Hall of Hexcellence: 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