single muscle for hours on end. It was an impressive feat! :)

Jason, sorry I didn't catch you during the time you were there. Are you going to Candlemass on the 24th?

Ken
 
Jasonic said:
Dude, it bothers me to no end that I didn't end up seeing you and Lee.
Ask Bob, I stuck around as long as we could on Friday night to try to find you guys. Then we went to the Super 8 with Vito and his pal to meet up with folks. We ended up hanging with Britt (Invisible Guest), War Ensemble, Pat (Mr Kaschie), and others....
Click to expand...

Yeah, Lee and I were outside of the room you guys were in for awhile and stayed long enough for me to do a 30 second jam with Brian Gordon before we headed off for the evening. If only we had known! :zombie:

metalprof said:
Jose and I figured Veggie has some Zen thing going on, allowing him to remain in the same place with no change in facial expression or apparent movement of a single muscle for hours on end. It was an impressive feat! :)
Click to expand...

I definitely used all that stored energy to go nuts for Iced Earth and Testament. :lol: :headbang: (I also was trying not to show the immense pain from the surge that was occuring behind me; I nearly got to second base with the metal railing and the person directly behind me and I didn't even know either of their names). :headbang: :lol:

And who all is going to Candlemass? Because Pate and I are...
 
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