Friday, April 23, 2010

Terror at the Alamo!


Date: April 23, 2010
Venue:
The Alamo, Ft. Worth TX
Bands:
Live By The Sword, Preatcher, Amoricide, Insinnerator

PRE-SHOW
[Spoiler alert] BEST SHOW EVER! Oh my goodness, the exhileration, the pure inebriation that comes from a crowd of people appreciate your art, even if it is a relatively small audience of just about thirty or so! I mean yeah, we'd had great applause and adoration before, but never with this much ardor, and from such a large percentage of the overall assemblage.
[/Spoiler] Wooh, ok. This was our first outing to the Dallas/Ft Worth area, so of course the initial challenge came in getting our bearings and finding the place.

Initially, we drove right past the venue, thinking our GPS's had to be fucking with us; all we saw were some shabby-looking buildings and what looked like an abandoned motel. Nothing resembling a music venue, no sign that said "The Alamo" on it. We drove a little further, found nothing approximating the venue, and ended up calling Pete from AltarEvil, the guy who invited us to this shindig. We met up with him, and he took us back to that derelict motel thing. The deal with that was it was indeed once a motel, but, now out of business, serves as kind of an impromptu strip mall. What were once rooms now were small businesses, a pretty clever idea in my opinion. The furthest "room" on the end served as The Alamo.

It was surprisingly spacious inside; either this room was once a "honeymooner" special, or it was the illusion of space caused by the lack of bed and other comfort furniture. The decently-sized stage, with the sound booth right next to it, took up maybe a quarter of the overall room, still plenty of space for a crowd and some booths set up along the side wall. In what was a very unique twist, a white screen was set up on the wall behind the stage, with a projector on the opposite wall, so bands could have moving images playing during their sets if they so chose.

Of course, before we could even think about asking if they had a copy of "Cannibal: The Musical" to project during our performance, we first had to accomplish the feat of getting our gear inside. With virtually no crowd yet, the stage right by the door, and close parking, this should have been a cakewalk. Unfortunately, a gaggle of young children were playing tag in the parking lot, paying little heed whatsoever to any cars trying to get through, while the mother focused her attention on her laptop, in her car. JT and Tarzan had themselves a time trying to back their vehicles into the closest possible spaces without accidentally glancing one of the frolicky little gremlins.

LIVE BY THE SWORD
After loading our stuff in and picking a spot by the stage to leave it, we took up positions (JT and Tony in the audience, Tarzan and I in one of the booths to start warming up) to watch Live By The Sword. What an awesome band to kick off the evening! Hard to put a finger on their exact style, it was like melodic blackened crust punk, if that makes any sense. Two guitarists, playing layered, catchy riffs and some eye-popping, well-thought-out solos, and a drummer whose main influence seems to be Mick Harris. The dude was a madman on the drums, chaotic blast beats and sporadic fills that somehow held it all together. Their lack of bassist was not even that big a deal, until they covered "The Trooper," which sounded hollow without the low end. All that aside, this band was truly a spectacle in action.

In fact, they proved to be too much of a spectacle. I saw a familiar look in Tony's eyes, and when I talked to him I found that he was indeed having a moment of massive insecurity. He felt those two guitarists, technicality-wise, could wipe the floor with him and JT. "How dare we try to follow this act, with our self-taught-isms and cheap equipment, what would the audience think?" I told Tony to relax. "These people all know who we are, they're not going to be surprised by our low-tech speed metal. They aren't here to see Hexlust: expert virtuosos giving a master class of high-end wankery; they're here to see Hexlust: fun-loving metalheads playing some catchy tunes way too damn fast!" Tony relaxed, and I did not hear about or see evidence of any insecurity for the rest of the night.

PREATCHER
In startling contrast to Live By The Sword's lack of low-end, Preatcher's bass was actually too loud in the mix! Granted this gave us all an appreciation for a bassist's role in a thrash band, but there were some slamming riffs and solos coming from this trio that were unfortunately not as audible as I would have liked them to be. No matter, they still had stage presence to spare and pulled out a kickin' version of Megadeth's "Skull Beneath the Skin." Also amusing, though rather uncomfortable with my parents attending this show, was the band's use of the projector to show a hentai film during their set. Thankfully, it was pretty straightforward human sex; I'm not sure how I would go about looking my parents in the eyes with tentacle rape going on within a close proximity.

HEXLUST
We were supposed to headline. Everyone who talked to us was looking forward to us headlining. Hell, we were looking forward to headlining, it had been a good while since we had received such coveted billing! Unfortunately, the Dallas/Ft Worth area was an even farther drive from home than San Antonio, a fact made all the more foreboding by news of a vicious storm headed our way. Nobody liked the idea of a late-night three-and-a-half-hour drive through windshield-obscuring rain on slippery roads, so we opted to take the middle slot and be on the road by midnight.

