Saturday was supposed to be The big day w/ me seeing bands I had never seen before such as Gwar, Pennwise and the mighty Tenacious D not to mention seeing the Machine that is Slipknot among others. We arrived this time around 11:45 and instead of waiting for a shuttle for 2 hours we managed to find a lady named Sandra who was offering rides to people at the back of the line for $10 a head. Considering we saw her yesterday and she could fit 14 people per trip assuming she made 20 or 30 trips at minimum a day she made… well a hell of a lot of money in those two days. In fact I’m thinking of this now and damn she could have walked away w/ over 10K that weekend. We were feeling pretty cool until she droped us off about a mile away so we had to walk another 45 minutes to get to the Raceway. It wasn’t an awful walk but the rain began to come down and it zapped some all important energy before we even got to the festival. Upon walking in we managed to catch the last 2 songs of Any Given Sin, a band that I will be getting to Lovedrafts in 2023. I was very interested in catching SION so we walked over to Iheart Stage for a bit to catch Two Sides of Me before SION took the Zyn Stage.
Two Sides of Me were awesome as always. They even had Pikachu onstage w/ them as the pits were absolutely wild. We ventured back over to the Main stage and SION seemed to be running late and I wanted to see Butcher Babies over at URW stage (which was a hard choice considering Lacuna Coil was on Main stage at the same time). Before I even get to the Butcher Babies I’ll say I found out that both Sion and Lacuna Coil canceled thier performances w/out me even knowing. Maybe I”m slow or maybe the festival didn’t do a good job letting the audience know and if I’m being honest I find myself to be pretty up on this stuff so if I missed it they coudn’t have done a stellar job.
So w/ SION (at the time) being late I decided it wasn’t worth it to miss Butcher Babies so we ventured over to the hill, walked down it and I squeezed right up front and waited for the Butcher Babies. These girls started out exciting crowds coming out in pasties and next to nothing else but they’ve graduated to short jeans and tank tops as the act became more about the music and a little less about the fact the two girls are knockouts. The band started up and Heidi and Carla danced onstage singing thier cover of “They’re Coming To take Me Away”. At one point, and probably my favorite part Heidi asked the Security gaurds if they’d done there stretches because they had a game called “The Climb” or something like that. For the duration of the next song they wanted to see as many crowd surfers as possible and they’d high five everyone who came up, oh and they count them. I believe they ended up w/ 206+ crowd surfers. Overall the Butcher Babies brought it especially for so early in the morning.
I wandered around and scoped some things out but did manage to catch about half of Chelsea Grin’s set and I’ll tell you I”m going to make it a point to go check them out in a club setting. The next band I was super stoked about was Powerman 5000. Its been many years since I’ve seen them though I had seen em 20 years ago many times. Led by Spider One (Younger brother of Rob Zombie) the band came out opening w/ “Footsteps and Voices”. The band blasted through hits like “Bombshell”, “Nobody’s Real” and set closer “When Worlds Collide”. I was so impressed w/ how not only did they not lose a step but they seem to be even better now than ever. So Enjoyable…
I’m not entirely sure why but I ventured up that damn hill and found my way over to the Zyn stage to catch a few songs from Apocalyptica. The sound was very off but they were good for sure. I’d like to see them again w/ better sound. I was back to the URW Stage for Mushroomhead. Somehow I’d never seen them before but that ended today as I was able to catch nearly thier full set. At this point it began pouring rain. The dusty pits gave way to mud and wet grass. Mushroomhead ripped through an awesome set which featured the return of Vocalist Dave “Gravy” Felton after a ten year absence. They even included a Pink Floyd Cover.
For only the second time I headed over to the Fan driven stage to catch my friends in From Ashes To New. These guys are on one of those perfectly steady climbs since they formed this current lineup. Playing side stages, to a few spots up on bigger stages. No overnight success, instead hard work and dedication. The band opened up w/ “Panic” and instantly had the crowd behind them. They have been playing two new tracks, the new single “Heartache” and the unreleased track “Broken By Design”. The band has perfected thier sound and transfers from Arena’s to outdoor festival’s such as this w/ ease. Bands always want to leave you wanting more and that’s something that From Ashes To New has down to a science as you can feel when the set is winding down and damn you sure don’t want it to.
I was really beginning to feel those VIP mixed drinks, the extra mile walk we took and the water logged clothes I was wearing at this point and headed over to the URW stage to catch the Reunion set of God Forbid and planned on the big evening leading into Gwar and Tenacious D. God Forbid came on that stage like they never left and were like a shot of Thunder to the crowd. Ripping through a set w/ all the bands most vicious live material and whipped the crowd into a frenzy. Towards the end of thier set my body had officially shut down and I had to call it a day sadly. I ended up missing the bands I wanted to see most including Gwar, Pennywise, Tenacious D and the mighty Slipknot. I simply couldn’t do it. I regret this decision more each day. ha.