The Metal Files

So last night I went to a big death metal show that had bands such as Cannibal Corpse, Misery Index, Skeleton Witch, Dying Fetus and one of my faves, Arsis!  As stated here too many times now, I am a huge Arsis fan and you can read about that stuff here.  I got to the show early hoping to see the Arsis guys hanging out on the street but no dice.  I know the door guy at the show and he let me in before everyone else to see if they were hanging out.  I poked around the venue and again, no dice.  No biggie.  I was talking to the dudes from Misery Index when Corpsegrinder from Cannibal Corpse comes up and says, “Are you part of the Cannibal Corpse meet and greet?”  “No way, man” I responded.  He looked a little disgruntled and walked away.  I didn’t realize who he was until about a minute after that exchange.  haha.  Whatever.  I am not a CC fan in the least.  Saw them about 10 years ago in Richmond, VA and they were the most boring band I had ever seen.

After leaving shortly thereafter to get a decent beer up the street I returned back to the club and starting seeing some good friends and hung out with them for a while.  This venue has an indoor and outdoor section and they bands were alternating time slots with some overlap.  We hung out in the other outdoor area during most of the other opening bands as they, to me, were all pretty forgettable.  I really was only there to see Arsis, and to a lesser degree Dying Fetus and Skeleton Witch.  I’d seen Dying Fetus 2 other times and I like their technical proficiency but I’d never buy their albums.  Skeleton Witch I’d love to see but they were playing at about the same time Arsis was.

So I’m standing there watching Misery Index and James “Jim” Malone from Arsis comes in.  I had seen him in about 5

Misery Index

years and tapped him on his shoulder.  It took him a second then he realized that he knew me.  We chatted for a minute during Misery Index but he needed to go get some of his gear as they were going on pretty soon.

The crowd thinned out pretty quickly after Misery Index and many of them went to the other side to see Skeleton Witch.   I hung out and staked my claim near the stage.  Arsis hit the stage after some prerecorded scene from a movie or something.  They opened with Return and went straight into Forced To Rock from the new album.  Unfortunately their bass player had just quit a few nights before and they were waiting on one of their previous ones to arrive to finish the tour.  Pity.  I was a little disappointed that Mike Van Dyne wasn’t doing the tour either.  He did the drums on the older albums and the newest one and he’s awesome.  A great guy too.  The guy they were using for touring was pretty fucking good, so playing-wise it was pretty seamless.

Arsis ripped through their set and Jim did a good job of getting the crowd involved.  There were a few hundred people

Arsis

in there to see them, which was cool.  I think they gained some new fans, for sure.

After they finished their set, Malone loaded his gear back on the bus and found me in the outside area talking to some friends.  That’s when the drinking began.  haha.  Laura started buying vodka/redbulls and that’s what we stuck with the the rest of night.  I introduced Jim to some of my friends and everyone was very complimentary about the band’s performance.  Someone mentioned that Bang Tango was playing the venue next door and Jim lit up and said, “Dude, we have to go to that.  I love that band!”  I told him we could go and I’d likely be able to get us in.  I did.  Ran into a few friends at that show and then Bang Tango started.

I’m not a fan and couldn’t name one song they ever did.  The band was very tight and his vocals were alright.  I had

Jim Malone (Arsis) enjoying some Bang Tango.

nothing to compare them to as far as how he sounded 20 years ago.  I did like one of his other projects, Beautiful Creatures.  The debut CD by them was listenable.  We pretty much stayed for their whole set.  It made me giggle a bit to see the sweaty death metal dude singing along to Bang Tango!

Personally, I wasn’t really enjoying the band, but I was having fun hanging out with an old friend.  Definitely made everything alright for the night.

After a few more drinks and the end of Bang Tango’s set, we went back to Emo’s to hang out.  Cannibal Corpse was on stage and they were just as boring as I could remember them being.  They had a huge crowd there, which is great.  Austin is getting a lot of metal shows these days.  We hung out until the end of their set and I had to get home, I had been up since 545AM that day and it was already 1AM.

I never saw any of Dying Fetus’ set, but I could hear them.  Meh.  No biggie.

We said our goodbyes and that was that.  I was very happy to see the band finally play Austin and even happier to get to hang out with Malone after such a long time.  Cool dude.  Great musician…very underrated as a guitarist in my opinion.  I remember their early days seeing shows and telling them that I thought they would get signed to a major label.  After their deal with Willowtip passed, I was very excited when they got signed to Nuclear Blast.  Well-deserved.  Those dudes worked hard to perfect their craft.

Arsis setlist:

1. Return/Forced To Rock
2. March For The Sick
3. Diamond For Disease
4. Escape Artist
5. We Are The Nightmare
6. Sightless Wisdom
7. The Sadistic Motives Behind Bereavement Letters
8. The Promise Of Never
9. The Face Of My Innocence

Bang Tango

"Reunited and it feels so good."