by Metal by Moonlight

I have been a lover of Death Metal and all metal for a very long time. I had never been to an all-metal festival let alone one of the biggest Death Metal music festivals around the world. This was the experience of a lifetime and I’m so thankful for all of those who helped make this possible. I first arrived on Thursday evening and had no idea what to expect, I’d been to other music festivals but I knew this one was going to be quite different. Even just driving through Baltimore there were so many people in metal shirts and denim jackets covered with patches, I felt like I was meant to be here, among my people.

The people working the festival were beyond friendly and helpful and gave me a lot of information throughout the duration of the festival. The first night was filled with some incredible bands and performances. First, I went to Baltimore Sound Stage and saw Incinerate from Minnesota. They were incredible, very brutal melodic technical death metal, the bass during this set was so intense the floor was shaking violently. What a great way to start the fest. After them, I headed on over to Rams Head Live to catch Derketa from Pittsburgh. They were fantastic! The vocals were incredible and the instrumentality of the whole ensemble was very unique. I then headed back to Sound Stage to catch Stabbing, a Texas death metal band with an intense sound. They were incredibly brutal and grindy and the vocals were impressive. I made sure to go and grab a CD of theirs after the set.

A little bit later on in the evening, I saw At War at Powerplant Live, an older death metal band that was first established back in 1985. Even though these musicians were seasoned veterans, they were incredibly lively on stage. The band was so energetic and they all looked like they were having an amazing time performing for everyone! The guys next to me blew up a few beach balls and one extremely large one that took him several songs to fill up with air. The crowd was bouncing them around back and forth and eventually it made it past the barricade. To my surprise, the security team sent the ball flying back into the crowd! The ball made a few more stops before going past the barricade again, this time making it all the way to the stage. The lead singer, mid song, without missing a beat, jumped up and headbutted the beach ball back to the crowd. Everyone went wild!

After this incredible performance I went over and saw Internal Suffering, a Colombian band formed back in 1996. The lead singer and front man was extremely energetic on stage, jumping around and egging on the crowd while also thanking us thoroughly for supporting them. Internal Suffering is another technical brutal death metal band but were much easier to understand in terms of vocals. Hours later I walked by a few of the band members and congratulated them on an amazing set.

The final show of the night for me was the main event, Sodom. They played their Agent Orange album from 1989 in its entirety. The crowd was so pumped to see these German death metal legends. The band was absolutely shredding on stage, from the first song to the last. The lead singer was very animated and so was the bassist. The vocals and instrumentals were on point and sounded exactly like the studio version, which is very impressive in my opinion. There were several times where I looked around at the crowd and every single person was headbanging at the same time and at the same pace. Everyone was locked in to their performance and they did not dissappoint.