Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, metal's my religion, and yeah, it's my dope. Standing in the thunder on stage in the pouring metal rain. What a feeling, baby, the lights are exploding.

Hello, this is George and welcome to the Metalheads Podcast.

Before getting into things, I just wanted to say a few things regarding our field recordings. We tried out a new way of doing field recordings and met with less than perfect results. Based on that, I'm going to do a solo top three for you. This is top three things I learned about recording in the field at Maryland Death Fest. Number one, windscreens, windscreens, windscreens. We were each carrying a Zoom H1 portable recording.

so we could report from the show. But I neglected to bring the windscreens for them, and as a result, some of the outdoor recordings have some serious wind noise. Sorry about that. The worst of it only lasts a few minutes at a time, so if you wait it out, things tend to get better. Two, the second thing I learned was that I really should have earbuds plugged into the recorders so we could monitor how loud or quiet we sounded. Some of the recordings, Buke blows out the mic by being too loud, and in others, the people talking just

just aren't loud enough. So, lesson learned and make sure to monitor the recording as it's happening. And finally, number three, the third thing I learned was that my idea of having two recorders, one for each of us, and then syncing them into one recording at the end was a bad idea. Again, with the different recording levels, we had Buke swallowing one mic and blowing it out while I was holding mine too far away and not getting a good enough level. Combined, these recordings don't sound so great.

They beat the ones with the wind noise, but still could have been better. So next time, one mic with a windscreen and headphones to monitor. Despite all the issues, I think we still have an interesting recording for you. Check it out. I hope you enjoy it. If not, well, sit tight. We'll have a brand new regular episode for you in just a couple days. Without further ado, here is our Metalheads coverage of the 2015 Maryland Death Fest.

And I'm here with Buke. And we are in the car, on the road, I-70, headed to Baltimore for the 2015 Maryland Death Fest. How are you today, sir? I'm wonderful. Tired, but you know what? That's not even a fucking thought in my mind, buddy. The weather today is absolutely beautiful. We couldn't have asked for a better day. Tomorrow is probably going to be a little hotter, but, you know, whatever.

So, yeah, we are on the road and we are headed to Baltimore. And it's about 10.30 in the morning. First band comes on, what, around noon? Yeah, about 12.30, so yeah. So, all right, we're going to try and report to you throughout the show between bands or when we just don't give a shit about somebody.

working last night george and knowing we were going to do this little pre-recording headed down what are your initial thoughts are you what are you expecting to see here you expecting to see an organized show what are you most excited for anything you're a little nervous about what your initial impressions going in well i don't know about you but okay we're only going for saturday and sunday at the edison lot because that's where all the bad the big bands are that we want to see

And so, you know, I started seeing things on Facebook and Twitter, and I'm kind of like, wait, what? No, no, it's not yet. And I'm like, oh, right. It starts two days before we get there. So it's been a little, I've just sort of felt like I'm missing something, you know? Especially with last night with, you know, obituary and napalm death and vatnet viscar and suffocation.

Bloodbath of course yes and Valenfire so it was tempting to go last night but you know I uh I really you know it's it's the Memorial Day weekend we're leaving our wives home alone uh so I felt like Friday was a good day to you know spend some time with the fam and and uh sort of build up some brawny points for being gone the rest of the weekend anything you're uh excited for any reservations about anything

Well, the reservations are at the hotel. And excited about, well, you know what I'm excited about. Fucking Trypticon, man. To finally see Tom Warrior and Trypticon, that's going to be amazing. I think it's going to be still kind of light out when they come on, which is kind of a bummer. But, you know, whatever. We'll deal. I'm really excited. I know it's not a bandwagon.

I'm just gonna come out and say it. I'm excited for this little merchant alley that they have. Yeah, yeah, we brought a backpack along so we can load up on any goodies that we come across. There's already an amorphous Maryland Death Fest exclusive vinyl. So it'd be cool seeing like, you know, exclusive, you know, posters, vinyl shirts and stuff like that. It'd be pretty cool. And I'm such a nerd. I even brought a little plastic tube thing to put posters in so they wouldn't get

I'm most excited for

Primordial

they're my favorite album of last year

they go on tomorrow

that's what I'm most excited for

George of course tripticon like he just said

I'm a little nervous

that

I know they've been doing this for years

13 years

looking at the pictures and stuff though

I'm a little nervous that

the stages you know you see these big

European festivals. The stages are big, huge stages. These things look like little tiny stages with huge open lot that we're going to. Well, it is in a parking lot right under the I-83 highway underpass. Sort of like Chris Farley living in the van down by the river kind of show, you know?

and stage B. So I'm guessing that there's like a stage, parking lot, and another stage, and you just sort of turn around and go to the next stage. But I haven't seen enough pictures yet to quite figure out what that's going to be like. Because they're just going right, you know, there's going to be no changeover. It's just going to be band, band, band, band. So, you know, we're also looking forward to meeting people there. I know Buke already talked to the guys at the Nine Circles podcast.

or Nine Circle? Yeah. Nine, is it Nine? Nine Circles. Nine Circles. Yeah. Used to be called the Horns Up Podcast. So we're probably going to run into them and drink some beers. And, you know, just in general, like when we went to Gwarbiki, one of the best things about it was meeting fans from around the country. In this case, possibly from around the world. And just hearing their stories. Yeah, hearing their stories, their experiences. Yep. Just talking to people and just, you know,

Bonding with those metal brothers and sisters that we just haven't met yet. I also, what I'm excited for too is, you know, like we talked before we turned this on, that this may be the opportunity for us to see some of these bands ever. Yes, I mean, as I was just explaining to Buick beforehand, before we turned this on, some of the bands playing today on Saturday at the Edison lot, you know, he was listening to some of their recordings,

and he's like man this sounds kind of like shit and i'm like well that's because these recordings they haven't recorded anything since like 1987 and so all these recordings are like old school death metal kind of shitty sounding but you know bands like bulldozer and morpheus descends and uh uh volcano you know it's like it's a big deal for these bands to be coming out and playing i mean bulldozer's coming from italy

And volcanoes from, I know it's South America. I don't remember which country. So it's kind of a big deal, even if you're not a fan. It's just sort of like, wow, you got to be like, okay, well, this is pretty badass. Yeah, man, I saw Bulldozer play. We got kind of bummed out earlier in the week. Apparently, this is not the first time they've had to drop off, but Sodom had to drop off, closing out the main lock.

Yeah, thanks to the U.S. government again, so many bands have to cancel tours, drop-off tours or shows because the U.S. government can't get off their ass and issue their visa so that they can come over and play. And that was the case with Sodom. And so Razor is going to be headlining today, which I'm sure there's a lot of rabid Razor fans out there. And they're not bad.

You know, they've been around for a long time, but I've never been much of a fan. And it's just, it's a little weird to me that they're headlining. I mean, that's... I could see them headlining at like Ram's Head or Soundstage, but at the Edison lot, yeah, I would have, or even Arcturus would have been, is probably a bigger name as far as I'm concerned. But you know, whatever. I think they'll probably be good. I was listening to some yesterday and going, yeah, I remember these guys.

You know what has me the most excited just came to me when you were just mentioning bands there is that you know you and I have been to the Oz Fest and the Mayhem Fest you get a lot of the poser kids there. You mean like us? So here is going to be you know this lineup is this is a metal lineup this is a you know true metal fest. No metalcore allowed. Exactly so you're not going to get those high school kids you're going to see them here but you know

As we say on the podcast, I'm expecting a lot of Brazilians to be here. Oh, fuck yeah. It's going to be a very, very South American, bullet-belted fucking jean jacket with patches kind of day, I bet you. And they're going to be out. And I'm going to feel like a pussy next to these guys. But, you know, what can you do? I was telling Buk the other day, actually, when I was at M3 with my wife, and I was looking at all the people there with their,

their jackets and their patches.

And I was like, you know, we really should.

We've discussed this before.

But we really should get, like, a vest and put patches on it and shit.

Even though I'm an old fucker and, you know, just for fun.

Just, you know, I'd probably only wear it when we go to shows.

They may rather large vests for both of us.

Yeah.

I was even thinking going, like, leather.

I saw a dude at the M3.

You know, it was more of a biker thing.

But it had patches on it. I was like, oh, that'd be kind of sweet. You know, different. At the very least, I'd have to go with black denim. Blue denim is just not really my thing. Even though my jean jacket from back in the day with all the patches was a blue denim jacket. Do you have a back patch you would go with? You know, I was trying to actually decide which way I would go with that. I was like, would I get a back patch or would I just put a shit ton of patches on the back? I have one already planned out. The Opest Still Life back patch.

I'd have to see what I could find. I'm pretty sure I have a Woods of Epre patch. I haven't looked at backpatches for fucking decades. So I don't even know. But if I had the choice and they make one, I would probably go with a Woods of Epre backpatch. You had some communications with a Woods member this week? Yeah, yeah.

I had ordered Wanderer on the Continent of Saplings CD from Thrasenblatt off of Bandcamp. And when I received my copy of the CD, Joel, pretty much the main guy, does everything, or most everything as far as I know, had sent along a little note saying, hey, thanks for the support, and he signed it. And I was like, schwing!

I was pretty excited about that and so I posted it on Instagram

and Twitter and

I was like hey you know a picture of it and I was like

hey check out what I got be really cool

to get Joel on the podcast

and I posted that a couple of weeks

ago but apparently Joel

came across it

and wrote back and you know said

hey thanks and you know let's do this

so I'm totally

I'm totally psyched

to try and get Joel on the podcast

I told him I'd send him a message through Facebook. I haven't done that yet because we're prepping for Death Fest. But in the next couple of days, I'm going to reach out to him and see what we can do, what we can set up. Supposedly, the new Throssenblot 3 album is almost ready for release. So hopefully we can time that where it's ready to go. Maybe we can even hear it beforehand, preview it so we can talk to him. But regardless, either way, as long as it's ready to go,

We can talk to them. That'll be fucking cool as hell. So. The only thing going into today I'm a little bit worried about is the sound. Outside festivals on smaller stages. I've never had my experience the best of sound. You and I have history. How many shows have you and I gone to where we've left and gone, man, that sound was fucking awesome. I can't think of any.

Exactly. So it's going to be what it's going to be. So yeah, outside sound tends to sound like shit. But so what, you know? Yeah. It's going to be metal and beer and metal heads everywhere. And fuck yeah, man. We're taking over Baltimore. So should be good. You got anything else you want to add before we check out here? George has gone out, bought a couple handheld recorders here. So throughout the weekend,

You are going to hear George and I talking to other podcasts, other fans that we meet. If we're at a booth and there's a band there, maybe try and talk to them. Because they didn't give out press passes for this event at all. They strictly say, don't even fucking ask. So we'll see what we can get. Whenever we stumble upon, we'll try and get it. Yep, so we'll try and make something interesting for you.

We want to give a shout out to our brother from another mother who is not here today. Hello, Jay. You will be here in our hearts and in our pants. We'll be thinking about you. Because he's in our iPhone, in our contacts. Exactly. Be close to my nuts. Deez nuts! Deez nuts! Exactly. Deez nuts. Alright. So, we are out of here. We will, well, the change will be transparent for you, but...

