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March Metal Meltdown

Like true Metal warriors, we awoke early and strapped on our spiked gauntlets, pulled on our tight leather pants, carefully covered our faces with corpsepaint and donned our necklaces of pentagrams and desecrated crosses. Well, not really. We awoke early, grumbled about the drive ahead of us, showered, dressed, bought massive amounts of junk food and soda and rode on to our quest. The trip was free of mishap (minus our disgust for the amount of money we spent on tolls for roads we didn't care to ever drive on again) until we reached route 73 in New Jersey. Some time ago, when New Jersey first started putting down roads, there was breach of all logic amongst the transportation planners, almost as if they were momentarily lobotomized. In these scant few moments sans cerebral cortex, they decided that instead of drivers turning left, they should create the "U and left turn lane", a lane that leads the driver off the road and faces him perpendicular to his previous direction. These monstrosities are dubbed 'jughandles' intended for safety purposes, a notion for scoffing purposes. When we had finally, joyously reached 73, we saw the expo center on the opposite side of the road separated from us by a barrier. Then a completely erroneous sign announcing "Expo Center" lead us on a wild goose chase down another highway into a lovely crime district. Navigational wizards that we are, we found our ways out of this land of death and back to 73, but only after spending 15 minutes before figuring out the glorious "U and left turn lane" idea. Finally back on 73, we mapped out how to get to the Expo Center and started our lengthy search for hotels. Our first choice, a small motel with its own exotic dancers located right across the road from the expo center, was booked. So, our search continued back down 73 until we settled for a Days Inn. The room was great, but at $65 a night, we cheap bastards decided that we would be driving home Saturday after the show instead of staying over another night. Mental note when you listen to metal for almost 12 hours straight it's not wise to drive almost 6 hours. However, I'm sure we scared yet amused quite a few weary travelers as we skirted in and out of lanes due to Jeremy's exhaustion. I know I was amused at the beatings I gave his leg to keep him awake. Once finally at the Expo center (and not so late that we missed more than one or two bands), we gathered our cameras, my tape recorder and our tickets and marched. After facing hassles with security about our cameras (they were confused about our passes and one of the co-promoters of the show had to convince them that our pass was legitimate), we at long last had entry to March Metal Meltdown. I personally think they train security guards to hassle press. We walked around and got familiar with the layout and the schedule. We walked through one of the stages and saw a band with masks. "Ha, they're trying to be Slipknot and they sound dumb" we thought as we dismissed them and walked on. While watching Fatal Aggression (who put on a pretty good set for being a bit too Rapcore for me), we found out that the masked band called Bad Luck 13 Riot Extravaganza (although we didn't want to name them here because we know they lavish the attention gained by their antics/stupidity) had doused a table with lighter fluid and set it on fire. Fire trucks and police cars showed up and the fire marshal ordered that the show stop until the fumes could be cleared out of the room. That's right, these idiots caused the whole show, all 4 stages, to stop. I know there were a lot of tough guys there who are a thousand times more Metal than myself, so I'm pretty sure the guys in that band were hunted down. This is a band that has a reputation for being banned from venues because of this type of activity. Now I personally (this is J-Sin talking) have put together and promoted shows. I would never sign a band with that type of reputation to play one of my shows. And if I know about their antics than I'm sure the bookers had to know too. So consider this to be the first thing on your list of things to change for next year—don't book dumb bands who have reputations for burning shit. When the show had finally started up again, we went to take in some bands on the Relapse stage and the Meltdown stage (which lived up to his name by being the stage where the infamous fire occurred ironic huh?). Pig Destroyer who is fronted by the insane guitarwork of Scott Hull also of ex-Anal Cunt and current project Agoraphobic Nosebleed fame just absolutely destroyed our ears with their majestic grindcore. As we were enjoying Pig Destroyer's intense set of crazed grindcore, a major flaw in the show became painfully evident. These two stages, housed in the same room, were side by side and separated by a curtain. Even the blasting fury of Pig Destroyer couldn't drown out the rumble from the band next door. I could even hear the other band when I was onstage taking photos of Pig Destroyer. Consider this to be the second thing to put on your list of things to change for next year.
Scrape, without a bass player (he cancelled on them three days before the show—asshole), managed to put on an intense set of songs from their demo and songs I'd never heard. Singer Pheroze was covering the whole stage and put his whole being into the show. This is a band that will definitely go somewhere big, so watch out.

