So I put together this awesome calendar of upcoming concerts on the site here, which you hopefully already know about. By doing so I tend to know what metal shows are coming and when, who’d have thought? I knew back in January that March was going to be a crazy month for metal concerts, just so many good ones to go to! As it has come closer I noticed a nice stretch of several good metal gigs all in a row. It dawned on me that it could be possible for me to hit 11 metal shows in 9 consecutive days, the first and last days both having double headers. Do I dare? Fuck yeah I do, they don’t call me Metal Chris for nothing. I’m calling this test of my metal mettle the Metal Marathon. It will start on Saturday 5 March 2011 and end Sunday 13 March. During this time DCHeavyMetal.com might fall a bit behind as far as updating the calendar goes. I’ll still be working my day job full time Monday through Friday and with that many concerts, pics and videos to upload, driving time and sleep, well, there’s only so many hours in a week! I’ll be sure to update the calendar as much as I can though. Now here’s a run down of what exactly the Metal Marathon will entail.

The first day of the Metal Marathon will find me in Richmond for two separate metal fests on Saturday 5 March 2011. The Rockin Massacre at Alley Katz and the Virginia Extreme Metal Fest at the Canal Club. Now I obviously won’t be able to see every band at both but I’m shooting to try to see at least Ethereal Genocide and Loculus at the Canal Club and Death Penalty and Division at Alley Katz. The two venues are only 850 feet away from each other and that’s easily walkable, so I’ll probably be going back and forth all day. I haven’t seen a list of set times for the Rockin Massacre yet, but VEMF has one here. I hope none of the bands I really want to see overlap!

The second day of the Metal Marathon, Sunday the 6th of March 2011, I’ll find myself driving up to Bourbon Street in Baltimore, Maryland to see Cradle Of Filth. I’ve gotten clearance for a photo pass to this show, so that’s cool. I haven’t seen Cradle since 2003, not sure what to expect. I might catch a bit of Nachtmystium if I’m there in time, but I’m not really a fan of theirs and I’ve seen them before too, so not the end of the world if I miss them. I have never been to the Bourbon Street venue, so it will be cool to check that place out.

The third day of the Metal Marathon, Monday the 7th of March 2011, I’ll be heading out to So Addictive in Herndon, Virginia for their weekly La Noche De Metal aka Metal Mondays which spotlights local metal acts every week. I’ve been a few times before and this line up seems to be one of their better ones, Wolfnuke really impressed me when I saw them there before, and Palkoski is entertaining grind, plus there’s two black metal bands I’ve not seen before so that should be cool.

The fourth day of the Metal Marathon will be Tuesday the 8th of March 2011 and will see me headed to the Corpse Fortress in Silver Spring, Maryland for a local metal DIY (do it yourself) house show. Revolta is a cool band I saw just recently play another house show in Fairfax, definitely worth checking out again, and there’s a couple other bands I’ve never heard of to check out too. Plus I’ve been meaning to hit the Corpse Fortress to see a metal concert there for a while now and this seems as good a reason to as any.

The fifth day of the Metal Marathon is the half way point, Wednesday the 9th of March 2011. I’ll be heading over to Jaxx to catch the excellent black metal line up of Rotting Christ, Melechesh and Hate. This is probably the concert I’m most excited about going to during the Metal Marathon, I’m a pretty big fan of Melechesh and this is just their 2nd US concert ever (I saw their first at Maryland Deathfest last year). Not every day you get to see bands from Greece, Israel and Poland all playing back to back. This is also my first stop at Jaxx, the only venue I’ll be going to more than once on my Metal Marathon.

The sixth day of the Metal Marathon is on Thursday the 10th of March 2011. I’ll be heading back up to Baltimore, though this time going to Sonar, to catch the death metal jazz fusion band Atheist play. I saw them at Jaxx in July of 2009 but that was before they released their new album last year, Jupiter, their first new material in 17 years! They’re playing with A Life Once Lost (aka I don’t give a shit) and the excellent Revocation, who I’ve been wanted to see for a while now. Also, local opening act Deranged Theory is playing, I hope I can get there in time to catch them.