We could make this like a normal podcast. We could have called him on the Bluetooth here. Had him in the background. Well, you know, I was actually toying with that. Because I was thinking after tonight when we go back to the hotel, if we wanted to do a regular podcast, we could dial him in and put it on speaker and I could hold this up to the phone when he talks. I tried it and it works pretty well. But I'm willing to bet that we're either going to forget or just be a little too inebriated to pull something together of that nature. Yes.

So, but we'll see. You never know. You might hear from Jay after all. Who knows? Exactly. All right. We'll be back. See ya.

How are you? Excited for MDF? Hell yeah. It's kind of fucked up because I've been living in Maryland for like 17 years and this is my first one. Oh my gosh. It's a good year. Good year. Make your first though. It's a good year. Are you going to be here tomorrow though? That's the question. That's a big day. Tomorrow's a big day. Tomorrow's a big day. Why is tomorrow the big day? Let Toomes, Primordial, Neurosis, Amorphous. Anonymous Rock. Take your pick. Take your fucking pick. So they were here yesterday.

This is our third year doing MDF. This is our first time doing, well, Cory and I at least did, on the all access, like all four days, all venues. I'm only doing Edison three days. But I did soundstage Thursday night. Okay. Yeah. And yesterday and Thursday, Thursday was fine. But yesterday, like, finished strong, let's say. Yeah. We had, uh... How was the new bloodbath? We actually didn't see that, unfortunately. What? We took up this event at Viscar.

- Yeah. - Of our Ram set, which was totally wonderful. - I heard they had an amazing set. - They were incredible. - They were incredible. - They blew us away. - Yeah. - Did they play any new material? - All new material. - I just got the new promo last night. I haven't listened to it yet. - It was amazing. You're gonna enjoy it. - Yeah. - You're gonna like it. - Yeah. - And it sounded so good live. They just really translated well. They only had 25 minutes and they did more with their 25 minutes than most of the other bands yesterday did with their hour. - And notice there was Valenfire that just tore it. - Yes, Valenfire was good. - Valenfire, their singer is a dry,

He accomplished his dream of playing in a parking lot in Baltimore. He did it in spades.

Nice. So was there any, for any of your past experiences here, how is this year getting off to start compared to previous years?

I think it's got to be the front runner. I really do. We just all told. We had some good experiences here the last couple years. Seeing Carcass was incredible at the gates last year. But the way things are trending so far this year, this is definitely...

Yeah, and this is only the beginning. Exactly. These are the entry days. Once it comes to today and tomorrow, holy god. This could totally kick. We're going to see Tripticon tonight. Yeah, we're going to see Tom G. Fisher. We're going to see Arcturus. All this stuff plus tomorrow. Who are you guys excited for? I'm here for Tripticon. That's the main reason. I love Tripticon. This guy here, he didn't like Tripticon. He's a pussy. Hi, Morio. Are you a Baltic Frost fan? Not really. He's too young for that.

Oh, that's good. Primordial, that's good. Primordial, Tombs. Primordial, he's probably one of the best albums in a while. They reminds me of my album of the year last year. This guy heard Tripticon's album last year and instantly said, as soon as he heard it, album of the year. He dropped the mic, walk away, album of the year. They were both my top 10. It was close. It wasn't Panopticon, but it was close. Panopticon was good. Hassan's pretty cool. Hi, Hassan. Hi Hassan. There's our other buddy. Oh, there's our other buddy. Hey, we're doing a live recording here for the podcast. Cool. Hello.

How's it going? How's everything going? Say hi. I'm having a great death fest. Were you here yesterday? Yeah. Awesome. Cyanide, Master. How fucking unprofessional is this? Hold on. That's our fucking third mic. I'll call him back. Go ahead. What was I going to say? We were talking about Trypticon. We were talking about Trypticon and who is your guys' highlight so far and who are you looking forward to?

Don't forget fucking Mobb Deep

Yeah Mobb Deep

Oh god Mobb Deep were excellent

They were fantastic

Yeah they were

Conan killed it

I heard that

Um

Oh shit was that other band

Two piece

Three piece band

How was Y.O.B.

Yob?

Yob

Yeah they were beautiful

Yeah I'm stoked

We missed Yob this time out

I uh

We saw them last month

And uh two months ago

They opened for Enslaved

Yeah

And they were fantastic

That was a great show

Today I'm looking forward to Trypticon. I'm a huge fan. That's what we were just talking about. Celtic Frost fans. Nice tattoo. Yeah, I can't wait to see them and Razor today. Are you guys a little surprised that Trypticon, after Sodom, couldn't make it? That Trypticon's not getting the headline spot? Well, they, so Trypticon had to pull out last year. And there was, because, because, um, Giger passed away. Tom G. Fisher was a mess. Um, there was no way they were going to miss it this year. Like, come hell or high water. And they already had that organized.

Like the way this works here, they can't just pull something out of their ass last minute when a band falls through. They have to just work with what they have. They already have the lineup organized for months in advance. So they're not going to be like, well, let's move Trypticon here. They just do what they can. Yeah, it worked out that band Solstice is touring with Master. So when Sodom dropped, Solstice is around and they took the spot. That makes sense. Now, I mean, it's a predicament because Razor conflicts with a band Adversarial, who are awesome too, playing at Bram's Head. So I'll probably watch Razor and then make some

Yeah, how do those, since this is yours, as you know, again, we've lived here our whole lives, never fucking made it here, we're posers, but when this Edison lot closes, do the times start to overlap when you've got to choose who you go to? Yeah, because Soundstage and Ramset go later. Yeah, Ramset opens at 10. Yeah, I think they stopped doing music in Edison around 1.

We mentioned Arcturus earlier. I'm kind of looking forward to seeing them. However, they don't really sound... Have you heard the new album? I have. I enjoy the hell of them. But at least me personally, I'm loving bands that are not just one set genre. In Arcturus, there's this mix of black improv, avant-garde, almost just even hint to Garage Rock. It's fantastic.

of the new album and I'm like, I don't know. I mean, some of his ICS Vortex's singing is kind of not good, which is surprising because he's a really good singer. That's what I like about it because it sounds so weird. Like, it really is. He's not hitting the notes perfectly, but it's like... He's never hit no perfect notes, to be real. Yeah. But it works for him. Okay, well, he's not hitting the notes moderately in some way, but it's still fantastic. I'm totally all about it. I hope they play some old, like, wintry gray kind of stuff, too. We'll see. Who else is playing tomorrow? Demolick. Yeah, that's a lot of neurosis.

This is a good MDF this year.

Very good at VF this year. Things are definitely picking up today and tomorrow. And it's already been good so far. So how's the crowd turn out for this guys? Is it packed? It's been good. It's been really good. Last night at Napalm Death was insane. Yeah, so Napalm Death was like 25 minutes late getting on and literally everyone, I mean, I don't think anyone was still around at Ram's Head. Like everyone had packed in and it was just random. Were they at Soundstage? Yes. Yeah, we just, we saw them at Soundstage Mac in January and that was pretty amazing.

I don't think they'll ever move on the

Maybe M&T Stadium? Maybe? I would love an open-air death metal festival. Wouldn't that be fucking great? The rumor for the longest time was they would move to Pimlico Racetrack or the fairgrounds when they were looking for a place outside of Sonar. But the Setizen lot is pretty great. When you see a Valken or other festivals, you see your power metal next to your black metal. Which is awesome. It is. I'm a big power metal fan.

Is crowd accepting of that? Do you guys think if they were to evolve into that? I think they do a whole bunch of different... I mean, look at how they took to Mobb Deep. Yeah. I mean, they were loving it. They took to Mobb Deep. If you look at it, I mean, it started off as straight death metal, but I mean, like last year they had... I mean, people went nuts for something like Soul Severe or something like Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats, and that's far from... The year before, they had the Melvins, and the Melvins killed it. So you have metal... Everyone here is very accepting of it. Like, if Arcturus are going to play the day,

was a strictly death metal day. I think that kind of says. Yeah, they've been branching out for a while now. I think your typical metal head listens to stuff like Brinecore or Symphonic Black Metal, so I think they're definitely branching out in genre. It's not strictly death metal as it was years back. So long as they don't get Korn or Limp Bizkit or anything new metal. New metal, that's another category. As long as the metal core stays away. Deathscape will get that. Deathscape will get the older remains of the world. All the Kid Rock stage. Okay, well, anything else?

you have to say? Have some more beers. I'm already three beers down. Haven't even seen the fucking band yet. It's 1232. Yeah, we still have to go get our wristbands. Who cares about the fucking... Definitely plug Nine Circles podcast. Plug away. Nine Circles just rebranded. We were horns up. It is www.ninecircles.co at underscore ninecircles. Twitter and Instagram. Facebook at ninecirclesblog. Yeah, we're podcasting. We're blogging. We're doing album reviews. It's good stuff.

I'd also love to plug my production company Visibly Shaken Productions on Facebook at Visibly Shaken Productions, Twitter at The Shaken. We have new webs here. It's called The Shades coming out in the next couple months. Saturization of religious extremes to the nth degree. Hello Samaritan's Kevin Davis. Kevin Davis everyone. Yes. Thank you. Right on. And gentlemen you guys just want to plug a band or anything? I'll plug my promotion company Ripping Headaches. I book shows in Baltimore and D.C. One last thing. Let's go.

Album of the year last year. Mine? I'll say this. Primordial, Where Greater Men Have Fallen, was mine. Followed by Tombs. I mean, I can give you an album of the year this year so far. It's the new Tau Cross record. I dig that. I dig that. With the whole amoebics and Away from Voivod. And Away from Misery.

George and I are pretty high on the Dothheims guard. Yeah, the new Dothheims guard is up there for me right now. So this year I would say definitely Ilsa's Felon's Claw on A389 records. Probably the best metal album I've heard so far. Really heavy cyanide worship, good Death and Doom album. Last year I would say horrendous Ectosis. That's a great album. How do you say that album? I never could figure it out. Ectosis. Yeah, that album I found out right at the end of the year last year.

I heard it was yeah yeah the two guys both play guitar and they shred it's like the Judas Priest of death you know who I kind of like and like them right now just recently around the new entrails album yeah there's a lot like them a lot it's really good yours last year panopticon roads to the north this year so far really liked tribulation children of the night and I really liked Olten their album mode they're like Swiss post sludge heavy shit really really good stuff

These guys are too fucking pretty for us, George. Last year, definitely Panopticon's Road to the North and Devin Townsend's Casualties of Cool. It's not exactly metal, but Devin Townsend can do no wrong. And then this year, Arcturus' new album is pretty kick-ass. But that's just where I'm like, yeah. Last year, hands down, Behemoth the Satanist. That album was a long time coming, and Nurgle fucking killed everything he wanted to do with it. This year, so far, I've been mostly impressed by Dervega and Afriheit.

It's stellar. Black metal. From Germany. It's good stuff. Cool. I would also say the new Noisum album, Blossoming Decay, great thrash metal album. It's the missing link between early Cannibal Corpse and early Slayer, and they're all young kids playing really awesome thrash. Right on. Yeah, they're from Baltimore. To end this first row of interviews here, this is why George and I and all of us love metal, because 20 minutes here and we already made fucking friends. So guys, let's see.

