The night of March 10th saw the return of the glorious technical wizards Atheist to Baltimore on the Jupiter World Tour. Unfortunately, to get to them involved shoveling out $25 and sitting through seven hit-or-miss opening acts.
Despite arriving 2 hours late, we managed to catch seven of the eight acts. The first we saw was some shit band fronted by a shirtless man with a strange lower-abdominal deformity / hip-indentations. The played generic metal with harsh vocals, emphasis on harsh as they sounded fucking awful and deafening -- too fucking high in the mix and the only place we were able to stand was right by the speaker vomiting out his silly RAWR RAWR RAWR at such a high volume it drowned out everything else save for the incessant CLICK CLICK CLICK of the bass drum YAWN. I guess it’s to the band’s benefit that I never found out their name.
Kudos to Sonar for doing the alternating stage thing (having one band set-up on one stage while another band played on the other). After Generic Metal Band #666 played their uninteresting set, we switched to the main room to see Fallen Martyr. I was taken by pleasant surprise when they started playing marauding black metal riffs! Then the vocalist hopped up on stage cloaked in a hood. He quickly disrobed down to a suit and it became instantly clear we were in for a corny ride from hell… and that we were. If it weren’t for the pointless synth/sample intros and interludes, and the vocalist’s banshee-croon and business attire, I could have taken them seriously. But alas, the gothic whiney-ness drowned what was otherwise decent black metal in a sea of yawns and disinterested stares.
Next up were Deranged Theory (I know, shitty name). Luckily, they kicked ass. The frontman was dressed in nothing but a Viking kilt and passed around a sexy horned helmet for the audience to indulge in. They played some death/thrash or whatever-the-fuck, and it was decent. All the lyrics were nerd-driven and about PC videogames I’ve never played (Starcraft and Castlevania were mentioned). Viking-kilt-man even brought out a sword for a stage prop which he later used to knight me and Adam as we knelt before him on a speaker. He was even cool enough to mosh with us during his own set! Regardless, Deranged Theory’s set came off as more stage-presence than anything, but it was still fun and got the concert-goers amped up for some brutal moshing that was yet to come.
After that was some stupid metalcore band with a synth – Last Chance to Reason I think – that did nothing interesting besides fuck around with some angular riffs here and there, and throw in a neat, but brief, bass solo at the end of their set. Again, major snorefest.
AND THEN MOTHERFUCKING REVOCATION TOOK THE MAIN STAGE. And thankfully so. At the Veil of Maya concert a while back, they were the only band there that didn’t suck deathcore ass, and holy shit do they still impress me. For those of you who don’t know, Revocation is a tech death/thrash band that Relapse has really been pushing recently. They’re worth seeing live, because they quite simply kill. Shred. Annihilate. REVOKE. The moshpit was off the hizzle for shizzle my nizzle, and they tore utter ass (I’m still in immense pain). This was almost worth the 25 bucks alone. Almost….
A Life Once Lost then followed up Revocation. They played more generic metal, but it wasn't as bad as RAWR RAWR RAWR BLAST BLAST BLAST from earlier on. And there was one stinky-ass motherfucker in a grey shirt that was ridiculously psyched to see them. We were tempted to flee, and in fact did about half-way through their set because we had better things to do like drink water and fart in a corner.
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All this fucking around was starting to get old, but then it dawned on us – ATHEIST WAS UP FUCKING NEXT. FUCK YEAH. After literally hours of wayward moshing for the sake of killing time, we were finally about to witness the technical wizardry in person! Three grizzly-looking metal motherfuckers marched out, axes in hand, accompanied by a bald gnome-drummer and what looked like a cracked-out impersonator of Bret Michaels (according to Bronwyn). Keep in mind, I had no idea what the faces looked like behind the axes, so I was a wee-bit confused by their appearance (not really).
Fortunately, they tore ass and played a medley of songs spanning their illustrious career. It was kind of a nuisance to hear he frontman Kelly Shaefer go on and on about smoking pot in between songs, wasting precious time that could’ve been spent moshing to excellent tech death, or perhaps smoking us up. But whatever; they kicked ass, and the solos were absolutely incredible to watch played just three feet away from where we were standing! I guess the guitarist closest to me at one point broke a string, because he disappeared briefly, remerging with a new battle axe that, ironically enough, had a bad plug-in, so he kept losing sound during the last song (but kept on fucking shredding) while the audience members desperately tried holding the plug in place, but to barely any avail. Regardless, they were fantastic live – better than on their albums – though according to Adam, the drummer fucked up a Latin-rhythm part in one of the songs that he nearly cried about.
In the end, it was well worth it to see the masters themselves grace the stage. It was even cooler to get my Revocation shirt autographed by the frontman while Adam got sigs from Shaefer, the drummer from Atheist, and the dude from Revocation all over his onesie (yes, his fucking onesie – the most metal pajamas ever).
Hail Satan.
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