Friday was fun. I went to the bank before heading down to Worcester and it looks like they finally fixed my card. I wasn’t particularly happy with the way one of the tellers was talking to me. I could tell he wanted to give me more attitude than he was allowed to. He kept telling me to enter my PIN more slowly. I know that it was something wrong on their end but somehow when they reset the PIN this time it worked. So there’s no point in complaining about it. I took out a hundred dollars for the day and headed down to the festival.
As usual it started off with a few metalcore bands that I had no interest in. I went back and forth between the two stages to give everybody a listen. I thought that I could occupy myself by browsing the vendors. There was no such luck there. In years past the balcony for the second stage was full of different groups, mostly record labels, selling mostly CDs with some other merchandise as well. This year there were no metal labels present, and only one guy was selling a small selection of CDs. Otherwise there were other sponsors of the festival with their tables up but the coolest thing that I found was some jewelry that I wouldn’t wear. Not only was there not a lot of quality goods but it looked like there was only half of the vendors that there have been in years past.
I knew this should have pleased me in a way because I could justify not spending money after all. This was especially useful because parking cost me fifteen bucks when I’m used to free street parking on Saturday night shows. But I could live with it. I was still riding that low when I saw the vendor area so the disappointment of no good vendors bummed me out more. I had to reason with myself to get myself out of it. Besides, I was at the festival to have fun.
I forgot Inquisition was on the Metal Alliance Tour going through that got attached to that fest. For those unfamiliar with them think of Immortal but without the bass. I thought it was funny that halfway through the vocalist/guitarist announced themselves as a “two-piece black metal band.” I think by that point, after seeing two guys play black metal, we didn’t need to be told that. But hey, they were one of the few good bands that I saw that day so I’m no complaining.
Skip ahead a few bands and we finally got to 1349, one of the other good bands on the bill. Sadly, because they were stuck with a five o’clock time slot they didn’t get a very long set. They still managed to win the audience over. I know that seems like an odd statement to make, as they’re well-known in the black metal world and I could tell that there were people there for them. But considering they were stuck in the late afternoon surrounded by crap metalcore bands I got the impression that most of the people who were getting into them weren’t familiar with their work. At one point a kid in a Spider-Man costume came down to the pit area and everybody started changing “Spider-Man! Spider-Man!” between two of the 1349 songs while they were tuning their guitars. He crowd-surfed towards the stage and was put back into the crowd before the band turned around. I have to wonder if they had any idea as to what was going on.
Then Goatwhore came on the main stage. I’ve never been a huge fan of theirs. If they played before 1349 I would have enjoyed them but when they go on afterwards I didn’t really care. Besides, I was getting really hungry. I took advantage of the all-day re-entry and walked down the street to Uno for dinner. I’m not one-hundred percent sure that their cheese is vegetarian but I flew caution to the wind this time. While I was there I noticed that all of the servers wore t-shirts promoting the Worcester Sharks, the AHL club down there. I was trying to figure out what to do because the next band I wanted to see was the headliner, Behemoth, and they weren’t on until 10:45. I walked by the DCU Center and discovered that there was indeed a game at 7:30 and they advertised tickets as low as ten bucks. That settled my plans for the evening until Behemoth went on stage (although it turned out the lowest-priced ticket was actually twelve. I wasn’t going to complain but it seemed odd). I had taken my Kindle and iPod with me so as I sat in the nosebleed section I listened to an old episode of the podcast “Harmontown” during the game and caught up on The New Yorker between periods. It was a good way to pass the time.
I’m glad I didn’t root for either club, though. Worcester lost 6-0. It almost looked like their goalie wasn’t even trying.
I got back just in time to sit down in the balcony for the main stage with a beer while the next-to-last band finished up their set. Not being familiar with them I actually thought there was one more band to go before Behemoth, but once I saw the familiar symbols getting set up on stage I rushed down to the floor. I wasn’t going to sit down for them. I was right that they were worth the forty-five dollar ticket alone and any other good band that day was a bonus. For once I took out my earplugs. I knew I wasn’t going to see another metal band for a while and besides, they’re one of the best. With the bombastic death metal and insane light show Behemoth gave us a sensory overload. I’m glad that I trained myself to stay up late so I wasn’t falling asleep during their set.
Tomorrow’s my first day back to work. It’s going to suck.
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Okay, so I know that I’m now four blog posts behind. My mind went on vacation without the rest of me before this past week. But now I’m starting to get back into the groove of things like I thought I would. I was going to try to write five blog posts today to get caught up but I now doubt it. Aside from any worries over being able to write that much in one day, I just realized that it’s Easter. I thought it was next week when I was planning on what to do for today. It wasn’t until I got online this morning and saw everybody on Facebook wishing everybody else a Happy Easter did I realize that I’m supposed to get together with family for lunch today. That’s always fun—getting together with people I see all of the time anyway in honor of a holiday that I don’t celebrate and watch those people eat meat, an activity that I find morally offensive. But anyway, I have all of these chores to do around that visit so I’ll try to write as much as I can and make up the rest throughout the week.
Ragged Good Looks 