Cheers again! And yeah exactly, let's have a great fucking medal! Alright, we'll be back! Sweet!

So far that I really enjoyed Serpentine Path. They were fucking heavy as shit. You know, Duke looks at me and I'm like thumping my chest because the bass on there, the sound is just so fucking loud. Yeah, every time the fucking drums would hit or the bass would hit, it's like somebody's pushing you or standing right next to you. Yeah, it was fucking incredibly heavy. Start the death fest for us. Yeah.

And then right after that we went over to the other stage and Twilight of the Gods was on and of course that was fucking spectacular. Any thoughts on that one? You know you see these members from other bands and all you can hear is you know you hear Twilight of the Gods songs but then I was in my head I kept hearing Primordial because you know that's the singer from them. But you know they they sounded amazing it was a nice break because we know we're going to get a lot of heavy you know death metal stuff after them.

Yeah. And it's funny because then later, well, obviously tomorrow we'll be seeing, what's his name, Alan again? Yeah. Singing for Primordial. And the bass player for Twilight of the Gods is playing right now. And I'm not sure how to say it. It's like Einherjer, something like that. It's like Norwegian Viking metal. And we just bowed out at the end of their set because we wanted to take a break and get this recorded. But they sound pretty fantastic as well. They certainly do.

They certainly do. Walking in so far, there's probably, I'd say, 20 to 30 merch vendors set up. Any shirt you could possibly think of, for the most part. CDs, tapes, vinyl. It's a fucking merch. It's ridiculous. It's like, like I was telling Buick, it's like going down to the ice cream store that has every fucking flavor, and you don't know what to get.

The thing about this is you're not getting the Judas Priest, the Aussie. You're getting the heavy fucking shit here. Yeah, the really cool obscure stuff. It's just like, oh my god, this is amazing. So, if you've ever considered coming to Death Fest and you haven't done it yet, you ought to do it. May I say this? The thing that's striking me that I'm liking so far is the laid-back approach to it so far. Not saying it's do what you want, but you walk in through this

security and George and I just passed a couple people in lawn chairs. You know, the foldable lawn chairs. You know, we got our large backpack here. We got our merch bag. It's a laid back, you know. Yeah, and they didn't really search the backpack too much. We could have brought in some pretty bad shit if we really wanted to. But no, we're not saying this is like a, you know, endorsement to, you know, bring in all your bad shit. We're just saying that it's not a police state. Yeah, exactly.

But yeah, it's pretty good. The weather's nice. We get a little bit of shade from the overpass that goes right by there. And a lot of cool people. We've talked to a few people. Before, we were talking to the Nine Circles guys. We ran into Chris from DC Heavy Metal. We've been through the merch booths. We talked to the guy at Vienna Music Exchange.

And it's just been a good day so far. A few beers in and just having a good time enjoying the weather, enjoying the music. It's not as busy yet as I thought it might be. I thought it would have been a little more packed than it is now. I don't know what people are waiting for. Yeah, you know. It's always the whole day he's done, though. Yeah, you know. Never can account for that. I don't know. A lot of people, they just show up for the end of the show. They don't want to be there for the whole day. If this is it, though, it's not fucking bad.

This parking lot of course it is. I haven't had fun.

Yeah, yeah, it would have been nice to have a park over here.

But you know, then you gotta drive back.

So we used Uber to get over here, which was pretty damn cool.

Yeah.

And so we can drink all the way along.

Anything you don't like stuff so far?

No, no, I'm having a blast.

I went to the, what was the name of the pork place?

Yeah, there's like a pork vendor. Grabbed a pulled pork sandwich, and we're wearing our Metalheads podcast shirts, and I'm wearing a hat too. So the guy who was selling me my sandwich was like, hey, is that your podcast? And I was like, why, yes, it is. Would you like a card? He's like, sure, man, I'll check it out. So, hey, if you're listening, thanks for the sandwich. You know what's striking me so far is just, you can honestly tell if it's a true metal crowd.

That's what's striking me the most. Oh, for sure. I mean, practically every shirt and patch and everything out there is very obscure, and I've got a fucking stiffy for it. It's like, oh, wow, Bathory, oh, fucking... What was the one that I was really digging on? Bows, Gaff, I saw a couple shirts of them. I just saw a Moonsorrow shirt. And, you know, so everybody brings out their obscure shit. But we're going to head back in here in a few minutes,

There's a couple groups here in the parking lot hanging out. I think I may

try and get in here with a couple of these groups. We may have some

in the metal parking lot here in a second. Yeah, Blood Red Throne is up next, so I kind of want to catch them too.

So, I guess that's all for now. We'll be back. See ya.

See ya.

This is Butte from the Metal Heads Podcast, and like George and I just mentioned, we're going to do a little heavy metal podcast

from the parking lot here. We ran into a nice group of people here. Where are you guys from? I'm Dutch. You're Dutch? American here from Baltimore. From Baltimore. Where are you guys from? From Holland as well. From where? Holland. From Westwood. Wow. Yeah. Wow. And we live in Baltimore and he's our roommate. Yeah. He's came from Arizona. Man, this is great. Who'd you guys come to see? I'm aiming most of my band yesterday. Suffocation, obituary. I wanted to see these guys when we got here a little bit late. But since I was

We're still shocked at how the parking lot is still so open.

Yesterday people were still working so people use this as a commuter parking lot too.

So that's what I think it is.

A lot of people walk like the hotels are down that way so a lot of people park there and walk.

Cool. You guys gonna be here tomorrow also?

Of course.

If you come over the ocean to see a couple of bands, you might as well pick them all, don't you? Exactly, exactly. So who you guys, the whole weekend, who you're most looking forward to seeing, though? Missy. Oh, look at that. I was quite bummed out. Sodom didn't show up. Yeah, isn't that pretty fucking sucks? I'm a huge bloodbath and suffocation fan. I like old trash. I like old death metal. A bit of punk.

DRI! Turn around Tom! Turn around! Let me see what you got! DRI, yep, that's nice! I have one, uh, I have one, uh, like that! That's pretty nice! The two of us are the West Virginia pit crew, so, uh, man! That's pretty nice! With my arms! Look at these guys! Black and blue! Fucking crazy! Dave Palm Death last night was very, uh, crazy! It was pretty crazy, wasn't it? Yeah! Yeah, it's my head! Are you serious?

They did too. They did a pretty cool band.

That was the most violent pit of the festival, I think.

So far, just that type, those little types of people jumping on other people, jumping on other people.

I'd see a little bit of a win.

No one died. Yet.

YET!

Yeah, I think that it was like a hardcore show. That's how the kids are today.

When we saw them in January, it was a completely different vibe.

Everybody was just kind of like, you know, in front of their headbanging.

But last night, they were climbing over people like Spiderman to jump off the stage.

And I had to get out of here.

I'm like, "Oh, my God, I got stepped on a lot of here."

And they're my favorite band. I was like, "Right up there, I gotta go."

Cool.

Well, thanks for giving us your time, guys. Hey, everybody. It's George. And this is Buke. And it is the wee hours of the morning after the Saturday Maryland Death Festival show at the Edison lot. We figured we'd give you a recap of the day before we turn in tonight. Last we spoke, I think we were out in the parking lot. And we stumbled upon the group of fans.

who I thought it would pan out to be more than it was. Yeah. Well, I just want to point out before that, Buke got totally like dissed by a group of Brazilians. He went over and was like, hey guys, can we talk to you about the podcast? And they're like, okay. And he's like, can you podcast? Can we talk to you? And they're like, no.

And we were like, okay then, see you later. Yeah. Because a lot of people, the admittance, you could come and go as you wanted. And a nice huge parking lot right adjacent to where the, you know, death fest was being held. But there wasn't a lot of people hanging out in the cars, surprisingly. Yeah, you know, like probably a lot of people like us came in, you know, by walking or taxi.

or whatever.

Yeah.

Probably not realizing there was that lot there.

Whatever.

That's not why people are fucking listening to this.

So that failed.

Right.

So, you know, we talked to some people and then we went back inside for Blood Red Throne,

I believe it was.

Yep.

And that was a pretty crushing set, I thought.

I didn't realize they had a new singer.

I didn't realize that.

He looked a little bit like a friend of ours.

But yeah, they played some pretty brutal death metal. They played it well, I thought. Buker pointed out that the one guitar player was wearing Crocs. And the other guitar player, and his mannerisms on stage, and the guitar he played. And his hair, and his beard, and everything. Dimebag. Total dead ringer for Dimebag. He was drinking vodka straight from the bottle.

And he was playing a dean with the headstock that's the V. Yeah, the flying V. Yeah, like dimes. It's probably, in fact, and it had that. And he was wearing a Pantera shirt. Yes. And the guitar had the metal plating like you get on. The diamond plate. Yeah, diamond plate, yeah. What ever happened to those guys? They changed singers. Yeah, and then we stopped caring about them. Stopped caring about them. We were really excited.

about them when we heard those kids. Yeah, they were good. But it's just like, yeah, new singer, whatever. Yeah. Let that be a lesson to you kids. If you have a singer and he's good, hold on to him. So, excuse me. So then after Blood Red Throne, I think that was when you decided to walk back to the hotel to deposit all of the things that we'd accumulated so far.

Yeah.

And I stuck around and watched Volcano and Bulldozer.

Both of those bands, if you're not familiar, are veteran bands from the 80s playing death metal.

Volcano was definitely a brutal death metal.

And Bulldozer was more of like a heavy thrash.

And the first couple songs by Volcano were not bad. I was like, right on. These guys are got to be pushing some years there. And they still rocked pretty hard. So I'll give them credit for that. But about halfway through their set, I was like, I'm tired. I'm going to go.

And it's actually right next to the stage. So I couldn't see them, but I could hear it really well. So I listened to the rest of their set. Then I walked over to the next stage to check out Bulldozer. And that was kind of interesting to look at. I've heard of Bulldozer, but I've never really listened to him all that much. And the singer was... Okay, this is an Italian band.

Not that that has anything to do with anything, but it's just a descriptor. He was throwing pasta out in the crowd as they came on stage. No. But he was wearing a cape, and he had a gray beard and a shaved head and drawn on sideburns. Was that drawn on? I looked drawn on. I thought that was his hair. That was my thought at first, but I was like, no, that's drawn on. Basically, think of

Huge mutton chops that go halfway up your head that when there's no other hair I was like that's a little weird looking and his microphone stand was like a podium with blood on it and so he was like that's a microphone you know affixed to the podium yeah so I don't know if that was like some sort of like evil preacher thing like a pulpit it's like a third-rate ghost yeah so that was actually my first thought

So they started playing, and the guitar sound was really buzzsaw, tinny, like it was coming out of a small $50 amplifier. It was a little shrill, even for me, even though I like really trebly music. I was like, damn, that kind of hurts to listen to, but I think they worked on that, because a couple songs later I wasn't noticing it. Either that, or I lost a little bit of hearing.

Probably that.

But I thought of the two, I think Bulldozer was better than Volcano.

At least I preferred them.

And somewhere shortly after the beginning of the Bulldozer set,

Buke arrived back from the hotel, and we hooked up and had a couple more beers.

