Unlike the previous two nights, I showed up a bit later, around 7:30. This is because I knew that two scheduled bands, Chaoswave and The Autumn Offering wouldn’t be playing. However, I had no idea if and how the schedule would be changing, or if any bands would be added, because not even the cancellations were mentioned officially (The Autumn Offering info was posted by a user on the Powerfest forum, and the Chaoswave rumor came solely through word of mouth the night before). I understand that the organizers are surely busy, but it takes less than 10 minutes to post a note on a forum or update a website with new information. But none of that was done, even though they must have known 48 hours in advance. I hate to say it, especially since the guys run a generally well-organized festival, but that’s a seriously Koshick-like move, and that lack of communication should never happen in 2008.

Again, just the walk from the car gave hints as to what kind of night it would be. It was a much older crowd, both in age and school. And also much more mainstream. Black Label Society and Misfits t-shirts were popular ways to express support of the underground. After Darkane’s set, I decided that I would stay up front to have a good spot for Testament, but when Pantera’s ‘Walk’ started playing over the PA and this group of 10 people around me raised their cups and started singing every single word as if it was the awesomest thing ever, oh god, I had to make a beeline out of there. I’m sure that alcohol sales were more lucrative on this night than the night before!

Twelfth Gate:
I arrived in time to hear their last two songs, and didn’t hear a single hook anywhere in either one of them. I guess I just don’t understand the point of making music without hooks.

Suidakra:
They were easily my most anticipated non-Iced Earth band of the two nights, and they lived up to that expectation. Sound was a bit dodgy, particularly in the beginning, but eventually their melodies came through, even if the clean harmony vocals never quite caught up. This band could have been on the Paganfest, but one thing that separates them from those bands is that they have a more genuine extreme-metal background, so their music has an extra intensity to it. And when that intensity is combined with sing-along melodies, it’s just awesome. Also, they have no special outfits; by their look they could have been an old-school thrash band. They did a bold move of playing an instrumental for their third song, but it was so hooky that it worked out great. An equally bold move was to walk offstage in preparation for an encore, even though they were two bands away from headliner status. Luckily for them, someone must have pushed them right back out, because no one in the audience had any idea that we were supposed to call for them! Question: did they play their song “Darkane Times” specially for the band who would be following them?

In contrast to the old folks, there were these two high-school aged couples going absolutely nuts for Suidakra, so after their set, I asked them, “so, I guess you guys really like that band?” “No we’ve never heard them before we just came here and this is awesome!!” The incongruous jumping up-and-down and ill-advised moshing continued through Darkane’s set until one of the girls tried crowd surfing one too many times, which quickly brought an end to their night. Too bad, they were a nice contrast to crotchety Testament fans yelling “get off the stage” to Darkane. Like, really, is Darkane so far away in style from Testament that they’re that intolerable, or is Testament truly the only music that they listen to? I can only imagine what they would have thought if they were there the night before!

Darkane:
I’m not too big of a fan, but I have their first album, so it was very nice of them to include the two “hits” from it, “Convicted” and “July 1999”. The vocalist even did a good job of changing up his growl for those songs to match the style of the original guy. Beyond that, the songs near the end of the set worked out better for me than the earlier ones, partly because I think their sound got a bit better. Sonically they can be a bit of a mess on the fast stuff, so I imagine it helps to know their songs. But by presence, they were easily the biggest non-headliners of the weekend. They’re a strolling band, meaning that all four guys up front constantly roam all around the stage, changing positions, which is actually fairly rare, but a simple way to make a performance seem more active. It also helps that they’re Swedish, and thus, tall. Definitely a much better and more memorable performance than what I remember from seeing them at the Milwaukee Metalfest years ago.

Testament:
I’m only a mild fan, but if I was as big a fan of them as I am of Iced Earth, then I’m sure this performance would have equaled Iced Earth’s for me. As it was, I just hung way back and enjoyed it in the sweat-free zone. It was difficult to gauge since I was in a different location both nights, but the crowd sizes seemed pretty similar, and the only way to move up would be to bash my way through. Testament’s sound was amazingly good, their lights far surpassed anything Iced Earth had, and their presence was excellent. I had just listened to ‘Live At The Fillmore’ before heading out to the venue, so it turned out that I recognized most of the songs that they played. Best for me were the two I knew the best, “Low” and “Trail of Tears”. Chuck Billy introduced the latter with a plea for human rights and environmental awareness, for which he received an enormous collective “meh” from the crowd of metalheads. Some of the other singers in the fest could really take a lesson from him in how to make the most out of a limited vocal range, because he really sounded good (it helped to have a very active soundman, who would jack up the reverb in time with his growls). Oh, and they could take a lesson from him in stage presence too. Actually all the guys in the band were quite fun to watch, although it seemed like Skolnick was going a bit overboard on the solos (or maybe I’m just not used to listening to music where guitar solos are such a focus?) On the other hand, one of my favorite parts was when the whole band was doing some improvisational jamming during the sing-along call-and-response of “Alone In The Dark”. It would have been cool to hear more of that. All in all, it was an impressive, headlining performance. And I now see that when the place is packed, including the balcony, it can be a pretty fun place for even “big” bands to play.

Overall, it was a great three nights of metal. Though for me, “nights” is a bit of a stretch, because the success of each night (excluding Paganfest) was heavily dependent on the headliners. And I think that I even got a lot more out of the undercard than many people there, who seemed to come *solely* to see the headliners. So, quite a different approach than last year, and a vastly different result in terms of attendance. Hopefully that also translated into a vastly different result for CRJ. I have a hard time imagining that they’d get as lucky with headliners next year, but if they do, it really calls into question the role of the undercard…I just can’t imagine that the attendance would have been much different if Iced Earth and Testament had been the only bands playing the last two nights. But maybe the imbalance this year was just an anomaly.

The only organizational issues were the above-mentioned lack of communication, and the line for the (men’s!) bathroom. It never really affected me, but it’s unbelievable that a venue with the Pearl Room’s capacity has only one smallish bathroom available. It’s like when they built it, they never expected they’d actually get a crowd to fill the place. The security seemed reasonable, succeeding at keeping crowd surfing to an absolute minimum, while still allowing freedom in the mosh pits. Occasionally they would take a shockingly active role in the pit, but hey, some of those guys probably deserve to be flung down to the ground anyhow.

So hopefully this was good enough for the guys to keep it going, because I look forward to next year!

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 at 9:46 am and is filed under concert. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.