Maryland Deathfest 2011: my photos and a first take

Maryland Deathfest 2011, a set on Flickr.

So much to chew on from my weekend in Baltimore. Talked to a lot of folks, got a decent look at a few local areas, did some record shopping, and became acquainted with National Bohemian beer, a.k.a. Natty Bo, the cheap beer of choice in Baltimore. Plus, I woke up Saturday morning with a blood bruise in my eyeball that I have no idea how I got.

And Maryland Deathfest! I got a look at about 15 different bands over 3 days. The music was of inconsistent quality, but the scene was just great to soak up. Here are the photos I took on a cheap digital camera. View this as a slideshow and check out the descriptions ("Show info") for my commentary on the festival.

getting ready for Maryland Deathfest, part 2: scanning the schedule

Now, which bands to see?  I know a handful of the older ones from having listened to and seen them in concert 20 or more years ago.   Still, there's much catching up to do, and I've been digesting all the preparatory material I can find: the Inverted Umlaut podcast, the Invisible Oranges program guide, the Baltimore City Paper cover story.  My friend and festival companion Francesco and I have chosen Friday and Sunday as the dates we'll be attending.  Here's what we can look forward to:

Day 1: Thursday, May 26

WITCHAVEN - 4:45 - 5:15
SHITSTORM - 5:30 - 5:55
NOISEAR - 6:10 - 6:40
MIASMAL - 6:55 - 7:30
LACK OF INTEREST - 7:45 - 8:20
FLESH PARADE - 8:35 - 9:10
EXTORTION - 9:25 - 10:00
BUZZOV*EN - 10:15 - 11:00
TRAGEDY - 11:15 - 12:00 CATHEDRAL - 12:15 - end

We're not attending this date, but I'd love to see Tragedy, the latest incarnation of a Memphis crust-punk/metal collective that goes back to the early 90s.  They started out as Cop Out, an unwashed, screamy-meemy outfit that I saw play in Santa Barbara with the Yah Mos (predecessors of !!!) and Jara (predecessors of my old band Born and Razed).  Then they became a smaller unit, took on a bona-fide long-hair metal guitarists, and got ridiculously heavy as His Hero Is Gone.  (Coincidentally, Born and Razed played with His Hero Is Gone and Still Life in Baltimore, in front of 10 people at a garage called the Shuffle House back in 1995.)  Now they're older, their hair is shorter, but they're still as beefy and mighty as they used to be.

Day 2: Friday, May 27

THE IMPALERS - 4:00 - 4:30
NOCTURNAL - 4:25 - 5:00
NAILS - 4:45 - 5:15
FUNEBRARUM - 5:15 - 5:55

PULLING TEETH - 5:30 - 6:00
AURA NOIR - 6:00 - 6:50
MACHETAZO - 6:40 - 7:20
CORROSION OF CONFORMITY - 7:20 - 8:20
CRIPPLE BASTARDS - 8:25 - 9:05
NEUROSIS - 9:10 - 10:45 
KYLESA - 10:45 - 11:25
EXHUMED - 11:40 - 12:25
MARDUK - 12:40 - end

Friday gets thick with great acts starting at 6 pm with Aura Noir, a Norwegian black metal act that nods heavily to old-school thrash metal.  Corrosion of Conformity are one of the big vintage acts at MDF, a hardcore punk band from North Carolina that led the crossover to underground metal back in the 80s.  I saw the version led by Pepper Keenan that got signed to a major label back in the early 90s, but apparently the original trio from their "Animosity" heyday will be playing tonight.  Kylesa are indie-rock's favorite metal band of the moment, with two drummers and probably the only woman on stage all weekend (guitarist/vocalist Laura Pleasants); their latest album is a tad too alternative for me, but I'm betting they'll be pulling the Pixies-sounding numbers from their setlist in favor of their old sludge metal classics.  The evening closes with the self-proclaimed "most blasphemous band in the world," Swedish black metal icons Marduk.  This isn't your quasi-psychedelic lo-fi black metal, but some of the fastest, loudest, and most "brutal" (an adjective that will get overused this weekend) metal I've heard.  Frankly, it doesn't make sense at all when played on an iPod, so I'm especially looking forward to hearing it on stage. 
 

