It's weird how writing sometimes seems like a chore and at other times is quite an enjoyable experience. The roughest part is where do you start? What kind of introduction do you want to grab people with and hopefully lure them into a false sense of security so that they think they are about to read a professional, thought-provoking piece on metal music, concert critiques, or the secret life of Gravehill's Hell Messiah and his obsession with homemade scented candles? It's not as easy as it looks; but luckily I just did it and thus I feel like I have accomplished at least one thing today.
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Hell Messiah's obsession with urinals and candles is frightening. |
The Goregon Massacre Fest III: 2012 was held in Portland, OR on June 22nd and 23rd and the ladies in the Gravehill camp were chuffed to play it. Our plan was to do a mini west coast tour with our brothers in Destroyed in Seconds (DIS) where we would hit San Francisco, Portland (for the fest), and then back down south to Oakland for a final show. But of course, nothing exactly goes to plan for Gravehill.
It turned out that of the 11 people in my group at my "regular" job, 5 of them decided to take vacation the same week as the fest and all of them asked for it way in advance of me. I mean, as soon as these fuckwits got off of Xmas vacation in December, they immediately put in for Summer vacation. So this meant that I got the figurative vacation shaft up my poophole and couldn't take off, even for a couple of days. At the time, I was furious and I was about to tell my job where to shove it but then came to my senses after a few bumps of blow. Coke really makes you focus on what is important. What was important was that if I was going to fight for time off to go on tour and play shows, it better be worth it if I was risking sudden unemployment. The guys were a bit annoyed (as they rightfully should have been) but luckily we had an "ace-in-the-hole" with Bodybag.
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| Bodybag: Ex-Gravehill Guitarist/Current Exhumed Bassist. I couldn't find a better pic in my archives. |
Bodybag had been on tour with Exhumed for a couple of months and was back briefly before he had to take off again. If anyone knew the riffs to Gravehill songs it was him and he had two pluses going for him. One, he's a beer-swilling, rape maniac who has been playing bass in Exhumed for about a year now and two, he knew the songs and can play bass ten times better than me. Needless to say, most anyone with a fundamental knowledge of music can play bass better than me but instead of hiring an 11th Grade band major, the Gravehill camp opted for one of our own. Bodybag covered for me in San Francisco on Thursday night and I'm glad he was there to take up the slack. I owe him many beers and besos!!
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| Possible Corpsemolester replacement. |
So what the fuck did I do? Well, since I couldn't get the days off to drive up to Portland, I had to fly up. I bought a one-way ticket through Southwest and flew up to Oregon on Saturday, the day of the fest. I arrived with no problems and since I only had my handy man-bag with me (IT'S NOT A PURSE!!), I was traveling very light. Portland has excellent public transportation so instead of opting for an expensive cab, I bought a $2.00 light rail ticket and got off at a station that was only a 10 minute walk from the venue. I'm all about the cheap!
I walked into the venue and was greeted with various cries of joy and relief that I had arrived safely. You know how it is, "It's about time you got here, FAG!", "Nice purse asshole! Did you pick that up at Victoria's Secret along with your see-through panties.", "Hey, look who decided to join us. Mr. 'I'm-too-good-to-drive-up-with-the-rest-of-us Corpsemolester!" It was a very emotional day. Lots of crying and hugging.
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| We're very emotional. |
The fest was pretty damn busy and I wanted to start drinking like, IMMEDIATELY. So I threw on my cool as fuck leather jacket, slathered on some eye shadow, feathered my bangs, and scooted up to the bar and ordered a local craft beer. After a few of those I eventually resorted to the cheapest brew available which was PBR because, if anything, I'm a pretty cheap bastard and as much as I like craft beer, I'm perfectly fine with the cheap stuff as well. After chatting it up for a bit with the Gravehill crew, a few local friends, and some of the fellas in Cardiac Arrest, I went to go check out some of the bands and to have a vegan gyro.
The bands I caught and who stood out were Heavy Voodoo, Bone Sickness, Mutant Supremacy, Coffin Dust, Blood Freak, and of course Cardiac Arrest. All of these bands flattened my face and pummeled my guts into mush. Now Blood Freak and Bone Sickness I had seen before and they always deliver the goods. But the east coasters (I believe they are anyway) Mutant Supremacy and Coffin Dust had me caught up in their thrashy as fuck hooks and technical proficiency. I've been kicking myself since Goregon that I didn't grab some merch. Luckily Gravehill will be seeing them again when we play a fest in New York come October (I think).
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| This is a random kitty photo I thought was funny. |
So I guess I should mention at this point that Cianide had dropped off the bill due to a set of unfortunate events. The stars didn't align for them and so Gravehill was pushed to headlining status. Now Gravehill headlining
anything is always a crap shoot. Sometimes it's a home run and at others it can be a bit dismal. We're not a high profile band like Exhumed so our crowd draw can be weird at times. Don't get me wrong. Even if the crowd is made up of a few people, those few people are die-hard Gravehill fans (or fans of good old fashioned death metal at least) and we always have a good time. But I don't think it's necessarily an incorrect reaction when promoters tell us that we're headlining and we have a little apprehension.
The crowd was thinning a bit but that's too be expected as it was pushing after 1:00 A.M. We got ready in our usual manner of spitting blood on each other and giving back massages (CC is the best at those) and we took the stage around 1:20 A.M. Now to me, the crowd looked pretty good. Of course it was dark and everyone I saw was up front but still, a better draw than I thought it would be. The stage was extremely small and I had the unfortunate place right behind Mike Abominator. During every one of his screeches, a hellish "silent-but-violent" chemical cloud of nausea-inducing fart stank assaulted my nostrils. This cloud would creep back to Thorgrimm as he dropped a drumstick twice!! The crowd raged, sang along, crowd-surfed, moshed, and proceeded to "out metal" us on stage. Portland knows how to fucking kill! Someone offered me chips during one of Abominator's ill-timed awesome jokes and Hell Messiah spat a big lugie of blood into my face effectively welcoming me back into the fold after not being able to play in San Francisco. What a great show with chants of "one more song" after we had already bulled through 10 fist bangers! Gravehill has always had a home in Portland and those guys welcomed us back with open, bloody arms!
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| You can see my hair being blown back from a massive Abominator fart. |
Many thanks to Brandon and Jason and whoever else helped in organizing this awesome fest and treating Gravehill and the rest of the bands in such a professional manner. YOU ROCK!! Next time we see you, CC is gonna give you the most erotic massages EVAR!
Links to awesomesauce and more sweet sexy pics below:
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| Cool Lovecraft-themed bar just a block down from the venue!! |
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| Members of DIS, Cardiac Arrest, Blood Freak, and Gravehill acting the fool. |
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| Trying hard not to be sexy and failing. |
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| The initial blood spattering went well. |
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| Thorgrimm and I playing "Trolls Under The Stairs". |
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| I give this latest blog post a Corpsie-approved thumbs up!! |
cheers from mutant supremacy! it was great to see y'all again. see ya in october, dude.
ReplyDeleteHell yeah! Looking forward to it!!
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