Central Illinois Metal Fest 2011: Part 1

DATELINE: 3:30 AM - July 22, 2011

So much for trying to get to bed early and getting a good night’s sleep. By 1:00 AM I had dozed off and it seemed like mere minutes had passed by until the alarm woke me up. I’m never quite happy in the morning so I curse quite profusely as I stumble out of my sweat-drenched, blood-soaked, crust-caked sheets. You’d think I would wash the linens regularly but in all honesty, I love my own and other people’s filth. The grunge and crust of it all arouses my tender loins!

With most of my luggage packed and ready to go, all I need to do is brush my teeth and drive the 50+ miles to Orange County where I will meet up with Mike Abominator at the Santa Ana Airport. Oh, and I guess I need to put on some pants as well. TSA is really picky about people and their pants.

6:45 AM

Mike and I make it through the bag check-in process and TSA security with no problem. I chuckle to myself as I see an elderly man pulled for a rigorous pat down and anal cavity check. Mike and I look like the biggest troublemakers in this upscale, white person haven and the fact that the gentlemen was Latino didn’t pass unnoticed to even my alcohol-dulled senses.

SOME TIME MID-FLIGHT

The girl that sits next to me has some fine gams on her. Quite a little dame. I don’t engage in any small-talk as it looks like she’s fairly uncomfortable sitting next to me. I don’t blame her; especially after I ask if she wants to sit on my lap.

2:35 PM

We had a brief layover in Dallas (less than an hour) before taking off to the small airport in Bloomington, Illinois. The journey itself hasn’t been bad and is uneventful. Stepping off the plane in Bloomington is like stepping into Hell. Illinois, like most of the Midwest and east coast, has been plunged into this massive heat wave. The humidity has to be 100% and it’s oppressive. Mike’s face is beaded with sweat as we wait outside for the rental car company to pick us up. I offer to splash him with some water from my water bottle, but he’s not fond of hot urine. Whatever.

4:45 PM

The trip from Bloomington to Urbana is relatively short. It’s about 50 or so miles. The bitch of it was that I had directions to get back to the airport from our hotel on our last day, but no directions to GET to the hotel. Since Mike and I are navigational geniuses, we turn the map around and reverse the directions. After numerous wrong turns and second guesses, we find ourselves on the right track. There’s an Arby’s off the main highway and we’re starving. Neither of us have had anything to eat all day. We grab some grub and proceed to Urbana with no more problems.

5:30 PM

Apparently, back in 2007, the Lincoln Lodge in Urbana was the shiznit. All I heard was good things about it until we arrive there. Thorgrimm and his girlfriend Lili have been traveling with Tom from Cardiac Arrest and his fiancé Jill. We arrive only to find that the hotel has been taken over by new owners and crackheads and tweekers now live there. Actually sounds rather pleasant. I love my fellow crackheads and tweekers. That’s only because there’s usually a surplus of filthy hookers walking around. Plus the air conditioning doesn’t work. I think if the air condition worked, we probably would have stayed. Instead of finding another hotel right away, we take off for the venue because Tom has to get there for the Cardiac Arrest performance which is in about an hour and a half.

7:00 PM

We dropped Tom and Jill off at the venue while Thorgrimm, Mike, Lili, and myself searched for another hotel. Thorgrimm suggested the Comfort Suites so we headed there. Compared to the Lincoln Love Lodge (as I so warmly call it now), the Comfort Suites is the Hilton of Urbana! A bit more expensive but Gravehill isn’t known for being particularly cheap when it comes to finding suitable accommodations when out on the road. We like our comfort goddammit!!

The Canopy Club seems to be embedded with several other local businesses on the same block. Across from the main campus of the University of Illinois, the area reeks of patchouli and hipster premadonnas. Otherwise, it’s very nice. Better than I expected. I feel right at home and actually manage to find my way around the town quite easily.

I head inside, get my paper wrist bands, and make a beeline straight for the bar. I buy a drink and saunter down to the stage area as Cardiac Arrest starts to play. Cardiac starts their set and they rage as usual. I’ve seen them numerous times and it’s just unbelievable how heavy they are; straight, pure, death metal from the bowels of Satan’s colon. During the set I finish my beer and head up for another one. While I’m waiting, I meet up with Beer Reebs from Hod. We chat for a few seconds and he buys shots for me, the bartender, and some random fellow who just happens to be lucky enough to be hanging around the bar. I don’t know what it was I drank, but I downed it quickly and chased it with a couple of gulps from my beer. I head back down into the pit area with a nice buzz already ringing between my ears.

While Cardiac nears the end of their bowel-destroying set, I notice a dude has the same shirt I’m wearing. That annoys me to no end. I don’t know why I’m obsessed so much with it. I guess it’s almost a heavy metal fashion faux paux. It’s an Asphyx “Death the Brutal Way” t-shirt and while it’s one of my favorites to wear, I’m determined to find something else. After Cardiac ends, I look around at all the merch tables and see nothing but indecipherable logos of bands I’ve either never heard of or bands that, more than likely, all sound the same. Herble-scurble bullshit. I like my Death Metal old school. Finally I come across a table that has a smattering of cool t-shirts. I see a Morgoth one that looks promising but then my eye catches a Celtic Frost “To Mega Therion”. That’s the one. I want it! The guy wants $20. FUCK! I pay it anyway. It’s Celtic Frost anyway. If it were any other band, I’d say fuck it and continue to wear my Asphyx shirt.