You want to jump in here?

No, I'm trying to think what happened when I got back.

This is when you and I made our way to sit down and wait for Trypticon, correct? Right, yeah. After we got tired of listening to Bulldozer towards the end, because they... After a point, it just kept going on and on and on and on. Yeah, they were good for a while, and then it was like, all right, well, we can see people lining up at the other stage for Trypticon already. Let's sort of make our way over there, because for me, anyway, that was, you know,

And tomorrow, this is your biggest point, yeah. So, you know, we wanted to at least be nearby so we could keep an eye on the stage and make sure to jump in when it looked like things were starting to get busy. And there was a lot of people starting to gather for Tripticon, so when we made our way over there, you know, posted up, it was about 6 o'clock then. Yeah.

It's still broad daylight, which wasn't how we wanted to see Trypticon. I think their set would have been so much more dramatic had it been dark. I mean, the music is so dark to be played during daylight is a little weird. But I don't want to take your fire because I can't do them justice. Trypticon came on and the smile I saw on George's face was

Something I'd only seen a couple of times before. Yeah, that's that smile right there. From ear to ear. Yeah, it was pretty awesome. You know, I've never seen Celtic Frost before, never seen Trypticon before. Huge fan, though. So I've, you know, I wanted to come last year to see Trypticon. And the fact that they had to cancel because of H.R. Giger's death. I mean, it was like, I'm not going then, you know,

I'm not wasting my money. Even though I think like Carcass was there and stuff like that. I'm sure it's still a good show, but I was just so disappointed. I was like, I'm not going. Shall we say, George and I just realized a couple hours ago, the reason we really, you know, living here with this in our backyard, you know, call us wherever you want to call us. We haven't gone before because the lineup has not been that strong, if you ask me. Yeah. It's been obscure. Really obscure.

Yeah. And so I would look at the lineup and go, meh. It's, you know, I mean, there's probably a couple bands in there that I like, but not enough for me to want to go and spend a weekend there. And last year, though, I was like, oh, I want to go. And, you know, a couple of the, I mean, it's Memorial Day weekend. Half the time I'm not here anyway because, you know, I'm off on vacation somewhere with my wife. So this year I made sure to buy tickets early enough. So when the wife doesn't ever say.

I was like, oh, by the way, honey, I bought tickets for Maryland Death Fest. It's Memorial Day weekend. Okay, bye. So, Tripticon's on and you're loving it. What did you think of them? I think they come out and I'm like, it was just, it was kind of weird to see Thomas Gabriel Fisher for the first time dressed the way you always see him now, wearing the like really nice black shirt with a knit black cap and like black eye makeup, kind of like

Like black tears running down his face. And I'm like. The inverted cross around his neck. Yeah. And it's just like. Wow. You know. It's like seeing a celebrity. It really is. And I mean. He is a celebrity in the metal world. Yeah. And. And then enough of him. The bass player comes out. Oh my God. The bass player. I knew. I knew they had a. Yeah. So. Bass player. But oh my God. She's hot. I didn't know she was so gorgeous. And she fucking. Murders. Dude. Did you see?

She played so hard. She busted a string. She broke her string. You gotta play hard to break a bass string. Yes. Yes. So she was really like attacking that thing. It's funny because when she was playing, I mean, you know, Tom Warrior, you see him playing and he's always got a grim look on his face and you look over her and she's, her head's kind of slightly tilted down and she's attacking that bass with like no emotion on her face and you just see her, like her eyes and I was like, damn, I would,

I would not want to piss her off. She looks fucking evil. But then Tom would say something to her and she'd get this cute little smile and I was like, aww, you're nice. So she was very interesting to me, not just because she was hot, just in general. In the dynamic of the band, she was very interesting.

And interesting too is that I didn't realize he takes some songs off the harsher parts vocal wise. Unless the guitar player. Yeah, I didn't know that either. Yeah, I don't know if that's maybe just on live. It could be. Yeah, I have to look at the liner notes and see. But yeah, on the whole, it was a pretty awesome set. Sound was perfect. Yep.

Yeah, they played a couple songs from the first Trypticon album, a couple songs from the latest Trypticon album. When they played third or fourth song in, they busted into Celtic Frost's Circle of the Tyrants. Up until then, I was like, okay, we were, yeah, I don't know, about 10, 15 feet from the stage. And up until that point, I had my camera out, I was taking some pictures, and then I was taking my phone out and

Taking some pictures. As soon as they started playing the opening notes of Circle of the Tyrants, the place fucking went batshit crazy. And it was like all of a sudden that like, you know when you're at the beach and you walk up to the ocean and you're like, oh, walking into the ocean. All of a sudden you get hit by an unexpected wave and it knocks you back. That was like the pit just erupting in this roar of humanity that just fucking.

He's crowd surfing past us. And everybody around us was like, that's so fucking cool. That guy's got balls, man. Yeah, so you got to take some balls to crowd surf when you need crutches. And there were women crowd surfing and all kinds of annoying people crowd surfing. I say annoying because the point that they would put them back into the crowd would come right in front of us. And so half the set, we got people running.

in front of us pushing us out of the way and he's like fuck you so but anyway um so yeah the pit just like took off like crazy during circle of the tyrants and uh i was like in the middle of trying to take a picture and all of a sudden i'm like whoa and almost knocked off my feet um we were right on like the fringe of the pit the whole time i think uh sort of off to the right side of it so you kind of had to keep an eye on things and for the most part uh it wasn't too bad

But every now and again, you'd get that like, you know, everybody's moving to the right now because everybody's lost their balance. It was a solid hour set that they played. Yeah. And immediately when they finished, I don't know if you sensed it, too. It's almost kind of like the air was let out of the rest of the night with the fans. Yeah. Well, they finished with the 20 minute long song off the first Tripticon album called The Prolonging.

And it takes some balls to play a 20-minute song, first of all, live. But, you know, it was great. And when they left the stage, actually, before they left the stage, they all came up to the front of the stage. And, you know, a lot of bands will do that. They'll come up to the front and they'll, like, put their arms around each other and be like, yay! But they all came up there.

And Tom comes back up to the microphone and he says, Trypticon bows to you. And they all bowed to us. And I was like, that's so fucking badass. You know, it's like people, bands will come out and like give a little bow to the crowd or whatever. But the way he said it was, it wasn't like, you know, thank you very much. It was, it was humble. It was like, thank you for allowing us to fucking rip your face off.

And I was just like, I love him. I love him so much. So an incredible set. Yeah, as we walked out of there, two things. Like Puke said, anybody that had to follow these guys, you know, forget about it. You know, they really should have been the headliner. And the other thing was we're walking away.

I made it. You know, last year, Buk likes to bring up the fact that last year, in like February, March, whatever it was, I proclaimed the Trypticon album of the year. So as soon as we were walking away, I just nonchalantly go, Buk, I'm calling it. This was the set of the year. So that may or may not be, but it was a pretty damn good set. Yeah, and that was the highlight of my day, because again, I don't have the attachment to Trypticon.

George does but seeing my best friend happy that that was that was worth it there yeah so then after that solstice played and we didn't really care about them so back and browse we spent their set uh i i finally decided that i was going to go and time to dive in and when George dives in guys yes we know I dives in uh to about the tune of 200 bucks worth of vinyl yeah i went and bought uh all the good money it's also on sale too yeah 15 bucks

Yeah, 15 bucks for stuff that you'd pay like 30, 40 bucks on like, you know, a website or eBay or something like that. So it was like, and oh my God, there was so much stuff. I mean, I think I mentioned it earlier. It's like a merchandise wet dream. I mean, every conceivable shirt and CD and vinyl patch, everything. I'm like, wow, if only they had my size in anything sucks to be fat. Yeah, I could probably like lose like 15, 20 pounds and get into a

2X, but... Well, we'll see if that happens. Yeah, but the cool thing about the vendors is they seem excited to, of course, make money. Of course. But all very nice setups. Yeah. Relapse was there. I spent a mint at Relapse. Nuclear Blast. Our friend, Vienna Record Exchange. Vienna Music Exchange. Vienna Music Exchange, I'm sorry. Yep, I picked up.

up a candle mass lucifer rising vinyl off of him yep and uh omega omega was there and crucial blast which we're going to hit tomorrow because there was just we just looked at so much vinyl it was it was pretty cool too it took me back to the days of the computer show yeah as fairgrounds i used to go my whole life growing up when it was just tables upon tables of one porn

Which, of course, I don't have here. Oddly. Yeah, tables and tables and tables of just metal stuff. Yeah. Just vinyl. Boxes upon boxes. You know, we're all used to listeners of this show, George and I have spoke about in the past. We're used to, there's a little rack over there. It's about one box wide. That's it. It's got an Iron Maiden. Yep.

And a Dio. And a Slayer album. And that's it. Yeah. Here is A through Z's taking up four tables worth. So much stuff that I've never even heard of. I say something like that, and I'm not trying to come across as braggy or self-righteous or arrogant. But I pour over this shit every fucking day. I mean, it's like my job, except I don't get paid for it.

But it's my addiction. I will say too, George did

about four or five times have to take out his phone and check.

Do I have this? Do I have this?

And every time I did.

Good thing you checked.

Getting old and forgetful.

So yeah, that's how we spent with Solstice.

Solstice, yeah.

Yeah.

Now mind you though, they have the sound

cranking when you're inside the parking lot.

So it's as if we are hearing them. Yeah, I mean, perfectly. Yeah, well, we were directly across from them. So other than the, like, tarps that they throw up on the booths, there wasn't really much blocking it. So, you know, it's not like we were missing the sound or anything. You could still have to scream over it to talk. Yeah. So then after that, we went back out to catch Arcturus.

This was a weird one. Yeah, Buke wasn't really interested in this at all to begin with. And I was like, dude, I got to go check these guys out. I mean, I've always sort of preferred the earlier, more traditional black metal before they went really avant-garde. Though lately I have been kind of digging some of the more avant-garde stuff. It's probably listening to all that Doddheim's guard. But, and like the very first song, I was like, oh man, he's so out of pity.

He's like out of key or something. I was like, damn, that sucks. But when I heard it at first, not really, because we do have a new album, promo. When I first heard them, I thought, not knowing them, I thought, man, it's a cool little folky, folk metal sound that they have. But then he starts with the avant-garde singing. But by the end of the first song or end of the second song, I look back and Bukes kind of banged his head a little bit. And I was like, you liking this? And he's like, this is pretty bad.

And so I was like right on he's getting into it that's cool I was like I did not expect that

by the second song it did get a little better

ICS Vortex the singer

he looked like somebody from Duck Dynasty

yes and he had his hands in his pockets

steampunk goggles

yeah

real weird

that he

casual who's that guy

the comedian

that's the hillbilly not

Not the redneck one, but he's like, somebody the somebody. Like Joe the janitor, or somebody the garbage guy, or Billy Bob, you know. Oh, Larry the cable guy. Larry the cable guy, that's it. He looked kind of like Larry the cable guy. I was like, huh, okay. But, you know, they had a violin player and a keyboard player who looked, I was like, is that Don Svano?

