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Maryland Deathfest X Day 1: Thursday

Back to the MDF menu page here.

When I arrived at MDF on the sold out first day, Thursday, the band that was playing was Rorschach. They’re an old school hardcore band from New Jersey that broke up in 1993 and didn’t reform until 2009. I didn’t get close enough to get any decent photos but I did shoot this video of them covering King Crimson’s 21st Century Schizoid Man. They were good but I didn’t really get into the show until the next band.

The next band to play was Maryland’s own death metal kings Dying Fetus. Their set wasn’t super long but they did play two songs from their upcoming new album, Reign Supreme. The band recently released a music video for the song From Womb To Waste featuring live footage shot at Maryland Deathfest that you can see here. I happened to shoot video of the same song, posted below, so think of it as a sort of preview for the official video. The song is good but really picks up at about 2:42 into the video when they launch into one of their famous break downs. I’ve seen Dying Fetus several times and while this set was a bit short it was still enough to get me into the whole MDF weekend mode.

The next band to play was Absu, a black metal band from Texas and one of the staples of American black metal (or USBM for short). Their drummer, Proscriptor, is the main man of the band and it always cracks me up a bit how he constantly uses his “metal” voice on stage, even when addressing the audience between songs. Regardless, they put on a good show but were really just a small tease of the epic black metal that would be coming up later in the weekend. I shot a video of them playing Earth Ripper, the first song off their 2011 album Abzu.

Next was the New Orleans based sludge metal band Eyehategod. The crowd had been turning over a lot as I stood on the rail for band after band, and when Eyehategod was coming on the black metal heads made way for the crusties who got really rowdy for this performance. It was fun to be in the middle of but hard to shoot much so I didn’t get a lot of shots off. The show was good but I don’t think they played anything special really. I shot the first two videos below but the next two are from Total Fucking Mayhem.

The next band to play was Agalloch, from the Pacific Northwest, as they put it, though I think they’re from Portland more specifically. I thought their performance was the best of the night, and their set list was mostly songs from their first two albums, which was great if you ask me. The only real problem I had with their set was that John Haughm’s clean vocals were just off. Regardless, they played one of my favorite songs of theirs, Hallways Of Enchanted Ebony, and they also played You Were but a Ghost in My Arms for the first time ever live, even though it is from their second album, Mantle, that was released in 2002. I’ve got video of both of those songs below, so check em out. They certainly weren’t the heaviest band playing MDF but they got people moshing anyways.

The final band of the night was the headlining act, Autopsy, a death metal band from the Bay Area. They had their reunion show at Maryland Deathfest two years prior, but since that show they aren’t a touring band and only play one off gigs here and there. I’m sure there were people who came out Thursday just to get to see them. Unfortunately there were technical difficulties that led to them starting their set 45 minutes late. They ended up getting cut off by the venue before their set was done, which was pretty shitty. The delay was pretty unprofessional, the MDF guys should have any and all back up gear ready for a headlining act so this lengthy of a delay doesn’t ever happen. However, they wouldn’t be the only headlining act to be delayed over the weekend and it was probably my one big complaint with the fest this year. Anyways, check out the four videos I shot of them below, as well as one more by Total Fucking Mayhem.

Continue to day 2: Friday here.
Back to the MDF menu page here.

June 19, 2012
Categories: Black Metal, Concert Reviews, Dark Metal, Death Metal, Hardcore Metal, Maryland Deathfest, Sludge Metal, Sonar . Tags: Absu, Agalloch, Autopsy, Concert, Dying Fetus, Eyehategod, Festival, Heavy Metal, Maryland Death Fest, Maryland Death Fest X, Maryland Deathfest, Maryland Deathfest X, MDF, MDF X, MDFX, Metal, Music, Rorschach, Sonar . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: Leave a comment

Review of Agalloch at Sonar

So Monday the 21st of March 2011 saw the Portland based dark metal band Agalloch come to Sonar in Baltimore. They put out an album late last year, Marrow Of The Spirit, that as per their usual won a lot of critical accolades and was put on many best of 2010 album lists. I did like it a lot though I have to say I prefer some of their older material more. Still, it does have some really good songs on it and is another quality album in their back catalog. Agalloch has quite a devoted following and their fans tend to know every song, not just a few ‘hits’ or whatever. This show saw a lot of people in the local metal community come out. It’s always nice to see a strong turn out for underground metal bands. The smaller Talking Head Club stage was used for this concert though it was rather cramped in the room by the time Agalloch hit the stage and they probably could have put this show on the larger main stage.