The seventh day of the Metal Marathon is Friday the 11th of March 2011. There’s a band from Brooklyn, New York called Meek Is Murder playing the Firehouse in old town Fairfax City, Virginia. I don’t really know much about them other than one of their members was in The Red Chord for a couple years. Regardless, they’re playing with local grind acts Drugs Of Faith and Gradius and it’s just $5. Not a huge show for my Friday night during this whole Metal Marathon, but it should be fun regardless.

The eighth day of the Metal Marathon is Saturday the 12th of March 2011. I’ll be headed to St Stephen’s Church (yeah I know, I hope I don’t burst into flame upon entering) in DC to catch Dropdead play there. I do know who Dropdead is and while I realize they’re old school legends of hardcore, I’m really going just to see some of the excellent local talent that has been lined up for this show. In particular I’d like to see Magrudergind, Cough and Ilsa. I’ve never been to the venue but considering that it’s a church, and that Dropdead is (I think) straight edge, there probably won’t be a bar there or anything. Still, those awesome posters (drawn by Ilsa’s drummer Joshy) are going to be for sale there and you can be damn sure I’m going to get myself one.

The ninth and final day of the Metal Marathon is on Sunday the 13th of March 2011. I’m going to head back to Jaxx to catch local opening act To The Teeth play and stay for Trap Them also. The new Trap Them album, Darker Handcraft, totally destroys by the way, certainly one of the best albums I’ve heard this year. I really can’t wait to see them play some of that at Jaxx (please play Evictionaries!). Depending on the time, I may stay to see Gaza play also, but I don’t care about the headliner The Red Chord so I’ll probably head out and cross the street to the new gourmet burger place near Jaxx named BGR for dinner. If you’ve never been there you should check em out, they’re on par with places like Ray’s Hell Burger. Anyways, after that I’ll be heading into DC to the 9:30 Club to catch their late show, Apocalyptica. Yep, those guys, the cello quartet from Finland that plays Metallica covers and such (as well as original material too). I’m kind of betting that the Jaxx show will start early enough on a Sunday that I can make both with plenty of time to spare. Since there’s another show at the 9:30 Club earlier in the evening, the doors for the Apocalyptica show open at 10pm and there’s a local opener too. I’ve been given a photo pass by the band so I will be up in the photo pit (aka sitting in the very front between the stage and the audience) which sounds like a great way to uh, “wind down” in the home stretch of my Metal Marathon. By the way I’ve got a contest running (until March 6th) that’s giving away a free pair of tickets to this Apocalyptica show, you can enter here if you’d like.

In all, the Metal Marathon will be 11 different metal shows at 10 different venues over 9 straight days. My car has been acting a bit funky of late so hopefully it will hold up through all this and I can get to all the shows, particularly in Richmond and Baltimore. If you are going to any of those and wanna carpool let me know, I don’t mind throwing down for gas/beer. The tickets and entry fees for all these shows come to $144! Christ, you’d think I actually had the money to spend. You can donate to my metal crusade here via PayPal if ya feel so inclined. I’m not sure how I’ll end up updating the site while this is all going on, I’ll be busy and without a lot of free time but I’d like to get at least a few pictures up as I go along to keep people updated. Hopefully I’ll have a big wrap up post chronicling my adventure and possibly a couple full concert reviews from stops along the way too. March doesn’t slow down a whole lot for me though as I plan on seeing Torche, Agalloch, St. Vitus and Wormrot later in the month too. Of course there’s more info on all the concerts in this post listed on the Calendar Of Upcoming Metal Concerts. Wish me luck and feel free to buy me a beer if you see me at any of these shows as I won’t really have drinking money during all this, haha. Fuck yeah heavy metal!

March 3, 2011
Categories: Metal Marathon, Washington DC / Maryland / Virginia Metal Scene . Tags:Metal Marathon . Author: Metal Chris

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