Day 3: Saturday, May 28

MASAKARI - 12:30 - 12:55
INNUMERABLE FORMS - 1:10 - 1:35
CREATIVE WASTE - 1:50 - 2:20
MAMMOTH GRINDER - 2:35 - 3:05
CRETIN - 3:20 - 3:55
AVULSED - 3:50 - 4:30
THE KILL- 4:10 - 4:40
CIANIDE - 4:35 - 5:10
BLOOD FREAK - 4:55 - 5:30
NUNSLAUGHTER - 5:30 - 6:10
IN SOLITUDE - 6:10 - 6:50
DROPDEAD - 6:25 - 6:55
HAIL OF BULLETS - 6:55 - 7:45
DOOM - 7:10 - 7:55
IMPALED NAZARENE - 7:55 - 8:45
EXHORDER - 8:50 - 9:40

VOIVOD - 9:45 - 10:45
DEFEATED SANITY - 9:55 - 10:30
ACID WITCH - 10:45 - 11:25
HOODED MENACE - 11:40 - 12:20
INQUISITION - 12:35 - end

We're not attending this date either, but the one everyone's talking about is Voivod, a Quebecois thrash-cum-prog metal quartet that goes back to the mid-80s.  I like Voivod on paper, but their music has often left me cold.  Long ago I sold their 1986 album Rrröööaaarrr, which I found too poorly produced, too amateurish, and too arch at the time (confessing this action now discredits any extreme metal credibility I have in 2011).  I also sold their big commercial album from 1989 Nothingface, which went the opposite direction—too slick and too commercially ambitious (including an unexciting version of Pink Floyd's "Astronomy Domine").  However, I'll still put 1988's Dimension Hatröss on the turntable from time to time.
 

Day 4: Sunday, May 29

VISCERAL DISGORGE- 1:15 - 1:45
OAK - 2:00 - 2:30
NIGHTBRINGER - 2:45 - 3:20
BAD ACID TRIP - 3:35 - 4:10
GRAVEHILL -3:45 - 4:25
DEAD CONGREGATION - 4:25 - 5:05
NOKTURNEL - 5:00 - 5:40
REPUGNANT - 5:40 - 6:20
MALIGNANT TUMOUR - 6:00 - 6:45
SKINLESS - 6:45 - 7:30
ORANGE GOBLIN - 6:45 - 7:30
LOCK UP - 7:30 - 8:15
BASTARD NOISE - 8:15 - 8:55
NUCLEAR ASSAULT - 8:20 - 9:10

CORONER - 9:20 - 10:50
CITIZENS ARREST - 9:50 - 10:30
WORMED - 10:45 - 11:25
LAST DAYS OF HUMANITY - 11:40 - 12:15
GHOST - 12:30 - end

Not sure if we're going to stay late into the night, but the two bands we'll definitely catch are Nightbringer and Dead Congregation. Nightbringer is essentially what you want from black metal: not so fast and pummeling to veer into death metal territory, with a wash of distorted guitars that makes up in sonic depth what it loses in attack, and dudes in face-paint and/or hooded cowls singing odes to Satan, oblivious to the absurdity of their mission.  You could be more Scandinavian and more lo-fi than these guys, but they illustrate black metal's generic charm about as well as anyone.  Dead Congregation are responsible for probably the best album I picked up in preparation for MDF: very brutal (there's that term again) death metal that feeds back all over the place.  What do occult themes sound like from a Greek Orthodox perspective?  We may get to find out with Dead Congregation.  I'd be interested in checking out Bastard Noise, who like Tragedy are an offshoot from 1990s DIY hardcore legends—in this case, Man Is The Bastard (truly a great band name).  It would be a gas to see Nuclear Assault, one of the few east coast bands from the 80s thrash metal heyday that I thought were worth listening to.  And I'd like to stick around until the end to see what the crowd makes of Ghost, a Swedish metal band who sings Satanic themes in—I kid you not—some super-catchy 70s arena-rock/80s glam-metal trappings.

getting ready for Maryland Deathfest, part 1: statement of intent

Grades have been turned in, the school year is over, and now I turn to more important responsibilities — road trip! In eight days I'll be attending Maryland Deathfest to experience the state of the art in extreme heavy metal. As the event's website states, "With an emphasis on diversity, the festival brings together the very best death metal, grindcore, thrash, hardcore, black metal, and experimental bands from all around the world." 

