Date: Sunday, May 24, 2009
Venue: Rock Bottom, San Antonio TX
Playing with: Gloam, So Unloved, Butchered Saint, Midnight
PRE-SHOW
After four outings to San Antonio, a routine has set in for Hexlust. On this day, like the others, we met at JT’s house in Kempner, dumped our gear into JT’s Explorer and Tony’s HexBus, chose riding buddies, and set off. We stopped at a gas station near JT’s house to fill up on gas and snacks. It kinda varies for everyone else but to this day my pre-show snacks are almost always a green Monster and a bag of Chex Mix Bold Party Blend.
GLOAM
I think there was a band that went on before Gloam, although I don’t remember who they were or what they sounded like. Alls I know is that I had my stuff unloaded and mostly set up by the time Gloam took the stage.
I will give this band props for not giving away much about themselves with their name and delivering a style that I did not see coming. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean I liked them. The vocalist, who was on the floor in front of the stage, had a keyboard, and soundchecked with some pretty off-the-wall soundscapey stuff. I was expecting mind-blowing psychedelic transcendentalism. I got substandard metalcore fluff (complete with obnoxiously bad snare tone) with weird keyboard “interludes” between songs. That’s right, the only time the dude touched his keyboard would be when a song ended. And it wasn’t like he actually played an interlude, he would just hit a key which triggered a sample. Looking back, and at my review of this band so far, I think it really was the lack of keyboard whackaloonery that disappointed me the most.
SO UNLOVED
I did not hate this band’s music. I say that not as a comparison to Gloam, but as a reference to how I rarely am into “punk”-type music. I like Dead Kennedys; I like the bands we play with back in Bell County; I’m like punk-inspired bands like Nuclear Assault and some bands in the grindcore genre. Beyond that, I just can’t get into the stuff. This band, however, had that awesome combo of pissed-offishness and sing-alongishness, and had a damn good stage presence too. The fact that these ladies were easy on the eyes didn’t hurt matters either.
UNFORTUNATELY, there was this prick in the audience who liked to mosh. I’m normally fine with this, I just move back out of his way and keep my eye on the band. Not good enough for this cockfag, though, who decided that moshing by himself (noone else was interested) was lonely work and decided to go around pushing folks on the edge of the circle. Including me and my bandmates. Mocking us all with thumbs-down gestures and middle fingers the whole time. Tarzan was amused by the fact that he could see me popping my jaw, part of my signature “Rolf is not amused” body language. Finally, though, the guy’s buddy grabbed him and whispered in his ear. I dunno what exactly was said, but considering the little douche stopped his tomfooligans, it was a warning to stop before he gets knocked down and clubbed about the head and throat.
Anyway, good band, good tunes, nice people to chat with. We haven’t played a show with them since, but I would not complain if’n we did.
BUTCHERED SAINT
By the time Butchered Saint went on, I was spending most of my time warming up on my practice pads. I heard them though, with their high-speed blackened blast-death metal. They weren’t as catchy as Hod, so I can’t say I remember much of their stuff, but I was ok with it. Sure enough, something did annoy me though.
Not once in most of their songs was there even one guitar solo, but finally, at least midway through their set, I heard it. A solo. Not just any solo, but a whammy solo. Ask any of my bandmates what Dart’s favorite type of guitar solo is, and they’ll probably tell you with little hesitation: Whammy solos. And boy howdy was I a happy camper… for five seconds. Then it was over. Just like that. They didn’t do it again; they didn’t attempt such a feat in another song. Five seconds of one tune. I couldn’t help but feel bamboozled.
HEXLUST
Part of me believed that the only reason we went on after Butchered Saint was that Midnight wanted to use our gear. This was the last night of their tour and they had already shipped most of their crap back to Ohio. Not that we were complaining, up to this point we were always going on first or second. It was nice to have a little more time to warm up, and it was nice to have a little more audience to play to. We were not disappointed, and I’m pretty sure we didn’t disappoint, judging by the enthusiastic applause after every song.