I thought it might have been. It's just weird because my excitement, and again, this avant-garde metal is very new to me. I have taken to the Dondheims guard. I like it, but it's still, again, it's a work in progress. And I liked them when they first were, Octurus, right? This band we're talking about. Octurus, yeah.

Yeah.

I liked it at first, but then as the set goes on, it's like,

maybe I'm not ready for this yet.

That's the problem with something.

It was weird.

The way I describe it in my head, I tell myself, it's like,

hey, this is like vocal prog metal.

Like, you know, they're throwing a weird solo over here, weird drums over here.

There was one song they did that it sounded like something off of Pink Floyd's The Wall.

The way he was like,

It was like when Roger Waters is like, you know, in this like near hysterical scream. And I was like, he would go from like, you know, it's hard to. Yeah. He would just do stuff for the sake of being weird. And it's like, all right, I can dig that for a song or two. But like a whole set, it wears on me a little bit. And the crowd just seemed to just.

sit there and take it. They didn't seem... No, they seemed to like it. I mean, they said I wanted to hear some Wintry Grey, you know. I like the Aspera Heims Symphonia album. That's, you know, one of my favorite old school black metal albums. I will say what impressed me. Hellhammer, when he fucking... That's my first time ever seeing him. Drummond motherfucker. When he lays into the fucking kick drum, the bass. Yeah. Holy shit.

I bet somewhere out in the Twilight of the Gods camp, Nick Barker was going,

I wish I was allowed to play like that today.

Speaking of that, we've seen two amazing drummers today.

Yes, we have.

Two of the best in the genre.

And it's funny because all these people are like in different bands that are playing here, you know.

The singer for Twilight of the Gods is also playing tomorrow as the singer for Primordial.

The bass player for Twilight of the Gods is also played today in Einherjer? I don't know how to say it. And you were saying the Serpentine Path guy was also in Winter, who's playing tomorrow. So there's a lot of inbreeding. We signed one, but we get three from that one band playing. Yeah.

They go back to Arcturus. After they finish. We went back to look at vinyl again. Yeah, we went back to look at vinyl again. Because we were missing some stuff. I made another purchase. And I, despite my misgivings, I bought the new Arcturus vinyl. All right. Yeah. As we were walking back, I said, oh, look, George. Yeah. He goes, damn it. All right. Here's $26. Give me the damn thing. You're coming home with me. And today, what?

It would have been closed out by Sodom. But the U.S. government said no. I don't think so. Like we mentioned earlier. So Razor finished the stage. And George and I went over there to check them out for a couple songs. And they were all right. They were all right. But not like closing out the night kind of quality. You know. I mean, you know. Now to the guy in front of me with the Razor back patch. Yeah. Who's losing his fucking mind. Sure. That was a perfect night for him.

Sure, but you know, stand that up next to the Trypticon set? Yeah. Night and day, man. It was like, no, no. That's a tough spot to be put into. Totally. I mean, you know, they were originally further down the list. So, you know, it just was sort of probably thrust upon them. There's no blame in them or anything. You know, if anybody's at fault here, I'm sure it's the government because they didn't issue the visas that Sodom needed to come into the country and play the show.

So, it's fucked up. But hey, you know, I've got a Maryland Death Fest shirt. It says Sodom on the back. So I can be like, yeah, I saw Sodom. Sounded like Razor, though. So. So yeah, we, you know, they finished. We called an Uber, you know, back to the hotel, grabbed dinner. I gotta admit, I don't want to, like, be doing an ad for him or anything, but it's pretty damn cool. Buick gets on his phone and he's like, boop, boop.

And like a minute and a half later, there's a car. Yes. And if you don't, if you've never used Uber, check it out. Yeah, it's pretty badass. And then, you know, like 10 minutes later, there we were back at the hotel and you just hop out and go. It's like, damn, it's so easy. Yeah, no money exchange, nothing. It's all done on the PayPal with the phone. So Uber when you need a ride. So your initial impression,

Let me start by saying the things that stood out for me today. Serpentine Path. Serpentine Path, yeah. Amazing. Amazing fucking doom. I would venture to put that as my... Number three? Number three. Yeah. My number two after them. Just doom to the point where when you want to hear hard-hitting,

fucking doom that is could have shake the fucking glasses off of george's face yep it felt like

somebody was kicking you every time yep awesome just feel the kick drum on you i love the feeling that when i

am watching something and you enjoy it that much as soon as they finish i went out and bought the vinyl i love that's why i love music i love moments like that and then so so you have something you want to say um i was just gonna say that my number four

to backpedal a little bit would have been blood red throne because that was just it was just a nice punishing intense it was and then yeah three would be uh serpentine path yeah my number two uh twilight that might as well yeah twilight of the gods it was it was uh like a early tease for primordial exactly exactly and of course and yeah number one trip to come yeah i can agree there

You heard it here. We agreed. Just a solid set. I am nowhere near the fan George's, but I cannot lie and say that it wasn't a solid set. George, your impressions on the first day with the setup that they have here and everything? It was pretty good. Much like the M3 festival that I went to a couple of weeks ago, they had two stages, and one finishes and another one starts up almost immediately.

And in this case, the stages were sort of like perpendicular to each other. It was like... Like one's a 12 o'clock, one's a 3 o'clock. Right, yeah. You know, you look forward in the other stages to your... 3 o'clock. Yeah. You're right. Your 9 o'clock, technically. I was looking at the main stage and thinking to the left, but... Which would be 9 o'clock. But... So it was, you know, it was easy to get back and forth, unlike the M3 festival where you had to climb a fucking hill.

to get to the next thing that was over the hill and into the woods. Couldn't see one stage from the other. I'm saying all this because if you're thinking about next year, there's plenty of space in the lot. In fact, George and I passed people sitting in, fold-out lawn chairs. You can bring in any of the stuff. You just can't bring in weapons, food, drinks in. There's plenty of food trucks here.

And vegan options. I had lamb tacos today. Got a pulled pork. It was good. Yeah. And hey, if you're the... I already said that, didn't I? If you're the pulled pork guy that I gave the card to, you know, hope you're checking this out and enjoying it. Thanks for giving me a dollar off my drink when I came back. And, you know, we're going to go check it out again tomorrow.

Vendors are awesome. Yeah. Lots of people buying CDs. Surprising. Yes. There were a lot of CDs there. A lot of people were buying them. I wonder how much they were. CDs, I didn't even look. Because if they were cheap, I might go and look for the ones that I want flack files. If it's cheaper. I'm going to do the same fucking thing. But I bet they're not.

bucks a CD.

What if they're a dollar?

If they're a dollar, I'll fucking load up, man.

But I don't think...

Buke, go for a walk.

Yes.

Mule, come here.

Buke was a hell of a guy today and was...

I loaded him down with...

I mean, how many vinyls did we pick up today between the two of us?

Mostly me.

25?

25 vinyls.

Yeah.

And he's...

You know, Relapse gave us a nice tote bag.

And he's just hauling these around for the last two hours of the day so that I don't have to in my old decrepitness. Mostly because he doesn't want to listen to me bitch about it. You know me well. I've been trying to make this weekend smooth sailing for George. My bones are old. What is that from? It's like Monty Python or something. I was impressed. The staff has been friendly.

different vendors. Oh, yeah. Everybody was great. Yeah. Tomorrow, though, I will admit, today my excitement, you know, wasn't super high because a lot of these bands, I just don't know. Yeah. But tomorrow, George, is the fucking day we've been waiting for. Yeah. Well. I know you saw your trip. You saw your trip to con. Yep. That's funny. We're each seeing our number one from last year.

I just saw we are yeah interesting and my number two

who is my number three machine head right so they're not here anyway yeah well I you know in the

morning we'll get up and we'll talk about uh yep tomorrow's lineup so unless you have anything else I

think we uh we'll uh wrap it up for the day well technically it's 2 30 in the morning so we'll wrap it up

for this morning.

Just, uh, it's gone better than I thought it would. The weather was perfect today.

Yeah, it's supposed to be 10 degrees hotter tomorrow. Can't wait for that.

He said sarcastically.

Yeah, but it's, uh, it's, it's been a fun day, buddy. It's, uh, the only, my only negative I have to say is the music is so loud and there is not a break between bands.

It's just a constant barrage all day. And it's hard to have a conversation with other people. It is. Because that wall of noise is just... Yeah, it would have been nicer to be able to have more conversations with people at the show. Believe me, I've been trying the whole time. But there's just no breaks to do so. And, you know, you have to literally leave the venue and go out across the street and into the parking lot over there to get far enough away to talk. So, yeah, it just wasn't as convenient as we had hoped.

But tomorrow, I think before we head out, we'll probably do a preview of what's to come. The guys are going to meet us again in the parking lot before. The Nine Circles guys will meet up with them and have pre-brews. So, all right. That's it. So, I'm out of here. We're out of here. Yep. See you tomorrow in the morning. Bye. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the

Sunday, Maryland Death Fest show at the Edison Lot. Well, welcome back to our continuing Death Fest coverage on MNN, the Metal News Network. We have transitioned now. We left the hotel. The nice thing about Death Fest is you can come and go as you want, like we mentioned on earlier episodes.

So we are parked here now. Yeah, so we can come out. We can put in more vinyl into the car so that it can bake in the heat. Or if we're baking in the heat, we can come and turn on the AC and keep the vinyl cool. Like I said, we can... Cool off ourselves. Cool off. Sit down in a padded chair as opposed to a picnic bench.

But yeah, so here we are. Can I just say something, first off, by seeing these security guards walking in? Did you see one of them yesterday start crowd surfing? Yes, I thought that was hilarious. I was going to say something about that and I forgot. Did they're moshing, they're crowd surfing, they're fucking... I thought maybe he was like pissed off going after somebody. He's like, I'm getting on top of the crowd and I'm going to get you, fucker. But no, it pretty much looked like he was crowd surfing. That's funny.

You know, it's kind of laid back. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, here we are and we're waiting around. Doesn't look like the Nine Circles guys are here yet. But I guess we'll hook up with them when they get here. And can I say that there are some attractive females here this weekend? If you're listening to this and you're one of the attractive metal girls here this weekend,

Great job. You're looking good. Yeah. Ooh, that one right there bending over. Nice. Okay, then. Okay. So, yeah. So, what do we got today? Okay. So, the first band going on that we're probably going to skip is Prosanctus Inferi. I don't know these guys. Well, they're not on until 1245. So, we still got another hour. But I picked up a couple of their albums. I listened to them. And I was like,

It's alright. It's just like extreme brutal. Technical death metal-ish. Technical death metal makes me think more like alkaloid or something. It's not like that. But just like really loud noisy stuff that didn't really interest me all that much. But you know, if they sound cool, you might check it out. But of course after that, this is probably the band I'm second most excited for the whole weekend.

Yeah, me too. Because this is Toomes. George, you know, was instantly raving about these guys when he heard them last year. I, of course, didn't listen to them right at first. I trusted him like I always do, and I bought the vinyl, you know, purchased Unheard, and they became one of my favorite albums last year. Well, now one of my favorite bands. Yep, that was my number two album last year. We were talking to the Nine Circles guys. They said they saw a show of them up in Brooklyn, was it? Yeah. They said they fucking tore it up. They were amazing.

