I’ve listened to hardcore, deathcore, and post-hardcore bands. They’re OK, they have their thing. Not really my style, but I understand that diversity adds to the scene as a whole, and obviously they believe in what they’re doing. But their fans can all fucking die, every one of them.

At the Summer Slaughter show this week, there was one core-influenced band that brought out all the 14-year-olds from New Jersey in their basketball shorts and sideways caps, and those little tykes kept trying to hardcore dance at a technical and brutal death metal show. It wasn’t a good time for anyone.

Now please, tell me that looks anything but tragically ridiculous.

It got to the point where as soon as a kid would start to slamdance, a death metal fan would step in and punch him in the head. The freaking security guards were sick of the slamdancing! I saw one grab a hardcore kid by the collar and yell, “Mosh right!” and then throw him back in the pit. Everyone has their own style, but this is just about respect and social mores. I’d never go to a hardcore show and start death metal moshing with everyone there. If I did try, I’d expect hostility from the crowd.

The tension built up throughout the night, with hardcore kids repeatedly getting punched in the face. Because they’re from Jersey, they’re all about “representing,” and so they wanted to make a scene. Check out this awesome video of a pit evolving. At first it’s a pretty lame circle pit. The hardcore crowd is standing in the middle of it, representing. The circle pit dissolves around them and they begin to slamdance, fending off invisible ninjas. Then the death metal kids move in again and revive their type of moshing.

What absolutely fascinates me about that video is that the moshing style shifts with the music! Right before the hardcore kids start doing their thing, the band on stage (Cryptopsy, for those interested) launches into a very slam-like breakdown. The death metal fans come back when the faster riffing starts again, right before the guitar solo. Did they plan this?

To get that nasty taste of slamdancing out of your mouth, I present you with a wall of death. (They moneyshot is at 1:10, so hang in there.)

And for anyone wondering why I was in the upper level making videos instead of punching hardcore kids in the head, I’d just come up after watching Psycroptic, Born Of Osiris, and The Faceless. When Kataklysm came on, I went back down and murdered people.

They played “Like Angels Weeping (The Dark)” and “Blood On The Swans”! Goddamn it was a heavy set.

Recently I was speaking with an American who mentioned a commercial that mocked German accents in English. That’s right up my alley, so I YouTubed it. Behold.

Classic, no? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this kind of accent around here, and I’ll never grow tired of it. In fact, I think I’ll adopt it when I’m back in the States. I bet it gets all the ladies.

Speaking of getting all the ladies, I love this guy, Stefen Raab. The name of this song is “Maschendrautzahn” which just means chain link fence. He uses a sample of an old lady, I think from Hessen, saying that word as his chorus. I love the song because it’s simultaneously mocking and celebrating the American lifestyle, like all contemporary German culture, and it’s also mocking and celebrating the goofy accent of the woman. One commenter on the video writes the word as she says it “Moaschendrahtzoaun.”

While trolling around on YouTube, I also found a pretty decent video of a German doing accents in French, Italian, American English, and Spanish. The American sounded slightly too French to me, but of course I’m picky, because nobody can do an American accent in German like I can.

OK, three video threshhold reached. If you’re interested, do make sure to check out Arnold Schwarzenegger doing interviews in German. He’s Austrian, so his German does sound a little silly to me, but it really puts his accent in English in context.

Please let me know vat you sink of ze videos.

But I do.

I miss my guitars very, very dearly. I do have an acoustic on loan from a friend here, but that’s only making me miss my sweethearts back in the States all the more. Recently I went digging through my video directory to try to see if there was any concert footage I could upload to YouTube and show some friends online. (Another story entirely, but I still haven’t been able to get the full version of “Treacherous Gods” at Paganfest up on YouTube. Worst 2.0 site ever.)

Anyway, while scaling the heights of the furthermost branches of that directory tree, I found some old videos of me playing guitar. This one I made two years ago, or almost. It was definitely August 2006, although I am not sure when in that month.

I absolutely love the riffs in this song. Heavy as hell, and no dicking around whatsoever. This CD was utter devastation. Make sure to check out the lyrics, too, as the whole CD was a concept album on the Iraq War, and has some real gem lines.

Try not to headbang yourself down to a lower IQ during the bridge. (“See who gives a FUCK!”)

And man, I have to say it: my guitar tone in this recording is fucking killer. I mean, it’s so heavy, it has its own goddamn event horizon. I am a Line6 fan for life.

One last thing to note: I remember so clearly that this was August 2006 because that’s the last time I cut my hair. You can’t really see my head in the video, but you also don’t see any long curly locks. I had a buzz cut.

Never again.

I decided to practice the song I’ve been listening to constantly since last night, “Omerta” by Katatonia. It’s haunting, and stuck in my head even as I slept last night.

Excuse the gray distortion for the first few seconds of the video. It’s a problem with Quicktime encoding and YouTube’s compression that I still haven’t worked out. Besides, it makes my eyes look even more striking.