The rest of Friday night was pretty devoid of bands we wanted much to see except for E Town Concrete until S.O.D., so we traveled around, watching a bit here and there and talking to people. These festivals bring out some of the nicest and some of the oddest. At 7:00, we took in a press conference with members of Impaled Nazarene, Incantation, and S.O.D. among others. Dan Lilker (S.O.D., ex-Brutal Truth) was the comedian on the panel and kept interjecting about the missing guy from Relapse who had left so long ago to supply beer to the interviewees.

At approximately 10:40 (translation twenty minutes later) E Town Concrete took the stage. Now granted this band is from Jersey. I expected a great reaction from the crowd. I expected people to go nuts. I expected a lot. Was I let down? No. I was thrown into a melting pot of rap and hardcore (read: Good shit not copycat crap). With a crowd that was juiced up from the days length and the problems that had occurred earlier, E Town Concrete picked and chewed on the energy of the crowd and fed us some more insanity. The played a new track from their upcoming album "The Second Coming". As par their last two efforts, this track is just as brutal and in your face. E Town didn't seem too thrilled to have to give up 30% of their merchandise to the show promoters/venue and they made that abundantly clear. Up next was Skinlab, so we sat down and watched a mundane blurry-sounding show. Needless to say we were more than disappointed with Skinlab and I actually felt sorry for them to have to follow such a great performance by E Town Concrete.


When S.O.D. took to the stage, I was denied my photo pit rights by the security guard, who, although he was only doing his job, had apparently been misinformed about what my pass meant. In fact the rest of the weekend, the security seemed misinformed. This is why you should appreciate Smother. We fight for our passes and then they don't get us the access we need so we risk our cameras in front of stage. My aside completed, S.O.D. put on an amazing show after their Slayer-ish wait to take the stage. They played hits spanning their 15-year, 2-album career. They also amazed the crowd by playing 6 songs in 9 seconds before outdoing themselves with 7 songs in 9 seconds. I believe that this was a slight pun on the movie "There's Something About Mary" which was later quoted after their hit "Short Bus"— with a quick "Franks and beans…" from Scott Ian. Never having seen Scott Ian and Charlie Benante play together in S.O.D., I was blown away by the speed with which they play. I think Scott's right hand is the fastest picking I've ever seen and Charlie's blast beats certainly are the most precise and equal I've ever known. S.O.D. loved the crowd and the crowd loved them back tenfold as the folks at March Metal Meltdown lost their minds to S.O.D. Then we retreated the hotel and slept too late for our free continental breakfast.



After eating lunch at the fanciest damn diner I've ever eaten at, we got to the Expo Center about an hour after the show had started. The second day was devoid of interesting acts until Anal Blast's set in midafternoon. I think Death Metal bands could learn a lot about stage presence from Grindcore bands like Anal Blast—specifically, their bass player. I have seen few players contort themselves on stage like this guy and still play as well. Not only that but hell he moved around and jumped off the stage and played in front of the people by the barrier. They filled their 30-minute slot with lots of Grind insanity and twisted humor about female genitals and menstrual cunnilingus. Not to mention the fact that their singer/screamer drank three quarters of a flask of Gin before throwing it and a beer out to the hungry-to-be-drunk crowd. I was surprised by how much Luddite Clone and Chimaira entertained me. I learned never again to even make small judgments of a band based on image. These two bands tore their sets up and really made an impression. Luddite Clone's singer has a monstrous voice and his stage presence is bewilderingly aggressive. Chimaira's brand of Metal borders on that horrible "Nu-Metal", but the songs are so damned good and the playing was so tight and heavy that I didn't mind seeing a DJ on stage with them. These guys know how newer, modern heavy music should be made. Jeremy didn't think he could trust my judgement that dumb bastard. Chimaira played most of their album "This Present Darkness". They were one of my favorite bands that played that day. They opened with the self-titled song of their album complete with samples. Unfortunately they had more than their fair share of sound problems with the sampler and DJ (no not turntables but a CD scratcher).