 

Why am I, a 42-year-old family man and sociologist, going to Maryland Deathfest?  Well, first: BECAUSE I CAN, thanks to my sainted wife who's tolerating my absence for four days while she stays behind with the kids.  So this counts as my Father's Day present, my birthday present, my Christmas present this year... and maybe even next year...  But I'm also going to satisfy my curiosity about three issues:

1. The return of 80s-style thrash metal.  My years of metal obsession were most intense between 1987 and 1993—in a nutshell, from Slayer's South of Heaven to Sepultura's Chaos A.D.  As I remember it, those were the period when the heyday of thrash metal (or speed metal, as we called it; I never used the term thrash metal or, worse, power metal) originating out of California gave way to Florida-based death metal, British-driven grindcore, all manners of occult weirdness from Continental Europe (often involving facepaint), and the mookification of alternative rock.  As Francesco, my former student and guide to all things contemporary in metal, has shown me, the sounds of thrash metal have influenced a number of young bands who have pulled back from the speed of death metal or the commitment of black metal (for two excellent examples, listen to Skeletonwitch and Toxic Holocaust). 

Yet as with most revivals, this isn't your father's thrash metal, but a selective revision of the 80s genre.  Most notably, much of the really extreme metal today disposes of the guitar solos that could be heard in the middle of almost every 80s thrash metal song. What does this signify?  A postmodern decentering of the foundation in blues-based hard rock that their 80s predecessors felt obliged (by their guitar teachers, perhaps) to acknowledge?  How else has thrash metal been selectively revived today?  How will the presence of 80s legends like Voivod, Nuclear Assault, Corrosion of Conformity and Coroner on this bill be received?

2. What's the metal action like these days?  I've been led to believe that Maryland Deathfest isn't another Ozzfest-type event where "extreme metal" is simply a corn-fed American music to send young men into the armed forces.  The music here will be niche, particularly centered in the black metal domain, and surprisingly global in origin.  Who's the audience for this stuff?  The most discriminating and alienated of the male lumpenproletariat, for whom Slipknot and Avenged Sevenfold might as well be the Black Eyed Peas and Katy Perry?  An educated musical intelligenstia looking for a little more kick than the All Tomorrow's Parties festival can provide?  Will the general admission floor erupt into a bruising wall of death, or will the audience merely stand in silence the better to shoot video from their iPhones?  Will attendees wear monastic robes and cowls, adorn themselves in leather and chrome, or paint their faces in black-metal kabuki style?  (GOD I HOPE SO.)

3. Brand THIS, Baltimore!  As this blog illustrates, I try to critically engage the latest paradigms in the fields of city branding and economic development, which are very enthusiastic these days about attracting musically sophisticated creative-types seeking an authentic, interactive relationship to places.  The models here are South by Southwest or more likely your more garden-variety city street festivals, which (the thinking goes) heighten to a not-too-abrupt crescendo a city's year-round portfolio of local performance, creativity, and supporting "amenity infrastructure," the better to provide a musical calling card for residents and tourists who always have choices about where they could live or visit. 

Baltimore could be doing worse in terms of attracting the demographic profile that's usually connoted by these paradigms: the college-educated 20-somethings who form and follow indie rock bands.  It's a demographic quite distinct from the city's general population (almost two-thirds black, lower educational attainment compared to Maryland) and long-term trends (constant population decline since 1950).  Not as bad as Detroit is maybe one way to think about it: Baltimore has the cheap housing and distressed brick aesthetic that draws a stream of bohemians comfortable with a distanced, ironic relationship to the hotspots of the urban crisis. 

How does metal, with its historic stance of alienation, fit into this dynamic of place consumption?  Never mind the city's professional marketers, who we can expect want nothing to do with a festival like Maryland Deathfest—do Baltimore's kreators [sic] and consumers of music hold a place in their iPods and their hearts for extreme metal?  Maybe the city is the wrong scale, to talk about since even in its 80s heyday, thrash metal was a quintessentially suburban/metropolitan music (e.g., Northern California's East Bay, NYC's boroughs/Long Island).  Indeed, if we expand the radar, then iconoclastic metal groups like Maryland's Iron Man begin to pop up.  Given the global origins of MDF's bill, just how far away are the attendees for this festival coming from, and do they relate to the city as more than just an event destination?  Obviously, these are questions that point away from the festival venue and into the parking lots, hotels, and other settings for tourist concert-goers.  Will we see black metal fans in the Baltimore Aquarium?