Sporting my new shirt, I strut my shit to another bar and grab some more brews. I meet up with some Facebook friends and meet some new friends as well. The drinking continues and some drugs are consumed. By the time I head back into the bar for another round of drinks, I meet up with Beer from Hod again. He buys shots, I throw back, and I buy more booze.

10:00 PM(?)

I stumble into the main room to catch some of Putrid Pile’s set. The lone man bands aren’t my style but I have to give them credit. It takes some talent to throw all that shit together.

Things are blurring now. I don’t know what time it is. I vaguely remember talking in Spanish to some Mexican kids who looked at me with amusement. I guess I thought I was asking where they were from but instead I told them to “Keep your burrito out of my face!” Very rude.

Another beer down and Nachtmystium plays. They sound out of place among all the grind, death, and herble-scurble bands; and it’s refreshing. I dig it. More beer is consumed somehow. I don’t know how or why, but I’m two-fisting beers. One is a Pabst and the other a Bud Light. What the hell?

11:00 PM(?)

I’m outside the club and I stumble toward where we parked the rental car.

A light shines in my face and I realize I’m lying on the curb beside the car. A University of Illinois campus cop is asking me, “Hey, you okay, pal?” I tell him I’m just waiting on friends and amazingly enough, he leaves me alone. I don’t know how long I’ve been lying on the sidewalk but I’m fed up with waiting around and decide to walk back to the hotel.

12:00 AM(?)

The walk doesn’t seem long and I assume I stay on the sidewalk with relatively little problem. Some black kid on a bicycle is riding in my direction. I hold up my hand for a high five and he slaps it as he cruises on by. The brothers know I’m down.

I try to bull my way into several convenience stores but out of the four I try, all of them but one are locked! The one I find open is manned by a long-hair, scraggly-bearded gent who has this large, heavy brow from which tiny, porcine eyes peer out. I feel vaguely uncomfortable as this blast from the past of human evolution judges me. I wonder if he has a gun under the counter or a large wooden club.

12:30 AM(?)

I stumble into my hotel room munching on stale donut sticks, strip down to my boxers and pass out on the bed.

Several hours later, I wake up to find Abominator, Dave from Cardiac Arrest, and several other people hanging out. It matters to me none. I walk by all of them in my boxers, tell them to fuck off, collapse in the bathroom and start to give sacrificial offerings of vomit to the Porcelain Altar. Hey, it’s Saturday. Oh shit, we play Saturday! These next 24 hours are going to be rough.

Recording When All Roads Lead to Hell: Part 3

As is often the case, I rarely complete anything I start such as blog posts and video games. In both cases, it’s just because I’m both lazy and get bored quickly. So in an effort to finally finish up writing about the recording of WAR (which all two of you read), I’m going to try and probe the deep recesses of my drug-addled, alcohol-deteriorated grey matter and finish this fucker. Then right after I’m going to play L.A. Noire on Xbox. But in all honesty, it bores me thinking about it...

So Saturday rolls around and I record my bass tracks. I remember a bucket of chicken, a prostitute, and an uneasy feeling of dread that I may have the Clap. Some of these memories are false, I just know it. Kinda like the false memories those creepy altar boys have of a priest molesting them. You know that’s bullshit!!

I digress. I thought I’d be able to knock out the bass tracks quickly but lo’ and behold, something sounds fishy. The tuning is off slightly and it’s noticeable enough that it drives Haddad insane as he keeps playing back tracks telling Bodybag and me that something’s not right. Turns out it’s an intonation problem...plus I was playing the wrong notes! Hahahaha No one’s ever called us a professional band so why start now? I will defend myself on the wrong notes thing though. Turns out Bodybag made some last minute riff adjustments and neglected to tell me about it. I recovered quickly and the bass tracks were complete in a few hours. I’m not really one for show or flair when it comes to bass. 90 percent of the time I’m just providing a low-end rumble so the guitars can work their magic. It’s more of a workman-like attitude instead of artistic. Going back and listening to the finished product today, I wish I could go and rerecord some parts with a tad bit more flair. Hindsight is...ah well, you know the rest.

Several days later Abominator started his vocal tracks. Except this time he wasn’t drunk and he doesn’t smoke anymore so all the vile, yellow, chunky phlegm that used to come up every time he would record or do a show is gone. He has the voice like a choir of angels! For a while there it seemed that we were recording a Power Metal album as he hit some high notes that would put his favorite band Hammerfall to shame. We eventually had to persuade Abominator that Gravehill was still, technically, a Death/Thrash Metal band and he should just stick to what we practiced. So he jumped to his usual gravelly-edged vocal pattern and completed the songs within a couple of hours. Thorgrimm, Hellfiend, and myself did some backing “gang bang” vocals and the raw recording process was pretty much finished. Hmmm...it IS “gang bang” vocals correct? Why does that not sound right...?

Thorgrimm and Bodybag were planning on traveling to Ryan Butler’s (Landmine Marathon) pad in Arizona to put a spit-shine polish on the tracks. Abominator and I had to work and Hellfiend was too busy fondling freshly grown fruit to attend the epic mastering session. But with the advances in technology, we got to hear most of the rough cuts.

I should add that my attempt at putting together the sound samples you hear on the album was a complete failure. Luckily some of the samples were salvaged while most were chucked. Oh well, que sera sera! THE END!!