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Witnessed
Maryland Deathfest 2010: Day 1
05/07/10 || InquisitorGeneralis
What: The Maryland Deathfest
When: 28th-30th May, 2010
Where: Club Sonar and surrounding streets, Baltimore Maryland
Introduction by Inquisitorgeneralis:
Every year, millions of Americans celebrate Memorial Day on the last weekend in May. This is a time for families to come together and celebrate the wholesome values of togetherness, love, and understanding while eating deviled eggs…a truly tasty and satanic concoction. We remember those who died for the freedom and life we enjoy while cherishing the warmth of loved ones and good times.
Fuck that.
While these hallow and sad celebrations are taking place a trve gathering of grvm souls takes place in my hometown of Baltimore, Maryland. Thousands of stinking, tattooed, drunk, and angry metalheads gather at a place called Club Sonar to pay homage to the one thing that unites all of humanity. Death. And, more importantly, Death Fucken Metal! That’s right dominators, it’s the Maryland Deathfest, the biggest and most extreme death, grind, and black metal festival on this side of the pond and seven years into the game it keeps getting stronger and stronger. This year, four brave soldiers of Global D bought three day passes and made a blood oath to Lucifer to experience as much insane metal as humanly possible while drinking gallons of cheap beer and smoking entire forests of mid-grade marijuana. Your guides to this carnival of madness were me, fellow staffers Daemonomania and Trauma, and long-time dominator Ryan Samuel.
Here is Yours truly with Mrs. Generalis who despite not liking death metal at all gave us repeated rides to the show and attended the last day!
There you have it, the four horsemen whose voices will guide you through these three days of unparallel metalness. Most of the pictures were taken by me unless otherwise noted. Read on to discover the hidden secrets of the first day…
Day 1: The Madness Begins.
After assembling the crew at the Inquisition HQ we headed to a local watering-hole for cheep pitchers and greasy eats. And pot brownies. The four of us stumbled in around 6pm and got right into it.
Here we have Daemonomania and Trauma ready for action at the start of Day 1!
???-7:25: Malignancy and Nazxul, Outside Stages.
IG: When we rolled in around 6:45 these two bands were playing out the outside stages. I don’t think any of us payed any real attention to them. All I remember is that the singer from Nazxul was dressed in a red robe and, not surprisingly, they fucking sucked. Honestly, I don’t remember jack about Maligancy. I was fucked up. No setlists for these chumps, find ‘em on yer own.
7:30-8:25: Watain, Inside Stage.
D: Not Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, or Tony award winners. What scares me is that I was expecting them to totally suck, and they totally didn’t. The suckiest thing related to this band at the MDF was some douche bag Abercrombie & Fitch kid in a Watain shirt who kept pushing moshers. Fuck that guy. Maybe he was feeling extra misanthropic. These guys come in third place behind Crucifist and Meleschechesheichsch overall.
IG: Watain was supposed to play outside but asked to be inside where it was darker. That’s very grvm guys, thumbs up. If you didn’t already know, I hate Black Metal and every year I am forced to swallow a big load of it at the Deathfest. I must admit though, Watain definitely know how to end a song with a killer section. The problem is that the first 3/4’s of every one of their songs is off tempo (in a bad way), blasty, screechy black metal shittiness. Again, another group of painted-up bozos fails to convert me to Norway’s finest export.
Ole IG did not take this picture, no way in Hell was I getting that close to these whackjobs!
Ryan: We didn’t stick around for the whole show but what we heard was not bad. I kind of wish I heard the whole set, but I’m not devastated I didn’t. Despite being the only black metal fan in the group, I’ve never really gotten into Watain. They did however have a really cool looking banner thing they hung up with the eyes backlit making the atmosphere that much more kvlt. Also, one of the running jokes that weekend was the black metal claw which D started, and then not long into the show I looked ahead into the crowd and instead of seeing horns being thrown up like any normal and well balanced metalhead would do, people were throwing up claws. Was very funny. Still, Watain left a good enough impression that I might need to check them out further and give them the time of day to see if I could really dig an album or two.
Watain setlist:
Malfeitor
Devil’s Blood
Sworn to the Dark
Rabid Death’s Curse
I Am the Earth
Wolves Curse
Reaping Death
Stellarvore
On Horns Impaled
The Return of Darkness and Evil (Bathory cover)
When he’s not at home alone playing video games forum dominator and
God-denying deluxe Ryan Samuel attends Black Metal concerts! This is
what Watain does to people. Strike a pose!
9:40 – 10:40: Gorguts, Outside Stage.
D: Gorguts were not messing around. They were no joke. They were professional. I kept repeating these things over and over again as they played. And looking baffled and amazed in equal measure with each out-of-left-field time change and breakdown that emerged. Might’ve been the brownies, or I might just be a retard. This became a recurring joke over the rest of the festival. Anyway, these fuckers really did kick several mountains of jiggly asscheeks. Technical, brutal, and that bizarre inhaled scream vocal style was toned down considerably live. Plus the lead singer kept appearing in the crowd over the next two days, looking cool and being awesome. More Gorguts albums are in my near future.
