Heavy TO: The Review, Day 2

So day two….after surviving so many hours on our feet the day prior, I felt pretty damn good, while Propraetor had made some minor concerns about feeling a bit hung-over (dehydration) we started off Day 2 well. (that and I was awoken by one of the fucking WOST calf cramp EVER) The biggest chat of the day was having Billy Talent on the card…to make matters even more fucked up, they were slotted after Slayer and before Rob Zombie… Yeah, it became the joke of the day, there were many many signs on the ways that Billy Talent can die (see our Heavy TO photos page), and it was rather funny, but in the end, sad. We’ll get to that.

I thought we were going to have rain this day, and nope, we had sun all fucking day, no cloud cover, I had missed a small spot on my neck and got burned well…..however, seeing the amount of people with wife beater burns made it even more hilarious. This day was going to turn out another brash of people suffering heat stress. As the day went on, the more I couldn’t take the heat, the only downfall of this show was the lack of any shelter whatsoever. People were crawling under the trailers, and swarming under the tents erected around the ATM machines, and the umbrella’s over the Popsicle stands just to find some little relief from the relentless sun. Of course Propraetor and I were heroes both sporting rather large tubes (giggity) of 50spf, and it became the joke of offering our “hot white spooge” to the lady’s around the park. (the tube were heated by being in our packs, making the viscosity of the cream more into milk….) but I digress.

Lets get this thing rolling.

Dead and Divine

Set list…have no friggin idea. Never heard of these dudes until the show. Hailing from Burlington Ontario, this 5 piece metalcore act did a pretty fuckin bang up job on kicking off day 2. The only downfall is found most of the tunes blended into one another….

Exodus

1 The Ballad of Leonard and Charles
2 War Is My Shepherd
3 Blacklist
4 Bonded By Blood
5 The Toxic Waltz
6 Strike Of The Beast

Two words. Holy.Fuck. Exodus took the bar and slammed it way fucking high for the day. I had low expectations on a handful of bands, since most of the popular thrash was the fucking garbage spewed out during the 90’s that so many poser bought into. Exodus was one of these bands unfortunately. I haven’t followed Exodus much over the years, but I still argue why the fuck would they have a “Big 4” and never include the awesome that Exodus and Testament did in the early days of Bay Thrash? Regardless, Holt and crew blew out the gates with their fucking buzzsaws and shredded. Take it a step further….Dukes hate fucked the crowd with relentless seething attitude that was so fitting for the, funny enough, Slayer-esque pace, that was being force fucked into the craniums of the fans watching. Not jokin. Same thing they did during this video of Waken, its something to experience. They owned the fucking crowd and reaffirmed my faith in the awesome that Exodus has become. One can easily forget the bad years. This line up kicks ass, and I hope it stays that way. Its going to be hard to top Exodus.

Death Angel

1 ???
2 Mistress of Pain
3 ???
4 Truce
5 ???
6 Ultra-Violence/ Thrown to the Wolves

Another band of my childhood years, to which only one album I liked and stopped listening to once Frolic through the Park hit the shelves….the bad years didn’t do well for these dudes, but the Ultra-Violence still stands at the top of my lists as some of the fucking BEST Thrash albums to date. With that, Death Angel did an amazing job, Osegueda was form perfect and lacked nothing. I wished they would have played more of the Ultra-Violence years, I would have killed to hear Voracious Souls live. Even following up after the intense Exodus set, DA has made a believer of me again. Welcome back guys, I promise to go buy the new material and give it a spin.

Volbeat

Sorry all, not a big fan of Volbeat, nor do I know much about them, they sounded pretty tight, even though having some technical difficulties, put on a decent show. Nothing to go home and tell the parents about though…..

Melissa Auf der Maur

Another WTF on today’s line up. Sorry hon, but you don’t fit in, nor did I think your set was al that interesting either. Exodus had ruined me for anything short of awesome.

Anvil

I never listened much to Anvil over the years, met Lips years ago, and really never paid much attention to them after Strength of Steel era. (The title track to Speed of Sound was pretty bad ass too) To be honest, I have never owned an Anvil album, I knew people that did, but they were never my cup of tea. Then I saw the documentary, I mean its clear why Anvil had never made it big, the product they sold was cheesy, and it still is…what I couldn’t get over is really how passionate they are about their tunes, shed a whole new light on them. Did it make me a fan? No. But you know what? As far as the antics Lips did, and what not, they were pretty entertaining to watch.

Baptized in Blood

Only thing I knew about these dudes is that they were Canadian and that Dave Mustaine had something to do with them…other than that? Nada. Pretty solid band though, and super tight. I can’t say much more about them since I was starting to get pretty whipped by the sun and my body was screaming for me to sit the fuck down, and that’s what Propraetor and I did, we picked a spot and just chilled out for a bit, as BiB got closer to the end of their set, he and I made our way back to the stage to see Testament.

Testament

1 Over the wall
2 The preacher?
3 New order
4 Practice what you preach
5 More than meets the eye
6 Souls of black
7 Into the pit
8 Disciple
9 Do not Resituate
10 ????
11 ???

