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Heavy metal preview

This country—or maybe it’s this city—is absolutely unreal in its love of heavy metal. I’d heard many times from people in the know that going to Bavaria and hoping to find lots of heavy metal was not a good plan. It’d be like shopping around for Symphonic Black Metal in the swamps of New Orleans or something. (Funny, offensive observation: “In The Swamps Of New Orleans” would be a fantastic album name for a Symphonic Black Metal band. Dimmu Borgir, I’m looking at you and tapping my foot impatiently.) So coming here, my hopes were rather low to begin with.

The other night, though, I found a sweet little hole in the wall club called Backstage. The bands playing that night were nothing amazing, but still pretty fun. There was an emo acoustic guitar player from LA who spoke no German and kept trying to joke with the crowd. I thought he was quite lame until near the end of his set, when he started singing some really incredible songs, like “I Hate Music.” Near as I can remember, there were lyrics like:

I hate mountains, I hate trees
I hate it when my friends fall in love
I hate every single thing that anybody does

I enjoyed it, and the crowd got really into it. Unfortunately, the night closed with a performance by a band called “The Dead Deaths.” They were screamo. I left one or two songs into their set.

But, on the way out, I noticed very many posters strewn all over the place, advertising some of the greatest bands on earth. I’ve actually made an album of the posters, I was so excited. (Really, I didn’t want to forget the names and dates, so I snapped pics of each interesting entry.) A brief rundown of the dudes showing up in Munich in the near future:

• As I Lay Dying (OK, I actually just missed them, but still)
• Behemoth (also just missed, but a friend says they’ll be back in December)
• Soilwork
• Dark Tranquillity—twice!
• Iced Earth
• Sonic Syndicate
• Nile
• Norther
• Paradise Lost
• Enslaved

This is quite truly unbelievable. You’re all lucky if I come home. Once this stipend comes, I’m going to headbang myself stupid.