Headbanging at Exodus March 07, 2008

The event: a rock concert by 6 previously unheard of bands.  The time: 6:00 p.m. on Feb. 16th (Saturday). The venue: a small closed auditorium.

That in itself should describe the quality of the event; not very good. It is just not fundamentally possible to hold a rock concert (that too with metal bands) in a confined room. You need open space for all that energy, or just to get away from people who don’t realize how bad they smell. Nonetheless, it wasn’t as bad as it looked. 2 of the bands were pretty good (Armour of God and some other vague name), one band tried to play around with their musical style, but chose the wrong venue for Hawaiian rock. The remaining three were your stereotypical death metal bands.

The event was brought together by the same guys who take care of the Unwind Center (which I am yet to visit), Exodus (hence the name of the event). Most of the people there already knew each other before hand, and our small group was slightly out of place. But considering we constituted half of the non-band audience, it wasn’t much of an issue. I guess the best part of the entire gig was the proximity to the band members. I remember standing in the front, less than 3 feet away from the lead guitarist as he shredded away to glory. I also remember being prompted to sing the chorus of “The Four Horsemen” (Metallica), and bulbing in full glory.

Unfortunately, it happened to be Sucky Saturday, which meant something bad had to happen. Without fail, some moshing did happened, and my specs broke in the midst of it. Which absolutely sucks, since I didn’t even have a spare set. And of course, without them, I couldn’t quite enjoy the rest of the night. Woe is me.