So it's really kind of a bummer that they're so early in the day. I mean, they're playing a 40-minute set, but... Do you think a lot of people here know of them? I don't know. I really don't know. I mean, as good as they are, you would think so. And, you know, the few people that I've talked to are all like, oh yeah, Toons, you know, so... But I don't know. I mean, given the way yesterday was, I expect it's going to be pretty dead when they play. Probably.

up yesterday.

So like four or five, right?

Yeah.

It was like when Bulldozer came on was when it really started filling up,

like somewhere between Volcano and Bulldozer.

Yeah.

Um, and yeah, that was like four or five o'clock.

So I don't know.

We'll see.

Maybe people.

But again, if you haven't heard Savage Gold from last year, pick that fucking album up.

Yeah.

Or even before that, the Path of Totality was really great.

And before that the winter hours. So good stuff. Check them out. Up after tombs we have Massacre with one S. South American? Probably. I looked up on Spotify. South American just brutal death metal bandits. So more like volcano kind of stuff. Not Mike. Right. If Jay was here, not Jay, if Will was here he'd probably be losing his mind over them.

Probably. I think it's the other massacre that he likes. The 2S Massacre. Where? Will probably be like, no, no I don't. I know he likes them. I know he likes them. We've talked about that. I like Massacre with 2S's as well. So unless this is a typo, and I know it's not because the Massacre with 2S's broke up again, this is a different Massacre. Well, guess what? They're back now. Yeah, but they'll be breaking up again in about five minutes. So. Alright.

After Massacre, Goat Snake. I'm on the fence about these guys. They're another band. Starter Sludge type of thing? Yeah, and they're just putting out their first album in like, I don't know, 15 years or something like that. And, you know, I listened to some of the older stuff. I think I even got a promo for the new album. And I'm on the fence. It's like, the style is pretty cool, but the music specific.

Son of a bitch. Fucking allergies, man. But the music specifically, it just didn't really grab me. It was like the style was cool, but the music was me. It was alright. So we'll see. Could be interesting. After that, there's a little band you might have heard of, Buke. They're called Primordial. You ever heard of these guys? Yes, I have. My album of the year last year, Where Great Men Have Fallen. Again, another early time for these guys.

Yeah, I mean this is even earlier than Trypticon was yesterday. It's almost insulting. I mean these guys have a long history. Yeah, I would have put them later than winter and later than skepticism at the very least. Demolich, hard to say. I mean the band only ever put out one album. So while they may be considered legendary, they only put out one album. I would put Primordial above them as well.

So that's my highlight. That's what I've been looking to the most this all weekend. Yeah, my top three there would have been, like, the last three headliners would have been Primordial, Neurosis, and Amorphous. But anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself here. So after Primordial, we have Winter, another one of these classic, like, doom death bands from the 90s, I think it was.

Maybe late 80s, but I think it was like early 90s

I'm curious to see what they're gonna sound like

I've listened to was it in darkness. I think it's called her into darkness something like that

You know

Compared to what's what's out now. It's not all that spectacular, but I think it was probably a pretty

Pretty decent for the time when it came out. So we'll see what they sound like. As we were talking at breakfast, we mentioned last night, this is made up of members of Serpentine Path are in it. So, is this a band you said I may like if I liked them yesterday? No, that would be... Okay, I'm sorry. That would be... Let's see. Well, fuck me. That would be his technical difficulties. No, that would be a band coming later.

We'll get to them. After winter, we have Anol Nathrok. I'm very curious what this is going to be like. I bet it's going to be... We thought Blood Red Throne yesterday was heavy. I'm certain it's going to be heavy. I'm just curious. Is it going to be just two guys and they have a lot of programming going on? Or are they going to be... What do they do live? Do they fill out the band with road musicians?

I don't know. One thing I know for sure is it's probably going to be loud as fuck out here. Because their album is. Yeah. Their albums are. And so I am looking forward to seeing them because that should be interesting at the very least and awesome at the outside best. Then after that is Skepticism, one of the forefathers of the funeral doom subgenre. And that's the one I was saying.

that if you were really digging Serpentine Path yesterday, you might really get into this. Because this is probably going to be just fucking chest-crushing fucking heavy music. So I'm definitely looking forward to seeing those guys. And after Skepticism is Demolich. They're playing 55 minutes. So I assume they're playing their one album.

They're probably just gonna play the whole album. Don't really know what to expect with that. After that, fuckin' neurosis. That's gonna be badass. I would really have to think. You wanna see these guys? I do. They have such a huge catalog, and I'm a little late to the party on them, that I didn't know really where to start. So I don't know what type of set they'll play, because they have a lot to pick from. Yeah.

Because I know there are a lot of these people

when they

list

bands of a certain genre you need to listen to

I always see their name come up

so

yeah definitely

so that'll be interesting to see there

I'm not super excited but I know that they're

they're good

so

and then finally closing out the night

making sure that we can't leave

early

is of Morph...

Amorph...

Amorph...

Amorphous, who will be playing the entirety of the Tales from the Thousand Lakes album.

Yep.

Which, if you were here, you were able to purchase one of the limited edition...

100 copy, yeah.

100 copy reissues from Relapse of Tales from the Thousand Lakes.

We both picked up a copy.

We're good consumers.

I'm really looking forward to that.

I went back and listened to that album again. It's an awesome album. It is. I really have gotten into their later stuff. Their Skyforger album. I know their styles changed a little bit over the years. Not the real heavy sound that they had when they first came out. I like them a lot. I really like the Circles, the last one that came out, and the one before that, Beginning. The Beginning of End Times, is that it? Something like that, yeah. Those were really good.

Yeah, their last three albums I've liked. Yeah. Well, they had sort of a middle period. It's like they started off with Tales of Thousand Lakes kind of death metal style. And then they started getting cleaner and they started doing clean vocals. And then they really only did clean vocals for a couple albums. And I just didn't really get into that stuff. So I stopped listening to them. You think this is their first time here in the States? No, no, I don't think so.

Someone's like, no, it's her seventh. Yeah. Yeah. No, I don't know. I've never seen them before, but I feel like they had to have been here before. I mean, I think one of the guys in Ninth Circles was saying that... I think it was him. Somebody said that they tried to see him like four years ago, five years ago, or something like that, so... I can't wait to see these singers' dreads also. He has like the dreads, you know, like the four-foot-long dreads. Yeah, I hate those.

Oh, well, what are you going to do? Yeah, what are you going to do? Guess I'll drink a beer. Yep. Is that thunder right here, or is that a band warming up? I think they're probably soundchecking. Yep. So, uh, yep. Alright, well, that's it. Look, I'll give you guys a little taste of soundcheck. You can't hear anything, because of course it fucking stops now. Yeah, but you can see the lights going on. And I bought a new car, so George and I came to Death Fest in a Toyota

The most metal of Prius. Yes. So we're sitting here in my fucking Prius now. Just being badasses. Yeah, that's why nobody's parking next to us. That's right, man. We're metal and we're saving the planet. Bitches. Who was that band that was always for the planet? Biohazard? Not really. No. Earth Crisis. Earth Crisis. That's it. I'm sorry. Yes. Yeah.

Planet's just fine. It's the humans that are fucked up. The planet will recover. People won't. Okay, well, we'll check in later. Since we have the car here now, George and I will be out here to sit in the car and talk later. Yep. We'll probably give you a mid-show update. Right on. See ya. See ya. Okay, this is Puke and George. Hello. George is drinking the fucking beer. We're made back up with our friends again. Nine Circles. The Nine Circles.

And we're here drinking some more beer in the parking lot. I always fucking put the mic too close. I get excited like a little like a little school boy. What's going on today boys? Ah nothing. This is our most most anticipated day of the festival. Sunday. Day four. Day four four. It's been a long time coming and we're just getting drunk and getting ready to watch the metal. Getting ready to watch the tombs is about to fucking come on after whoever's on right now. Pro Sanctus and Fury. I called them in furious pro sancti.

I don't know who they are anyway. But again, we mentioned, and we talked yesterday, Toomes is about to come on. George and I just said, easily one of the best albums of last year. Savage Gold. Yeah, one of the best bands here in the whole weekend. They rounded out my top ten last year. They were number ten on my list. They were number ten? Yes. Oh, wow. I can rally them all. There were some good ones. So my top ten last year, I'm not going to remember all of them, but Souls to Fear was in there.

Legion, Behemoth, Creep, and Stranger was one of the most ridiculously amazing albums.

I gotta ask you about Soul Staphir. Great album, I'm not denying that. But it's in no way a metal album.

It's post-metal. I love Soul Staphir and I like them for what they do. I don't look at them the same way I see black metal or any other subgenre. I just say this is a Soul Staphir album. And once you separate how you listen to it from everything else and you don't categorize it, then you really appreciate the listen.

Right. Like I said, I think it's a great album, but I'm not sure it belongs on a top ten metal list. Is it an awesome album? Fuck yeah, it's an awesome album, but is it a metal album? I give it some track back to their past, because they were a very black metal Icelandic band in their early days. And that is their root, that's their history. You still get some of their influences at times, so I still kind of categorize them in metal because of their entire career, even if maybe the most recent effort was far more post-metal than they've ever done before.

I look at the same thing with one of my favorite overall albums last year was Alcest, Shelter.

Yeah, that's another one.

Guys that started off as black gays, they're pretty much shoegays. There's nothing metal about them. I did not include them in my metal list.

It's like an Appleball, take your pick. There's a million bands like it.

Exactly. Well, last year, this guy's favorite band is Opet, but we left it off because that's not a fucking metal. It's a prog rock album.

Great prog rock album.

And I will say about that album, Cusp of Eternity,

One of the best songs came out last year. We did a top 10 for Opeth on our blog. I'm thinking these guys on. You did a top 10 Opeth? I did a top 10. What's your favorite Opeth album? Shit. Sorry. For me, I don't think it's their best, but for me, Nostalgia Purposes, this was my first heavy Opeth album that I got into, Ghost Rivers. Same for me. That was my number one, too. I knew we were going to agree on that one. That was my number one, too. Blackwater Park and Still Life are great, but Ghost Rivers, I have the Nostalgia.

I have to start to finish.

We saw them when they did the Heritage Hunter Tour with Mastodon.

Yes.

And they did the entire set was like all the mellow, melodic shit.

And then when they busted into Ghost of Perdition.

Not Ghost of Perdition, what was it? Grand Coduration.

Grand Coduration.

Monster.

Yes.

Absolutely.

How did they go to the Mastodon?

I saw them on tour with Cat of Latonia. There was a last show on tour, they did a quick bloodbath set. What? Yeah. That's incredible. And it's fucked up because we interviewed Michael for the show, which is like, it's on our YouTube. It's the most fucked up interview ever because he's in the corner and he's fucking... Yeah, it looks like an interrogation. It's slightly out of focus because they stuck us in like the hallway that goes between the stage and like in the back area. And there's people walking back and forth inside.