Ah yes, Testament. I got to admit, the only albums I have owned from them over the years was The Legacy (fucking AMAZING album and a must have in any thrash collection), Practice What you Preach, and Low. Opening up with Over the Wall was fucking awesome, but from there, the show seemed to spiral downward. Maybe it was me and getting sick of the searing heat, I wound up getting more annoyed with the show. Chuck was pretty good on vocals, transitioning form his newer growling, to his old school screeching, but not hittin the high notes of yor. What killed it for me was Souls of Black. I fucking hated that album and I have yet to understand why anyone does…but we spin back to the bad years of metal (the 90’s)

Again, its more than likely me and how I was feeling at the time, I started to become more agitated and even near the end, the last song would.just.not.fucking.end.

Mastodon

While I recognized a few tune, Masotdon has never been a staple in my metal diet. With that and the band not knowing what country they were in was pretty fucked up…I wasn’t sure it was a joke. Propraetor and I took another rest and listened, and got ourselves into position for Slayer. Mastodon undoubtedly was solid and tight, looked like a bunch of champs. But other than that…I just couldn’t get into the groove.

Slayer

1 World Painted Blood
2 Hate Worldwide
3 War Ensemble
4 Postmortem
5 Dittohead
6 Dead Skin Mask
7 Spirit in Black
8 Mandatory Suicide
9 Chemical Warfare
10 Silent Scream
11 Seasons in the Abyss
12 Snuff
13 South of Heaven
14 Raining Blood
15 Black Magic
16 Angel of Death

Anytime I have seen these guys my reaction is the same….Holy.Fuck. What can I say? The sound sucked. It was all drums and, I swear to Christ since the days of Hell Awaits, you could hear Tom play, and yeah, he was sloppy as fuck, full of mistakes, and what you could hear of the guitars, barely filled out the sound. The mids were completely gone. But aside from that…holy.Fuck. It’s Slayer. To my surprise, Holt from Exodus was filling in for Hanneman as he tends to his ailment. Holt had ZERO difficulty filling them mighty big shoes. Slayer is legend. Its just too bad album wise they keep trying to recreate Reign In Blood era…..but still…Gods among insects.

Billy Talent

So now its time for Billy Talent…while one can sit back corporately and say this would have been a great choice to hit a wider demographic. Someone didn’t think this all the way through. I mean, Punk would surly fit in well…but not mainstream crap… I mean, The Dead Kennedy’s or something like that would work….were they looking for more Canadian content? I would have suggested keeping the pace by adding to the line up something along the lines of Into Eternity, Voivod, Cryptopsy, Devin Townsend, Agonist, or a pile of other bands, not Billy Talent. What started off as a funny joke at the threats being made to the guys in BT, we had to watch as the people all swarmed away from the Slayer stage all flipping the bird to BT…then the rain…no…HAIL of water containers started….what a shame. As Propraetor and I made our way out of the grounds we watched and listen to a train wreck happen. The guys form BT were nothing short of professionals and took the high road, even to the point of it sounding like WTF are we even doing here…and who the fuck slated us after Slayer?????????

Regardless, while the brand of art that BT bring is something I can not stand, they are in fact a really really solid band. No jokes. Tight as fuck and no slips.

Sad to say aside from my post about being a community, we treated these guys how we were and are treated in the eyes of the common public. There was a lot of people there to see Billy talent, and instead of just walking away and grabbing a beer, you acted like a bunch of tools. We should be ashamed of ourselves. Think about it assholes. BT is Canadian…BT is award wining….and I bet they pulled in more money in one year then even grouping a fucking DAYS worth of bands in this weekends showcase have done in a fucking entire career spanning 30 years. That has to say something about them, right?

Even Propraetor scolded some dude on the subway for making retarded comments about BT.

Good for the guys in BT.

Rob Zombie

With that, sadly enough, I had had enough and with having a day job, and a long ride home, we did not stay from the Zombie.

My picks of the day:

Exodus (only becasue it’s expected that Slayer brings it)
Slayer
Death Angel
Baptized in Blood
Dead and Divine
Testament
Mastodon
Volbeat

Few things I would change next year, is while I loved having all these wicked Thrash bands and such, a tad bit more variety of metal, aside from Hard Rock, Metalcore and Thrash. Opeth was really the only Metal band that was different, book end them with something like a Swallow the Sun, My Dying Bride, hell even a Paradise lost, and a Behemoth, Gojira, Meshuggah, Fear Factory or hell, Dethklok (for shits and giggles)

Shelter. We needed shelter. Even a misting tent or something to get some relief from the sun, I counted at least 8 cases of heat stress (I know it would have been compounded with alcohol and other goodies), it would be interesting to see the data of first aid cases and….never mind, I am not at work….

Regardless, I really felt that we as fans came out as winners. I think the event was a smashing success and it would be cool to see it happen annually.

In closing, I want to once again thank the flowing organizations and people:
Lauren and MC from Live Nation
Jagermeister
Sound Academy
The Security Crew
Big James, Endast, and all the bands that came out and shredded our faces off
The Fans
Trevor, Jo-ann and Big Pat from Hard Rock radio Live
and of course, the women. Thank you for being so easy on the eyes……….