Now, I should mention I know I’m not spot-on in a lot of this. It was done in a single take, as I didn’t feel like messing around with it all day, and just wanted to capture the essence of my wonderful Sunday afternoon.

Regarding the chord changes, I’m pretty confident that the main passage (verse, chorus, and bridge) is Dsus2-Am-Am-Fmaj7, Em-Em-G-Am. At least that sounds pretty fine. The bridge riff tosses some kind of Am7sus4 junk in there, and then some chord based around E that I couldn’t figure out. In the outro, I just alternate between Fmaj7 and Em, ignoring that mystery chord.

Regarding my singing, you can go to hell.

Lyrics to the song here.

Videoblogging is supposed to be inane, right?

Back when I was painfully broke (after losing my internship), I remember my favorite thing about this pizza job is that inclement weather would not keep me from working, as was—and of course still is—the case with my tour guide job. Now that I’m back in good economic standing, I view working in the pouring rain less like a privilege.

Damn it, I made a video of myself, and that’s supposed to be the content of this post. Enjoy.

Last night was Paganfest, easily the best metal festival I’ve ever attended (which, to be honest, isn’t saying very much, as the U.S. isn’t exactly big on festivals). It was a good time. As the venue website declares:

HEIDENFEST

* Nur fürs Paganfest: Met- Ausschank (Trinkhörner sind erlaubt)

[translation]

PAGANFEST

* Only for Paganfest: Mead bar (drinking horns allowed)

That’s got to be the greatest exception ever. Drinking horns were indeed allowed, and how. I was only of the only people there without one, and also without full pelt garb.

Step one: get into a sold-out show

I arrived late to the show, with my Finnish comrade, due to a minor mishap. Having heard from everyone multiple times that there was no way in hell we were getting in without tickets, as the festival had been sold out for weeks, we decided to give it a go anyway. First we tried the back entrance, and acted ignorant when asked for tickets. “Well, we thought the line out front was for people with them, so we figured we’d come back here to buy them. No? Go back out front? OK, no problem, man.” The whole time we were scoping out places to hop the fence, but security was quite heavy, especially around the easily hoppable sections of fencing.

Tuomas isn’t very confident with his German—although his English puts my German to shame—so I decided to do the talking with the security guard at the main gate. She said, “No. No way in hell, without a ticket. This has been sold out for weeks. Yes, I know you guys really want to see these bands, but my job is to make sure that no one without a ticket gets in. Sorry.”

Fortunately, I’m majoring in making friends. I talked with her for a little bit, and spun some bullshit like, “I know it’s completely out of the question for us to get in, but is there anyway we can at least just buy a T-shirt for the festival? We love these bands so much and we just want to be able to have something from the show, even if we don’t get to see them.” That definitely struck a chord of empathy with the guard, and I let it resonate for a bit before trying anything else. She said that maybe if we came back in an hour, there would be merch outside that we could pick up, possibly even at a discount. She recommended another club, with a beer garden, where we could go to kill time.

I of course said this was a wonderful idea, and thanked her profusely. Then Tuomas and I fell back a little bit and discussed our options. I translated my conversation with the guard (into English, not Finnish!) and also explained that I thought there was hope. We were already a little buzzed from the beers we’d had at my place before heading out, so we figured what the hell, let’s hang out and see what happens. Several minutes later, the same security guard comes up to me and says in a low voice, “Leave now. Come back in 10 minutes. Perhaps my colleague can help you.”

We booked it. I set an alarm on my phone for 8 minutes so that we’d be back in just the right amount of time, and Tuomas and I started talking about the bands playing. We were laughing that I hadn’t understood who was playing, because I’d always pronounced the bandname Týr as teer instead of the proper toorr. While joking around and taking stupid pictures of each other, the security guard came up to me again and said, “There, that’s my coworker. Talk to him. He’s on the phone now but when he’s off he’ll help you.”

We hovered so close to the guy we were practically hugging him. As soon as he snapped his cell phone shut, he looked us up and down, then gestured for us to follow him—quietly. We get in through the Guest List Only door, and he introduces us to a colleague of his, who wants money. She says, “That’ll be 28.” Not bad at all! I hand her 40. The guy says, “No, that won’t do. It has to be exact.” Well, shit. I didn’t know what to do about that, and I figured I was just about to get ripped off 12 bucks. Funny thing is, I didn’t really have a problem with this. But a suggestion is made that the woman break my bills, giving me a 20, a 10, and then another 10 in coins. Then I paid the 28 exactly. I still fail to see the point of this, but who the hell cares, because it got me in. Tuomas gets the same deal, we tip the nice man 5 bucks, and we’re on our way to forging through the crowd, trying to get near the stage.

Finding a place in the crowd

The people at this show were all-out diehard fans of folk metal, and it showed.