Our set list was different this time in that we closed with “Baphomet Dawn.” There were two reasons behind this: One, it was our first time playing this song in front of our San Antonio audience and we thought they would get a major kick out of it; two, our old friend Jade had come to our practice a week before and suggested that we close with the song, which we all thought was a great idea. The desire associated with the first point (audience approval) was satisfied; we got nothing but compliments on our seven-minute doom-speed behemoth. (Basically it’s our version of Sarcofago’s “Nightmare,” haha) Unfortunately, the desire associated with the second point (great closer) was unsatisfied; being that the song is so damn long and is also a change of pace from the rest of our songs, I always felt it worked best in the middle, and the nagging feeling of anti-climax that came with using this song as a closer reaffirmed that conviction.
After the performance as we were getting off stage, some chick asked Tony if she could get a copy of our CD. Tony responded that we didn’t have one on us and that she could download it off our MySpace for free, and it totally threw this girl for a loop. She was like “You don’t have a copy of your recording with you?” as if Tony had just told her he drove all the way here without a driver’s license. I found her bafflement slightly amusing.
As I said before, we were sharing our equipment with Midnight this evening, and it was a pretty sweet feeling not having to immediately get my gear offstage and start breaking it down. I took full advantage by sitting down on the couch in Rock Bottom’s back room and opening a bottle of water. Normally I do none of these until my drums are loaded and secure. In retrospect I kinda feel like a douche, I didn’t think Midnight’s drummer had brought his own set of cymbals and would have gladly stayed behind to take mine off if I had.
MIDNIGHT
So before our set we were talking to these three dudes who claimed to be the band Midnight. They were all roughly middle-aged, very friendly, and overall were about the least likely metal band I’d seen since… us. But then the equipment gets on stage, shirts came off, black hoods were donned, and it happened. Before us stood Midnight, the band that mixes Venom power-trio metal madness with a Piledriver fashion sense. The songs were good, although when I said they were Venom-ish I wasn’t kidding. While definitely steeped in evil subject matter, it was all just a little too mid-tempo for my taste.
Of course, I wasn’t really focused on whether or not I liked the music. Admittedly, my mind was set on how great my drums sounded! Until this evening I had never been fully confident in how POW-y my snare was or how BOOM-y my toms were. Tony, Tarzan, and I just stood there admiring the audience perspective on our equipment when the guitar suddenly stopped. We thought this was just some breakdown that was part of the song for like two seconds, then the bass and drums got confused and stopped. Something had blown in Tony’s amp head. We got his stuff off stage and Midnight continued with someone else’s head while I followed Tony out to the back yard area. He was none too happy, having just recently got the head and now it was somehow fritzed. He put on a brave smiley face for the public but I knew he was screaming inside.
POST-SHOW
Our first time driving back to Killeen after a San Antonio show. It was late, we were all tired, Tony was driving, and I was his passenger. Not that I’m complaining, I was happy to be the one talking to him in his mood. Soon he was mostly cheered up, we were listening to music and laughing and generally enjoying ourselves. It was a pretty peaceful drive until we got just outside of Burnet. That’s when the fog rolled in. And not just any ordinary fog, this was pea-soup, slow-down-or-you’ll-die, fuck-you-tired-driver fog. We were doing like 35 on a highway-speed road and shoveling extra minutes onto our journey home, not to mention hoping nobody behind us decides to throw caution to the fog and plow full-speed-ahead into the HexBus.
Tony and I made it to my house in Killeen at like 3 or so in the morning. We left the HexBus in the driveway, staggered into my room, and fell gratefully into our beds. Boys will be boys though; exhaustion didn’t stop us from staying up another half hour making fart jokes.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
I must seem godawful cranky talking about this show. Every section I wrote in had something go on that rubbed me (or Tony) the wrong way. Honestly it really was not all that bad of a show, I wasn’t even particularly pissed off when we left. There were just little things I did not like going on at every turn, which thankfully did not compound and add up to major pissiness.
Tony’s amp head was eventually repaired and was back in action by our next show. An exact answer was never found for its temporary demise, but those in the know offered up a possible solution of it being plugged into a multi-plug deal, resulting in a short.
Also, I would like to take this “closing thoughts” section to say goodbye to the HexBus. Not long after this show, Tony’s parents decided to get rid of it in favor of one of them spiffy Toyota hybrid spaceships. All of us in Hexlust miss that van terribly, with its impossibly comfy seats, ample legroom, separate stereo systems, and of course, the Super Nintendo hookups. What we will not miss, however, was that 90s relic’s appetite for petroleum. That thing guzzled gas like Chris Holmes enjoyed him some Jack Daniels. R.I.P. HexBus. You’re a cube now.