What a show. Oh my god, what a show! As I said earlier, inarguably the best show we have played up to this point, all thanks to the audience. Every member of the crowd was cheering our name after every song. That's right, not just at the end of the set, but between tunes! What a rush! The best part was they were well-behaved! See, my drum kit took up nearly the whole stage with just enough room left for amps, putting the guys on the floor with the audience not three feet away. This gathering of metalheads, while headbanging and moshing and thrashing like maniacs, exercised fantastic control, never coming too close to Hexlust's front line.

What made this even more impressive was the overall lack of crowd control. In Killeen, if you put on a free metal show, BYOB, with no bouncers, there's a good chance people are gonna get hurt and that venue's getting destroyed. My mom, talking about the Alamo crowd, put it best: "They weren't here to get wasted, act a fool in public or to try to get laid; nobody needed a baby-sitter because everyone in attendance was there for the music." I hadn't heard my mom say anything like that about an audience since our days of playing punk shows with Shfux. What we had here was a pure, honest-to-goodness metal show, and we it owe it all to everyone in attendance.

Guess I should talk a little about us now, haha. Thanks to the high supplied by the audience response, I hardly kept track of any minor mistakes that were made. Tarzan's arm started cramping again, a leftover concern from our last show the week before that was now starting to worry me. Thanks to a monitor positioned right behind me, I was able to clearly hear Tony's vocals for the first time ever. He was in fine form tonight, every lyric full of charisma and energy. He overdid his opening scream to "Tombs," however, resulting in a headrush for him and almost no lyrics at all during the song's two main verses. Thankfully, this did not affect his lead work. Feeding off the audience energy, he and JT turned out some of the most frenzied, scale-blazing, whammy-abusing solos I've heard from them in a while.

Oh, and the audience went apeshit for "Agent Orange," once they recognized it (we decided to be tricky bastards and not reveal the title). Ladies and gentlemen, we have ourselves another crowd-pleasing cover!

POST-SHOW
It started sprinkling as we were packing the gear back into our vehicles, a sure sign that we needed to get a move on. We said goodbye to Pete and all the new friends we'd made, including the members of Amoricide (AltarEvil's last-minute replacement in the wake of their sudden dissoution) and Insinnerator, whose performances we unfortunately did not get to enjoy, and set off for home. We were maybe an hour into our journey when the rain hit.

For the most part it was actually not so bad, we could at least still see the road. We still had ourselves some adventures though. Passing an eighteen-wheeler that was going this much too slow was scary as hell, those many tires were splashing heavy water onto our windshields whether we were behind it or beside it. I totally screamed. Then we had to deal with Central Texas Expressway. There was construction being done around that time, allowing the storm to turn the narrow road into an obstacle course of traffic barrels, barricades, and splintery kindling that had once been detour signs. Yeah, I was wide awake when I got home.


PHOTOS

Warming up

Scoping out the stage (note the projector screen)

YEAAAAAAAH!

Awesome audience

Befuddled audience, before they recognized "Agent Orange"

Woooooooh!

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Back to the Vault!

Flyer by Tarzan!

Date: April 17, 2010
Venue:
Music Vault, Harker Heights TX
Playing With:
Awake At Dawn, Faint The Fiction, Dear Cyanide (Dead By November scheduled, didn't play)

PRE-SHOW
By the time we finally made it to the Music Vault (we had to stop midway and drive back to my house for Tarzan's pedals) we were surprised to find ourselves loading with a few of the other bands playing his evening. Normally when we take the time to get there extra-early we are the only ones there. No complaints from our end, however. Since there were only three other groups this evening, there was plenty of space for all of us to set up our gear in the Vault's spacious backstage area while Awake at Dawn loaded right onto the stage.

AWAKE AT DAWN
First performance of the evening came from Awake at Dawn, who sounded like Days of the New on a Cynic trip; dark, moody post-grunge with a variety of guitar effects used and even a synthesizer, set up right in front of the lead vocalist. It was a rather low-key way to start the evening, especially for an audience ready for something heavier, so there were only one or two people standing directly in front of the stage. I certainly dug them, the musicianship was advanced yet tasteful, and the tunes were certainly catchy. Best part in my opinion was when the aforementioned synth was brought in to double a lead guitar line, I really get a kick out of trippy stuff like that.