When I first got to the show some band named Vindensång was playing. They were awful but I missed all but the last few songs of their set so it wasn’t that bad. The next band was Worm Ouroboros, a three piece with Agalloch drummer, Aesop Dekker, and two women playing guitar and bass who also both sing. Aesop has another non-Agalloch side project, named Ludicra, that is pretty good and since I hadn’t heard anything by Worm Ouroboros going into this show I was hoping for something that might be on par with that. Unfortunately, and contrary to what just about everyone else I spoke with about them thought, they were awful. Their sound was very slow, atmospheric and it sorta seemed like a lullaby trying to put me to sleep. That would be OK perhaps if it was the intro song to their set or something, but the music never picked up. The women’s voices were singing very softly and they didn’t seem very in tune with each other at any point where they were both singing simultaneously. There were a couple of times where it seemed the music was starting to pick up, but it was a trick, just more soft and slow music would follow. I realize headliner Agalloch isn’t the most brutal band in the world and their opening acts aren’t going to cover Napalm Death, but this was still a fucking metal concert! When Worm Ouroboros was playing I couldn’t help feeling that I was watching a band on the second stage at the Lilith Fair. I didn’t bother shooting video of them because I didn’t want that on my YouTube page so if you want to check them out you’ll have to do that somewhere else. When they finally finished (and took their Christmas lights with them) much to my bewilderment the audience gave them a great response. Am I some elitist narrow minded prick who only listens to metal, the more extreme the better? Hell no, I listen to a lot more than metal, of various levels of speed and all sorts of moods. This was just bad and made me wonder what everyone else saw in them. Perhaps I should have been drinking more?

I felt like I was waking up out of a coma before Agalloch’s set, so I really hoped they were going to keep it interesting. As if in an effort to wake everyone up, after the taped intro they opened the set with Into The Painted Grey which starts off with one of their faster riffs. They went right into Falling Snow and then played one of their new songs, The Watcher’s Monolith, which just happens to be my favorite on the new album. By this point I was pretty into the show with any thoughts of poor opening acts far from my mind. Agalloch’s very dramatic atmospherics and epic, well polished riffs have always been present in their sound. It’s the details that seem to change the most from album to album. More acoustic guitars used on one, female back up singing on another. They are very good at writing songs that go through a lot of changes in tempo but always seem to feel like they flow perfectly from the highs to the lows and back again. This was even more apparent live where the faster parts had more energy and the grand build ups to those great riffs just seemed more powerful. Their set list was a good mix of tunes spanning their career, three songs from Marrow Of The Spirit, three from Ashes Against The Grain and a song each from their older full lengths and they even played what vocalist John Haughm identified as the fourth song they had ever written, Of Stone, Wind And Pillor. I was hoping they would play my favorite song of theirs, Hallways Of Enchanted Ebony but they didn’t. People were calling out for the band to perform that song’s album, Pale Folklore, in its entirety as an encore but they only played two songs (I have video of the entire encore posted below). The band didn’t seem too cramped on the small stage, at least not from where I was. They used the fog machine a lot and the lighting was pretty low the entire set, and they had members of Worm Ouroboros going around the crowd telling people to stop using the flash on their cameras (that was annoying) but whatever, the songs are good enough that they made this show excellent regardless. I, and the rest of the audience, probably could have stood there and listened to them play their entire back catalog if the band had wanted to. After the set guitarist Don Anderson got on the mic and asked who had stolen one of their three cauldrons from the stage. I have no idea who did, but that’s kinda metal that it had to be asked. Agalloch does not tour a lot out here on the east coast so I’m glad I got the chance to see them as they came through the area. This is a band highly recommended by critics and my opinion is the same, see them live if you have the chance, just get there late to miss the openers. Now, check out my videos of Agalloch at this concert below and feel free to look at the rest of the pics I shot of them that night on my Flickr page here.