Ryan: MDF was my first exposure to these guys. I have to say they made a very good first impression! While I didn’t like the song “Obscura” so much, every other song they played sounded ace. They were very professional. They were not joking around. These guys were serious (back me up, D). But seriously, these guys kicked ass. I found myself head banging a lot throughout the set and in fact my neck was pretty sore the rest of the weekend due to these guys making me bang my head. They were so dissonant and strange yet so heavy and cool. I don’t have any of their albums yet but that may change. The bottom line though is that these guys bring it live, no joke. Plus the singer guy seemed really cool, hanging out the rest of the weekend. If you’re into death metal even in the slightest and you have the opportunity to see these guys, do it, you won’t be disappointed. My top three shows of the weekend were Black Breath, Gride, and Gorguts. Haven’t come up with an order for them yet, nor do I feel the need to.
T: I knew Gorguts from their first two albums, and Obscura. I liked them from their first two albums, but not Obscura. They played some real good shit live, and I really hope none of it was from Obscura, because I’d feel like a d— errr, like more of a douche.
Luc and Gorguts were all that and a cone of frites. They really kicked assloads of uh… ass!
IG: Gorguts dominated and were absolutely the best band of the fest for me. Luc and the crew, including human drum machine John Longstreth on drums, pumped out one technical beating after another. While I was only really familiar with the material from “Obscura” enjoyed pretty much everything this guys played. The new songs (with no names) sounded more like material from “The Erosion of Sanity”. Watching Gorguts made me realize that every modern tech-death band from Psycroptic to Necrophagist and Soreption need to haul their asses to Montreal and buy Luc some Molson Dry and an order of Poutine. As a result of this show I have acquired every Gorguts record and am now a devoted fan boy. “Nostalgia” was crushing and my favorite song of the set…and maybe the entire festival. “Orphans of sickness” and “With their flesh he’ll create” both dominated as well. The new tunes were good and we can only hope Gorguts is around to stay.
Gorguts setlist:
From Wisdom to Hate
Orphans of Sickness
The Carnal State
Another new song
Nostalgia
Stiff and Cold
Obscura
With Their Flesh He’ll Create
10:45-11:20: Gride, Inside Stage.
Ryan: Being the one man in the group with any sense of class, I was the sole attendee of Gride on Friday night. Gride was one of the bands I wanted to see after being impressed with their full length album whose title I cannot reproduced here due to it being in Czech and the only Czech I know is “your women are hot, will they fuck me please?” Suffice it to say, these guys fucking rocked the house. While I didn’t love every song they played, everything I recognized from their full length sounded top titties awesome and though I’m not really a mosher, the one time I decided to jump around and mosh with some guys was during this show. As LJ put it, Gride makes non-moshers mosh. Really fucking kickass grind, awesome live band, and I think at least four out of five guys on stage were wearing doo-rags. Doo-rags! So weird. Any grind fan owes it to him or her to check them out and most certainly see them live if given the opportunity. Three thumbs up from me because I’m an alien man.
IG: I agree that I have no class, nor do I have any tolerance for pure grind. I heard a few tunes by these guys while getting a beer. I guess it was ok. It made Ryan Samuel mosh, so 2 points awarded for that.
Gride setlist:
A bunch of short, fast, blasty songs
11:35 – 12:15: Coffins, Inside Stage.
D: I’m a Coffins newbie, but I had an idea of what to expect. Got me as to which song was which, but I did enjoy the rumbling assault that was their performance. Were my socks blown off? Was I bodily hurled into a pile of feces in the horrifically nasty men’s bathroom? Nope. But not a bad band at all. Nice, stripped-down death doom played with conviction. Bravo, Coffdrops. Still a 7 out of 10 crew though.
Ryan: I’ve only heard a little bit of these guys before seeing them. They were cooler live than on cd but not my favorite band of the weekend. I think the problem is they are a bit too repetitive. As D said to me during the set, they need like one more riff per song. I think that would help. However, they were still pretty fucking cool, I can’t deny that. Their heavy, slow, doomy shit was very heavy indeed, and it was pretty cool. Definitely not a bad set by any means, just wish they had just a little bit more to their metal.
T: These guys bored me to complete hell. I don’t know if it was because I had enough beers by that time, or what, but I certainly did not want to be in there listening to them. Booooorrrrrrriiiiiinnnnngggggg.
IG Doom continues to not impress me. There were a few decent moments but overall I found Coffins as excited as being in a Coffin. These guys obviously know and love metal but they need something to fucking get them excited. Maybe we could invade Okinawa again or something and get ‘em fired up. Some suicidal rage might help Coffins pick things up a bit.
Coffins setlist:
Couldn’t find one. Honestly, I tried.
Ending Rant from The Inquisitor
We skipped out on DRI at the end: a decision
which none of us regret. We finished the night bounding National
Bohemian beer and hitting the old corncob pipe while dreaming of what
other great offerings were in store for us the next day. One final thing
before I go. As you can expect, the MDF was
packed with whacky metalheads sporting some of the worst tattoos ever
injected into human flesh. I honor of the inked-up retards I will end
each review with a picture I took of the goofiest tattoo I was able to
capture on film that day. The one below may have been from the first
day, but it is a strong contender for the champ…
No, your eyes are not deceiving you. That really is Spock and Picard
of Star Trek fame tattooed on the back of this fleshy metal babe!
Keep your eyes peeled for coverage of the rest of the festival, your black prayers will be answered shortly…