Converge played during a lame band that Jeremy wanted to watch Pessimist (although Pessimist didn't actually start till after Converge was over but Jeremy was dumb and went and waited). This was the most amazing part of the entire weekend for me. The crowd was the biggest for any of the acts that had played on the Relapse stage and for good reason. Converge ripped through several songs off of "Petitioning the Empty Sky" and their newest split with Agoraphobic Nosebleed called "The Poacher Diaries". You wouldn't have been able to tell that they had a new drummer because the band was incredibly tight. Jacob I must say is probably the most amazing frontman I've ever witness grab the mike. His screams were more devasting than that which are recorded on the album. This was the only band throughout the entire weekend in which security actually looked like they were scared for their own safety. The crowd would do sing-a-longs and the security would try and keep the dumb barriers up. I was crushed a few times and punched in the back of the head but hey I didn't mind. Despite the fact that I was clinging onto my camera I was able to sing-a-long and protect myself as the most devasting hardcore kung-fu was performed. At the end of the set Jacob jumped into the crowd to let the crowd finish the song. As he was singing one of the dumber (but oddly smaller) security guys tried to pull him back which landed him a swift kick in the face. This must have made the guy a little mad as he continued to tug on Jacob's leg. Well Converge's bassist responded by throwing down his bass and jumping where Jacob was and sure enough one of their guitarist soon followed. But don't let yourself think they stopped playing. Oh no. The song went on and despite only having one guitar, drums, and some kid in the audience singing the song was finished by a dramatic throw of the mike to Jacob as he returned to stage and grabbed the mike in time to finish the last verse.

Then, the attraction for me remained the Nightfall stage, where a string of great bands was playing: Skinless, Defiled, Pessimist, Fleshgrind, Dying Fetus, Angel Corpse, Hate Eternal, Immolation, Witchery and Immortal (the last two we didn't see because we needed to leave). The only break there was Mortician, whose set called forth a huge crowd, and I don't know why. Pessimist played a tight set even though their stage show really seemed to lack the energy of their albums. Dying Fetus and Angel Corpse both put on godly sets with lots of energy and aggression. This was my virgin experience with these two live and I would kill to catch their insanity again. Angel Corpse's stage show was well constructed with lots of songs running into each other, keeping the insanity level at the highest. Hate Eternal were as intense as on the Death Metal Massacre tour. Immolation laid waste as expected, opening with "Once Ordained". Working with only Robert Vigna on guitar these days, they were still intense and brutal. One thing Immolation does live that really sets them apart from the rest is how they announce their songs. Most of these Death Metal bands feel it's necessary to growl the song title, which is very annoying for someone who isn't familiar with the material. It's hard to go out and look for a specific album if the fans make no sense of the song titles. Immolation seems to grasp this concept. Ross Dolan, in a normal conversational tone, thanks the audience after each song and announces the next one clearly. There were a lot of people around me unfamiliar with Hate Eternal. As Erik Rutan growled out the titles, I clarified for these people. In this part of the show, I was happy except for the little annoying kid who was obviously not into the music at all and was there solely to try knocking people down. I thought after me and several other angry Metalheads pushed him on the ground and kicked him that he'd learn, but during Immolation's last song he succeeded in knocking down a big guy behind me who in turn tried to steady himself with my tiny stature. We both went tumbling and my camera took a short airborne trip to the floor. The kid seemed to disappear, but a Black Metal fan in front of me asked if I was ok and promised to kill the kid in the Immortal pit. I wonder if he survived.



We also managed to catch a bit of The Step Kings set. We both have seen them before and they were a bit more intense than the last time. It's funny because I believe I saw the Jersey Roadrunner representative (being as she yelled for "Vibe" their first single quite a bit and seemed to be carrying a bit of their shit too). So a shout-out for her too, I wish I had stopped to talk to a fellow Roadrunnerian if you did see me singing along know that J-Sin saw you too and was glad he wasn't the only one who had heard them before. They blitzed through their remainder of their set with a good furious attitude. The metal pipe suffered. For those of you that have seen them live recently you'll know that their newest member plays guitar, beats the metal pipe, congas, shakers, sings, and beats a 16" tom. Versatile guy huh?

Overall, the March Metal Meltdown was worth the $120 for our tickets, plus the $15 in tolls and the $65 for our hotel room. There were a few things that could have been improved. Perhaps there shouldn't have been so many bands booked. 133 seemed overkill. Also, the promoters seem to have forgotten that when sound waves hit concrete and steel, they reflect almost perfectly. The walls and girders in the building added a lot of echo that made the sound very blurry even for the people in the front row. I hope in the future the idea of two stages in one room separated by a curtain is nixed. But, there were enough good bands and great people there to make it really worth the trip. It was an experience I won't forget and I look forward to the next Jack Koshick event, Milwaukee Metalfest. See you there. Also J-Sin wants to give a shout-out to Meilani who was there at the show and was nice enough to scout us out and keep us company during the show.