I think my favorite was this dude, whom I headbanged with throughout most of the show, until I was elected to crowdsurf and thrown over the front rail. (That was during Ensiferum, so I’d gotten a lot of pictures by that point, and it was OK by me. Plus, I loved those guys.)

While still standing near the back upon arriving, Tuomas treated me to a few beers as a thank-you for my rapport-building prowess. Again, as we’d arrived late, we’d already missed Equilibrium and Eluvietie (about whom I’ve heard great things), but we were able to catch Týr setting up, and their set in full force.

The bands

Týr

I love these guys. Their Ragnarok album blows me away every time I put it on, and it’s one of those epics discs that you have to listen to in its entirety, the whole way through, every time. The crowd dug them, hard.

Absolutely epic. I’ve also thrown up a video of the last part of Hail To The Hammer, in which the sound quality is even lower than above, but the crowd’s enthusiasm is even greater.

Moonsorrow

I’ve been dying to see these guys live. I haven’t listened to any Moonsorrow for years, and so as soon as they started playing, opening with Raunioilla (which Tuomas kindly informed me means “Upon The Ruins,” a freaking killer songtitle), I was taken back about 4 years, to the time I used to spin that CD every morning, walking to classes.

As is to be expected from these guys, they were only able to play about 3 or 4 songs during their 45-minute set, but that worked beautifully. Each song has such flowing dynamic contrast that they really worked the crowd, shifting from headbanging to clapping to singing and then back again.

Here’s a brief clip from Raunioilla, by far my favorite song of theirs. I say “brief” when it’s actually the first 3 minutes of a 13-minute song, so beware.

[audio:raunioilla-intro.mp3]

For the record, I freaking love bands who give a mic to everyone in the band. (Yes, even the drummer is wearing a headset.)

Korpiklaani

I was so not ready for these guys. I’ve called them “fratboy folk” before, because pretty much every one of their songs is about drinking, rather than fighting, but I’d failed to realize what this was going to mean to a crowd in Munich. Singing about beer is without a doubt the best way to win the hearts of a crowd in this city, and Korpiklaani wielded the crowd like the gods they are.

To get a good idea of their sound, check out this quip from their Wiki page.

The music of Korpiklaani ranges from the violin-and-guitar paean to the Finnish god of fermentation Pellonpekko, to the “typical” trollish metal “Wooden Pints”, to “Crows Bring The Spring”.

Yeah, that’s about right. Dancing galore. Wannabe vikings, arm-in-arm, spinning round and round and shouting at the top of their lungs things like, “Beer, beer! Beer, beer!”

And, of course, they’re not afraid to get down and folky. I wasn’t expecting it, but the bastards went ahead and did a live rendition of Shaman Drum, of which I only caught the end on camera.

It was far more haunting live than it seems here. As I was making the video, I wanted to make sure to cut off the explosion of cheers from the crowd as the song ended, which I thought it would make for better resonance on video, but I was completely wrong. The crowd reaction would only add to the experience. Ah, well.

Ensiferum

I finally, finally got to see Ensiferum live. It’s a damn shame Jari Mäenpää wasn’t with them, but the dude from Norther did a pretty damn good job on vocals. The opened, of course, with Iron, and the crowd went nuts. Unfortunately for Ensiferum, Korpiklaani had absolutely drained the audience with all the dancing, so the first few Ensiferum songs were met with relatively tame enthusiasm. Still, Ensiferum cleaned up.

My sole complaint regarding the new vocalist was that during the solo for Iron, he didn’t play the original. He referenced it in his sweeps, but he brought in too much of his own technique. I’m still torn as to whether this was a shameless appropriation of a classic song by a newcomer who can’t fill Jari’s shoes, or a reverant reticence to mar a beautiful, untouchable thing with his own playing. In my opinion, it’s more appropriate to lay insufficient offerings at the altar of a metal god than to build a new altar, which it seemed to me like he was doing.

This was partly made up for, though, by one of my favorite moments from the whole night, when Ensiferum fulfilled their duty as headliners and played part of a classic metal song. Being from the North, it would have been completely inappropriate to toss yet another tribute onto Dimebag Darrell’s burial mound. I’m glad they didn’t. They went the extra mile and played the main riff from the father of all battle metal songs, The Trooper.

While the band did play a stellar setlist, they left off Treacherous Gods, which thrilled me—because they did it as an encore. I made a video of the whole song, but it’s pretty poor quality, so I won’t embed it. I’ll see how it turns out upon YouTubeification, and might throw up a link to it later after it’s finished processing.

Probably the highlight of their set was the crowd singing along to the bridge of “Lai Lai Hei,” but sadly I don’t have video of it. Take my word for it, though: it was awesome.

The land of hope and glory

I know this was a disastrously protracted post, but I couldn’t help but gush about this show. I encourage you to listen to all the bands’ material at length, as everyone who played (well, I can’t vouch for Equilibrium) offers absolutely stellar folk metal.

Stay folk.

Seriously, though. Do read a book.