Good day all,
I have complained in the past that there where not enough heavy metal festivals in the United States and the best ones to go to where in Europe. The European festivals consist of 3-5 days of almost non-stop heavy metal with a multitude of bands playing and making it an experience worth ones tickets and expenses. Oh, except you have to camp out in a field with hundreds of thousand other metalheads (think no showers or proper bathrooms). That has got to smell great. Regardless, the first metal festival (barely but a combined tour for one price) I remember was 1988 Monster’s of Rock tour. Most of you probably weren’t even born yet but it had an impressive lineup for the time, it was a stadium tour, and it was all of these bands in one place. This was the primer for multi-band tours, the originator of the festival type lineup in the United States. The lineup of the original Monsters of Rock tour was Kingdom Come, Metallica, Dokken, Scorpions, and Van Halen (Hager era). Think about the year and look at the fact that Metallica was the second band to play on that day, this was quite some time ago.
But I digress, this year is turning out to be an excellent year for the metal festival, outside of the staple festivals like M3 and Rocklahoma the promoters and venues are booking some really great and eclectic festivals for this year. Maryland Deathfest is always packed full of bands, but you have to be willing to go to Baltimore to enjoy this three-day event, Summer Slaughter is worthy of one’s money, although I would personally like to see one or two more bands on the bill, Mayhem Fest is already packed full of great bands and now what I feel is probably the best festival for the money is the Shockwave festival. This event will have 11 bands including Fear Factory, Voivod, Havok, Revocation, and Misery Index, just to name a few. The beauty of this festival (it’s almost as if the promoters are reading my blog) is the price, $25.00 for an all day festival with 11 bands. Now if that is not economical I don’t know what is!
As I said before, I have complained about the festivals, or lack there of before and this is my mea culpa. I will no longer say that there isn’t enough for the young (and old) metalhead to see every summer. Also, this is much more accessible than a metal cruise would be if you know what I mean (if you don’t check out this link http://wp.me/p2amN7-3W). At this point everyone should take some time this summer and go out and support the artists that you love by attending one of these festivals. It is imperative that the fans get out there and support as having these bands all together in one place is more money friendly to the promoters and labels, but it still needs fan support to survive.
So from now on you won’t hear me complain about a lack of festivals in the US. Like I said earlier, just the fact they are able to have the Shockwave Festival at that price makes this kind of thing much more accessible to many more people. Come on people, go out there and support these bands so that they keep bringing these festivals to us. By the way, another great thing, they are bringing the festival to us and we don’t have to journey through the dark forests and cold mountains to get to them, double bonus! Although now that I think about it, wouldn’t it be cool if someone had a concert in the middle of winter with a bunch of black metal bands? It would be like we where in Norway all dark and cold, just like the music and the place where most of it comes from, I wouldn’t be there, don’t do cold anymore, but it would be fun for the corpse paint crowd, heck if it’s cold enough they won’t even have to paint their faces, just let the frostbite do the work.
Song of the day in recognition of the Shockwave Festival: http://youtu.be/i-Asl-wgsG8
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Have a Great Weekend, Peace,
Lurch
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