I kinda had to vacuum into a corner with the camera and you know like I said I it was out of focus because I didn't have a chance to really play with the settings any yeah and we we asked him we're like so you know you're gonna be doing any any thing with bloodbath anymore or any more harsh vocals ever again and he was he was coy I just saw them this past January or maybe was a summer when they're on tour with in flames and the first two tracks as expected were right up new album custom return to me but after

They didn't come around our area here. Well, I've been lucky. I've seen them a couple times. I've seen them 14 times. I'll say that again. Well, that's more than a couple. Good for you. Good for you. But right after Custible Eternity, they broke immediately into Deliverance. Right off the bat. Really? Track number three on the set. It was a great show, a great set list. They did an incredible job. Michael's still got some death metal in his core. It's going to come out. It's going to come back out. It will. And shall we say, you already started George's

I'm excited today. When we saw your shirt, look at this. This is Evokin Ultramores. One of the best Funeral Doom metal albums ever. Shout out. Okay, so getting back to that today. Tombs is about to fucking go on. Who else you guys excited for? Number one, Amorphous. Primordial, Ananothroc, Winter, Neurosis. So do you know if Ananothroc have guys that come out with them or do they just play the two of them? I don't know. I've never seen

That's a great question. Truth be told, I hadn't really even listened to them before Zidaratum came out last year.

I don't know about that, Monty. Do you listen to that album?

I've listened to it since, yeah, but I've only been familiar with them for about six months now.

Still a lot of people. Yeah, still a lot of people. That'll be good.

Primordial was probably my highlight of the day.

Maybe two. Well, fuck, after Alan yesterday, after Twilight of the Gods.

That was my favorite album of last year.

It was just a perfect start to finish, just a perfect heavy metal album. Not super heavy in parts, you know, but a perfect album.

The thing I love about Primordial is you can't really classify them, right?

Because, like, they have black metal, but it's in such a unique way from the vocals down to the pace.

Yeah.

And everything else.

Alan, you can tell, like, he's very clearly influenced by, like, the classic vocalists, like, the more melodic.

Like, I hear shades of Dio.

What I was doing in Shades of the MF site? Like a little Matt Barlow. Yeah, yeah. I can hear that. I can hear that. Yeah. I took a quick like Instagram video yesterday of like wanting to just see it. I was like, I have to capture this. This dude is like, otherworldly. Yeah, it was fantastic. You may lose me if Memorial opens how the, how the Wynne Grayman have fallen. Oh, yes. If they open with that track, if they open with the same track, I will disappear. So will I.

That was one of the best songs I've heard the longest time.

The lyrics and everything in that song is ten-faced.

And I don't know why they're not getting behind that song.

I don't know why they're playing it for a fucking clock.

Yeah, and they can use to be one of those bands.

I think of last year, like, Uncle Asset.

They set them up when it was still pretty light out.

And I was just like, "No, this is a band that likes to play in darkness."

You know, set them up a little bit later on.

They could have easily carried like an 830. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But obviously they had some bigger names to attend to. What do you guys think of it? I mean, the music is so dark. It was the thing, though. It seems weird. Even Serpentine Path, it seems weird seeing these doom metal, slow, sludgy, penetrating riffs. And then it's like 80 and sunny and you're like, oh, this is so nice.

"Welcome to just about any band that plays the 70,000 tons of metal crews." As much as we want to go to that. And as much as this will happen in the next couple years, I'm assuming. Yeah, the Metal Sucks guys go on that and we were listening to their coverage and going, "Man, we gotta go to that thing." Yeah, we're planning on that. I have never met Chuck or Godless, but we've treated them all the time. They seem like fun dudes. Yeah, they do seem like fun dudes except when they kind of mess with George a little bit. Pirate Metal rules!

Ailstorm for days.

We did it because we were doing our top 20 albums on our podcast, but they came on for our year-end episode.

And so we're like, well, what else can we do?

Let's do top 10 songs of the year.

That's good, yeah.

Which, for me at least, was very different because I based it on whether it was catchy in my head,

something that gets stuck in my head, which is a completely more commercial beast than my albums.

And my number one song for last year was "Ailstorm Drink." I love this song! I go back to it all the time in these situations! I don't think that's in my head all the time! We are here to drink your beer! To your rum at the point of a gun! The alcohol to us will fall! We are here to drink your beer! See, if I had to do a top ten, I have another one from that album. I love the cover of "Hangover" by Tao Cruz. Like, I don't like Tao Cruz at all.

The original song sucks, but they make it so much fun. The whole tone of that is just so upbeat. I absolutely love it. So they gave me a lot of shit about Pirate Metal. So what, dude? It's fun. It's for the purpose. For the next couple days, it's like, oh, Pirate Metal. We were sitting there parrots back and forth on the pirate's shoulder and stuff like that. He didn't like Tripticon either, so whatever. No genre or no subgenre inspires more fun than Pirate Metal.

It's that simple. I'm sorry. I'm not going to get really super drunk and party to a fucking trypticon or blackmail or something. It's not going to work that way. I am sitting in the corner by myself weeping. And there's a lid. Intense is burning. I'm just sitting there like, leave me alone. Okay, well, we're going to sit here. Gentlemen, truly, a friendship was made this weekend with you guys. Pleasure to meet you, Jens. We'll be tough. Obviously, I can say this maybe speaking for you guys too. Podding with you guys in the future. You guys are fucking welcome all of us.

us anytime you guys are awesome it's been a blast make some friends too with you guys and we'll see you guys all about right yep that's what it's all about there we go cheers guys all right so here we are at the end of the day on sunday i'm sorry we didn't get to do any midday uh recordings but uh today was one crazy day yeah it was fucking hot as hell there were a lot of good bands and

We were just fucking wiped out. So any extra time we had, we fucking got food, drink, grab a nap, grab a nap, sit down, find some shade, whatever. So we'll just give you one, you know, one play by play for the whole day now. Let's see. So the first band that played today was the Pro Sanctus Inferi, I believe it was. And we didn't watch that.

No, we didn't watch it. We caught up with the non-circle guys and started drinking beer with them. And we recorded some material with them. Hopefully it turned out well. So hopefully you guys are hearing that or have already heard that. Yep. So then we all made our way inside and got up front for tombs. Yes. And not unexpectedly, they fucking came.

Oh yeah, they started out right with the first track from their new album, right at the start, and from then on it was on. And we made the curious discovery that the Toomes singer-guitar player looks rather like our own Jay Dickinson. Except a little chunkier. Just a little chunkier, or beefier. Yeah, so I nicknamed him Chunky Jay. That was a great set they put on. Oh, it was amazing.

A Couple Songs From Order Albums. It was definitely one of my favorite sets of the day. We got right up on the fence for that. Yep. Great way to start the day. And then after that, we didn't go back outside again for a while? Because we didn't care about, I'll have the band list in front of me now. Massacre, was that it? Massacre and somebody else.

Well, we didn't, whoever they were, we didn't watch them, so it didn't matter. Fuck, I wish I could remember who it was. Why don't you keep talking for a little while? I'll see if I can pull up the list. No, but we went outside. We had some more brews. I think that's when we interviewed the Nine Circle guys at that time. Yeah. Just shot the shit with them.

They're an excellent group of guys. They had a couple more friends show up to join us. And from there, I think we went back in and it was getting ready for Primordial time, if I'm correct. I think that was the next band that we saw. Yep, give me one second here, I'll have that schedule. I think Primordial was the next band because... So yeah, After Tombs was Massacre.

of course Massacre with one S. Don't get excited. And then Goat Snake was the other band. Yeah, so we heard them from the parking lot. Yeah, we did. Yeah, we heard them from the parking lot. I think we probably caught the tail end of them as we were coming in for Primordial. And Primordial, would you believe it? They actually completely sucked. We couldn't believe it. No, they were amazing. They were amazing. They were amazing.

They opened up where greater men have fallen. And let me just say, you know, leading up to it, Buke was like fucking Rain Man. He's like, they better play where greater men have fallen. I really hope they play where greater men have fallen. And so I was so happy that they opened with it so he wouldn't have to worry about it the whole set. Because I've been disappointed as of late with my songs not being played. Yeah. Like at the King Diamond show. And of course, yesterday,

We saw Alan singing for Twilight of the Gods. Today, of course, he had on his primordial garb. Yeah. So he had his hood and the makeup and stuff on. And it was... They sounded amazing, too. I was going to call this my favorite set of the day, but now I'm calling it a tie for my favorite set of the day. Oh, okay. It was my favorite set of the day. Yeah, of course. Okay, and then we rounded up...

We stayed there the whole time just fucking loving it. They played Babel's Tower, Coffin Ships. They played all their hits. Yeah, all the greatest hits from Primordial. After Primordial, we were starting to really feel it after that. We were pretty beat. And it was only, you know, like four o'clock in the afternoon.

I guess. That's when winter came on. And we didn't go over to the stage to watch them, but we sat nearby and we could hear them. Call us pussies, but it's 80 degrees, 85 degrees, and we're standing on a blacktop parking lot. Just blaring sun, yeah. Just baking you. Yeah, it was anytime you were in the direct sun, it was just fucking horrible.

So yeah, we heard Winter, but we didn't really look at him too much. I sort of leaned over around the little building we were by. There they go, they're big. So yeah, there's Winter. Okay. All right. Well, you know, moving on. So then we were already set up for the next band, Anal Nathrak. And well, these guys were pretty badass. Yeah, we answered your question.

This band. Yep, yep. You know, the core of the band in terms of studio recording and such is just two guys. So we were like, are they going to do like a two-piece thing and use like, you know, recordings and triggers and things like that? The answer is no. They had a full band and they were pretty crushing. Heavy. Heavy, yeah. Fucking heavy. Fucking heavy. What you hear on the CD, the album, is what you heard live today. Brutal. Yeah.

them. Interesting enough,

they,

when we had seen a bunch of heavier bands before them,

you think it can't get any heavier,

they shattered those walls.

Yeah,

that was,

it was pretty damn heavy.

So then after that,

actually,

towards the end of the winter set,

sorry,

not,

end of the Anald Nathrock set,

Puke was just,

he was beat,

He was fucking, he was gone. And he had to go out to the car and just like chill for a bit. So I stuck around for the end of Anomath Rock and the beginning of the next band, Skepticism. And I don't know if he were coming in already, but I was texting him going, dude, you need to get the fuck in here. Yeah, as soon as you text me, I was like, oh, okay, I'm coming in. This is my band that tied for first for my favorite set of the day. It was Skepticism.

And I think I sort of stand alone on this one, even though people, like some of the Nine Circles guys, were like, yeah, you know, it didn't really do anything for me. But, you know, my point being, skepticism is one of the pioneers of funeral doom. And if you're not a fan of funeral doom, you're just not going to get it, you know? Yeah, looking around, people look bored. Yeah. But people were clapping.

What's so great for me was that it wasn't just another concert set. It was almost like performance art. Now, I've never seen the band before. I don't know if this is what they always do. If they do, it's a pretty genius move. But, okay, it's Funeral Doom. They were all dressed up in, like, you know, fancy clothes. Tuxes. Yeah, and I was like, what's that all about? And I finally was like,

They're dressed for a funeral. Yeah. I was like, that's so fucking badass. And they don't, they're heavy as shit. They're a funeral doom band, but they don't have a bass player. They have, he's a keyboard player, I guess, but he was basically an organ player. And so there's a guitar player, an organ player, a drummer, and a singer. And first of all, the music was just hauntingly beautiful. And then the vocals would just be like.

