Date: Thursday, July 10, 2008
Venue: Rock Bottom Tattoo Bar, San Antonio, TX
Bands: Abbatoir, Hexlust, Ayasoltec, Plague, Hod, Deceased
PRE-SHOW
Our first San Antonio show! I remember this day quite vividly. I was at JT’s house at like 9:30, we loaded into Tony’s family van, which we had dubbed the HexBus, and we were on the road by about 11. Phil was with us that day, taking pictures (which I have yet to see by the way) and was crammed into the back-most seat with some of the amps. Keith and I were in the middle seats playing Donkey Kong (the HexBus had a SuperNES hookup!) and JT and Tony up front. JT’s mom followed in his car, carrying some of our other amps and guitars. Also headed to our destination, though not traveling with us, were my dad and brother.
First thing we did was find JT’s sister’s apartment and unload our shit there. Then we piled into his car (Tony driving) and set out to find the club at which we were playing. This was before Tony got his Garmin, so we were going by directions printed off the Internet. Confused fun ensued. See, those directions were screwed up in some way, I think they were backwards; we would read “get on highway at this intersection” and not be able to find it. Tensions rose and tempers flared, but finally we found the place and everything was hunky-dory again. We headed back to the apartment to unwind before the show. (Note: this is when Keith, having acquired a pack of donuts from a gas station, uttered his immortal line “I got donuts, donuts I got!”)
First impressions of the Rock Bottom Tattoo Bar were reflected in its surroundings. Located in a part of San Antonio literally right by the Riverwalk, it was located across the street from some buildings which were either falling apart or abandoned in the middle of construction. Either way they were empty, windows were broken, and there was graffiti on the walls. This was starting to feel like when we played at Headhunters less than a month before, when we were on the lookout for crazy people to come and rob us.
ABBATOIR
The show itself was ok. Abbatoir played first, and were different considering they didn’t have a bass player. Not by principle, theirs was somehow elsewhere at the time of the event. Some cool leads, rather technical. The best part about the band honestly was the drummer, a big dude who had some serious skills on the kit (I heard him warming up to the last part of Opeth’s “Deliverance” before the show) along with some rotary toms.
HEXLUST
We played second this evening. My dad took footage of this momentous occasion, our first San Antonio show, and it shows us being very nervous. Not a whole lotta stage presence at all. We were just standing there, good lord. This was not helped by the fact that I looked like a total dork with my glasses, thanks to an eye infection I’d been battling which made contacts a no-no. The set list this evening was our classic Intro-Troops-Toxic-Hellhammer-Tombs-Sodomy lineup.
We came off the stage relieved just to have made it through ok. We were in a club with no actual friends and were very grateful by the one line of, like, seven people (including my dad and brother) who watched us, and were very intimidated by this group of black-clad mountain men who were there to play the show. These men turned out to be the band Hod, and showered us with compliments. We felt very cool thanks to that and Deceased, according to Tony, commenting that we were “very fast."
PLAGUE
I had never heard of Plague before this, have not heard of them afterword, and they weren’t particularly awesome, very Hatebreed/Lamb-of-God-ish. The lead singer, another LMS-afflicted “well-read” metalcore frontman, tried multiple times to incite the crowd into cheers with bullshit like “How ya fuckin' doin' San Antonio? I can’t fuckin' hear ya!” and really dumb pothead jokes.
AYASOLTEC, HOD, AND DECEASED
I thought Ayasoltec were particularly awesome, short on the vocals and long on the guitar solos. Too bad I haven’t seen this band since. Hod then took the stage and were AWESOME, they had SWEET equipment and STAGE PRESENCE and a CROWD, everything we wanted that evening. We had already taken a liking to these dudes thanks to their friendliness, now we found ourselves looking at our musical big brothers. By the time Deceased took the stage, Tony and I had tired of the club and the music and took a walk around the neighborhood, the gear safely stowed in the Hexbus. We found that, though the club itself was surrounded by dilapidation and decay, just a block away was a happenin’ VFW center. Which was, of course, on the Riverwalk.
We came back into the club just in time to catch Deceased going into a happenin’ version of Venom’s “Black Metal.” At this point in time, I hadn’t listened to Venom in like a year, but when I heard those lyrics and recognized that riff, I ran right into the crowd and started singing along like I had just heard the song yesterday. A very excellent way to close out a fantastic first show in San Antonio.