HEXLUST
Our first time playing at the Vault since that last-minute show in November, and we were excited to show people how much we'd improved in the months past, and to gauge their reaction to the new addition to our set list. We'd recently been contacted to play a show in the Ft Worth area, a "pure thrash" gig for which we'll be the headliner, so we decided we'd learn "Agent Orange" by Sodom for the occasion. Tonight would the be test drive for our new cover.

A decent size audience of family, friends, and local support had built up by the time we hit the stage, and a roar of cheers went up as we went into the intro song. The positive, responsive crowd helped Tony feel more confident, resulting in better playing from our anxiety-ridden vocalist and looser, funnier banter between songs. "Toxic," "Hellhammer," and "Baphomet" went off without a hitch, and we had the room singing along to "Agent Orange" by the second chorus. I'm really looking forward to playing that song more in the future! It's less technical and less structurally weird than "Open Casket," so I'm able to relax and basically let the song play itself, a huge relief when we're past the halfway point in our set list. Of course we closed the show with "Tombs," during which JT dropped his pick in the midst of his long solo (oh, did we tease him about that), and left the stage feeling pretty damn good about ourselves. Another successful set in what is shaping up to be a fantastic year for Hexlust!

FAINT THE FICTION
I came back from loading gear in time to catch the last half of Faint the Fiction's set. Not my cup of tea musically. They employ that "alternative metal" sound from the early-to-mid 2000s like Nonpoint and Shadows Fall (the singer even had dreadlocks), but they had talent and energy to spare, and I admired their use of stomp-box lights. The audience certainly dug it, this was not a mosh-happy crowd but folks were nodding their heads and cheering after every tune. I admit I smiled and sang along when they pulled out an energetic cover of Killswitch Engage's "End of Heartache," good memories of senior year come back with that song, and I think they followed that up with a Salt n Pepa cover, although for the life of me I couldn't place the actual tune.

DEAR CYANIDE
This was not Dear Cyanide's night. For one thing, they were very tired. Talking to Mike (lead vocalist) before the show, we found out that the band had just hours ago got back into town from a show they played the night before, some festival out in the middle of nowhere at which they didn't even take the stage til like four in the morning. I'm sorry, may I'm the world's youngest old man, destined to have my band blacklisted for wussing out of a performance, but anytime after two-thirty is bedtime, cousin. Especially if we have a show the next evening.

Another thing pointing to a bad night for DC was the lack of a devoted audience, which in retrospect may have been a blessing considering what was about to go down. Dear Cyanide are one of the most popular bands in the scene right now, helped by the fact that they are mostly or all military (their lineup changes often), and while those in attendance were receptive, this was not the usual crowd of enthusiasts. If you look at their live pictures on their profile or find one of their videos on YouTube, you see a stage deluged with sweaty, shirtless soldiers ready to mosh it up. What they had on this oddly low-key Saturday evening were mostly close friends and family of the bands, and even a few Boozefighters thanks to Remo, former drummer of now-defunt Remo Gotzi, being in DC. (NOTE: Pogi, former Gotzi guitarist, was also in the band but not present this evening) However, even that audience was dwindling by the time the band took the stage at close to one a.m.

After an agonizingly long soundcheck (O-Zone kept running into problems with his bass rig, I think Lucky Sevyn was having amp problems as well), DC launched into their set, and while they played as competently as any well-practiced band, it was obvious they all had other places they would rather be, all involving a bed. After a few songs, the sound problems started up again, leading to confusion as to what to perform next and a few members looking like they were ready to throw down their instruments and walk the hell out. Somehow a cover of Korn's "Blind" got started, and that got a warm reception, then they went into something sounding like a Primus cover with a long intro. They never made it past that intro, though, it sort of meandered and petered out and they just stopped playing. They didn't attempt another song. That was it, they were officially spent.

POST-SHOW/CLOSING THOUGHTS
I felt bad for DC but knew that this was just an off-night for them. Neither their stability nor their reputation were damaged, I was sure that next time they played it would be business as usual, ruling the night with the audience in the palm of their hand. We in Hexlust got paid and got on our merry way, with me thinking about off-nights and when ours might be. Would it be the kind that only the band can sense, with the musicians downtrodden but the audience convinced it was the greatest show ever? Or would it be a really obvious hiccup, where the band can look forward to a) polite avoidance, b) excuses ("that sound guy clearly did not know how to work a monitor!") or c) brutal honesty from the audience ("Yeah, y'all sucked tonight. The hell, bro?") Hopefully next week won't be an off-night, we're all looking forward to bringing the hexcellence to Ft Worth!


PHOTOS

BUDDIES!

Backstage

Onstage

Ripping solo

JT's "Tombs" solo