Yeah, the whole time. And, ooh, I... Great job, though. Shouldn't have done that. And, uh... And the singer, like you said, he was, like, in a tux or something, and the white bow tie was, like, untied. He looked, like, disheveled, like something had happened. And what really made it for me was the singer... In Funeral Doom, there's a lot of music where there's no singing.

And he could go offstage or just stand there or do whatever. But what he could do, the emotion that he could give just standing there was like a slap in the face. It was like, holy shit. It was just incredible what he could communicate by gestures and facial expressions alone. You know, he looked like... He looked very somber. Forlorn. Yes. You know. Yes.

He looked like and like with the smoke drifting across the stage. Yeah, the smoke was hanging. Do you notice the smoke was really hanging? Yeah. A little heavy for them. And it was like, like he had just lost his love. Yeah. Or he had just gotten in a car accident and his, somebody that he loved lay dead at his feet. He was just, it wasn't like melodramatic. It was just very somber and just like forlorn. The crowd was even cheering. The crowd was

It was like heartbreaking. I was like wow. That is truly the spirit of funeral doom right there. Again this is in broad daylight. Yeah. That we're feeling this way. Imagine a dark venue. Yeah. He was simply phenomenal. And. Have you listened to other. I know you've known of them. Yeah I've got a couple other albums. But you know. On you know in your headphones or whatever.

It's just another funeral album. But to see this performed live, the way that they do it, I felt it was something truly different and very special. And, you know, I mean, everybody was clabbin', and I think, you know, maybe people who didn't know them didn't know what was going on, but they felt something, I think. You think this was the right venue for them on the bill?

I don't see why not. Okay, I'm just saying, surrounded by all these other extreme bands, you know, they're not, you know, light by any means of it. I mean, Twilight of the Gods isn't metal either. I just didn't know if you thought that they, you know, would have been better off on a different build. I like a little diversity in the sets. Yeah, so do I. It's Maryland Death Fest, but, you know, it's nice to have some other styles in there to mix things up. So, I thought that was just,

It's a truly phenomenal set. But by the end, this just completely sapped us. So while I kind of wanted to check out Demelich, I'm not exactly sure how that's pronounced. This is at the point where we were like, fuck this. And we have been drinking beers all day. Yeah, it's always good to do that in the heat. Without water. You don't get dehydrated or anything.

So we went out to the car and crashed hard. I actually have some video of you snoring. So yeah, we crashed for most of their set. But talking to... I'm drawing a blank on his name. Dan? Yeah, to Valken. Oh, you mean Corey. Yeah, Corey, I'm sorry. Corey said that going to Valken and stuff, it's common for young people to go back to their campsite, to their tent.

You're not a band you really don't want to see, grab a quick nap, and then you're right back in it again. Yeah, it's common. We're not pussies. Come on, I'm trying to... Yeah, so we caught that, you know, we went in before the band had finished because Neurosis was coming up next, so we wanted to be prepared for that. We caught the tail end of them, and it actually sounded pretty good. I'm not a real big fan of their one album that they put out back in the early 90s. I know it's a classic, but...

But, you know, the recording quality, the vocal quality, just didn't really do anything for me. But they played well, I thought, from what I heard. I thought they sounded really good, so right on. But then, of course, Neurosis. Yes. Not unexpectedly again. No. They were pretty badass. Yeah. You know. Heavier than the recordings I've heard. Yeah. Of them. Yeah, definitely.

Definitely sludgy, heavy. Really sludgy, yep. But again, like halfway through the set, we had to go sit down. Our legs were given out. This is really making us sound like a bunch of pussies. We are. We are just a bunch of pussies. But I mean, you know, we were still within, you know, 30, 40 yards of the band. So, you know, we still listened. And

And actually towards the end of that set, I looked up and I was like, hey Buke, isn't that Nick Barker walking by? And he's like, oh, wait, what? And so he fucking jumps up and runs off after him. And I'm like, all right, here we go. Here we go again. Here we go. Mr. Social Butterfly on the prowl. So I drag my broken ass after him.

And he's already engaged Nick in conversation. And so I catch up and jump in and, you know, we shake hands and we all take pictures together. And it was cool. Nick was a good guy. Very nice guy. Very nice guy. Very happy to talk to us. And very humble. You know, we were heaping praises on him as to what a great drummer he is. And he was very, you know, just like

Oh, no, no, no, no. Yeah. I asked him what he's doing now with other projects or something. He said he's kind of taking a step back and working more in the background in the promotions, working with bookings and stuff. So in case you're a Nick Barker fan, aside from Twilight of the Gods, that's what he's working on now. Yep. So then we finally get to the headliners of the day, the last band.

The Edison Lot, Amorphous. Yes. And they came out and they were going to be playing the entirety of Tales from the Thousand Lakes. And I cannot guess that anybody left there disappointed in that. No. There were a few complaints about the sound quality. I will agree. But I don't think any metal show is going to leave everybody. You're not going to find anybody that does it.

He doesn't have any complaints about the sound. The mix was just bad. Yeah. But they put on a great show. Yeah, they came out though. You know, when bands play the whole albums, I don't mind. I know they're a little pressed for time. If they would have come out and maybe played some other songs first and then roll into it, cool. Yeah. But I know time here is an issue. Yeah, time is at a premium. Especially when they're, you know, jumping right from band to band to band. But,

Granted, they were the headliners, so you know. And I assume there's a curfew, so they wouldn't be able to go over that. We decided to get a jump on everybody trying to squeeze through the exit at once. So during the last song, we started walking. And... Watch out there, buddy. And as we're walking by, I saw somebody that I knew. Yeah. Somebody from a local band that...

I'd met a few months back and I was like, "Oh, hey, puke, I gotta chase it." I started chasing the dude down. George actually starts running after this guy and as he starts, like, you know, as George is literally starting to hustle, I see the members of Trypticon. Three members of Trypticon, the guitar player, the bass player and the drummer, are stopped talking to some people and he's like, "George, George!" I'm like, "Dude, dude, I gotta go have to go." Yeah, George is like, "Puke, I have to go!" And, you know, I wanted to say, you know,

I mean, it's no disrespect, but fuck him. Yeah. George, here's your Trypticon right here. And I finally understood what he was talking about. So I was like, look to the guy I know, look to Trypticon. I'm like, not even a choice there. So I ran over and joined Buke. And, you know, I immediately started gushing to the guitar player, just like, you know, we have a podcast.

One Choice for last year. And he's all like, "Oh, thank you. Thank you." And, you know, also very humble. Yes. And... I can't take my eyes off of the bass player. She's gorgeous. And so then again, you know, we both took pictures with the three of them. I meant today, sorry, you know, you were really playing heavy. You broke your bass string. She goes, you know, very nice and innocent. She says simply, "It happens." It happens.

I was hoping to try and get her on the podcast. I think I mentioned that last night. And I was doing a little research in the car here and she has pretty much no internet footprint whatsoever. She has the only thing that she has online apparently is a Twitter account that she never uses. So I don't know if I'll be able to pull that off. I might try contacting the label and see if they'll hook something up. But I'm kind of guessing.

She probably doesn't do interviews. So we'll see. So anyway, that was a great capper to the evening. Again, these pictures are on the Instagram, the Twitter, Facebook. Yeah, so you can check that out. I've been posting stuff to Twitter for the last two days, pictures and stuff, so you can check that out. I was a little inconsistent. Some of it was Twitter, some of it was Facebook, some of it was Instagram.

If I posted it to Instagram, it would post it to both of the others. I should have been doing that all along. But anyway, so that was a great capper to the whole weekend. From there, we walked out to the parking lot. We waited for the Nine Circles guys, you know, said, great meeting you and all that, which it was. It was truly an honor talking to them. It's always, it's the best part of going to these shows is meeting people and just, you know, getting to know people. Making friends. Yep.

So we had a blast there and we parted ways and now we are headed home and we're really fucking thirsty. Yeah, we're fucking dying and everything's closed. Everything's fucking closed this late on a Sunday night. So it looks like it's going to be home before any liquids are to be found. So sorry. It is Memorial Day now. It's here in the States. It's just a little after midnight. George, you will be

Yeah, I'm going to be... I was joking. I was saying I'll wake up on Tuesday. Because I'm fucking tired. I will be... First off, say happy birthday to my wife, Stephanie. Love you, babe. Even though she doesn't listen to this. But I love you. It's there. If something ever happens to me, there's your voice. There's your drop. Yep. Alright. But...

I work so I gotta pick my fucking stuff up and go to work tomorrow. Yep. But I have a whole fucking list of bands to play tomorrow. Hell yeah. A bunch of vinyl to listen to in the morning. Exactly. George one thing you take away the most from the weekend? Probably pain. Well I feel like it was a really good experience. It's something we probably should have done earlier but it's definitely something we will be doing again.

again, so. Mine stuck with me. It's something I thought of when I told you I would have it when we repotted later. Being surrounded by true metal fans. Yeah. You didn't see, you know, we've all been to the concerts. You didn't see one slipknot shirt. No. You didn't see, you didn't even see Opas. You didn't even, I'm serious. You didn't see a lot of the, you know,

entry-level bands. Right. You saw true metalheads here. Yeah. Yeah, from all over. That was... It was cool just being part of that. Yes. Something that, you know, every place we went to, if it was getting beer, if it was, you know, drinking last night at the club. Being surrounded by all these people that look way cooler than we do. Yes. But, hey, what are you going to do? But, you know, people are like, oh, what are you there for?

What's the type of bands? We belong to that. Today. And we talked to a lot of people who asked about our shirts and was like, hey, what's this about a podcast? And, you know, told them about the podcast, handed out some cards. If any of you guys are listening. Truly. Thanks. So thanks for listening. It was an awesome festival. I, you know, we learned how to, I forgot how to do a big festival like this.

There's one other thing I have to mention. Mr. Social Butterfly over here, he doesn't like playing by the rules. And so he quickly made friends with the lady at the exit gate. And so, you know, with your wristbands, you're free to come and go, but you have to go and show them your wristband and get searched again every time you go back in. Not this guy.

It's because I gave her a beer. He gave her a beer. Made pals with her. And every time he'd go by, he'd say something nice to her or whatever. And so then when we'd come back, we'd just go back in through the exit. I could never get away with these sorts of things. This guy, I don't know how he does it. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. I just shake my head and follow along. But it was a fun day. No more buying of the vinyl for you today. No. No.

I couldn't find anything else I wanted. I think I've got a big enough stack. I picked up a couple shirts today. A white one. I picked up a white shirt, yes. The gruesome. What am I doing? You'll wear it, and you'll like it. I will. It's an old school throwback. You'll come to love the white shirt, and you'll be asking fans to make more. At least it doesn't have the three quarter length sleeves, right? Yes. So, that's going to wrap up.

We are out of here. Hopefully we'll have a new

regular podcast for you soon. Jay will be there for that.

George, it was fun again, brother. I love you and it was a great

couple days with you. Yep, this is

memories. Yep, always is.

Alright, see ya.

See ya.