Now, which bands to see?  I know a handful of the older ones from having listened to and seen them in concert 20 or more years ago.   Still, there’s much catching up to do, and I’ve been digesting all the preparatory material I can find: the Inverted Umlaut podcast, the Invisible Oranges program guide, the Baltimore City Paper cover story.  My friend and festival companion Francesco and I have chosen Friday and Sunday as the dates we’ll be attending.  Here’s what we can look forward to:

Day 1: Thursday, May 26
WITCHAVEN – 4:45 – 5:15
SHITSTORM – 5:30 – 5:55
NOISEAR – 6:10 – 6:40
MIASMAL – 6:55 – 7:30
LACK OF INTEREST – 7:45 – 8:20
FLESH PARADE – 8:35 – 9:10
EXTORTION – 9:25 – 10:00
BUZZOV*EN – 10:15 – 11:00
TRAGEDY – 11:15 – 12:00 CATHEDRAL – 12:15 – end

We’re not attending this date, but I’d love to see Tragedy, the latest incarnation of a Memphis crust-punk/metal collective that goes back to the early 90s.  They started out as Cop Out, an unwashed, screamy-meemy outfit that I saw play in Santa Barbara with the Yah Mos (predecessors of !!!) and Jara (predecessors of my old band Born and Razed).  Then they became a smaller unit, took on a bona-fide long-hair metal guitarists, and got ridiculously heavy as His Hero Is Gone.  (Coincidentally, Born and Razed played with His Hero Is Gone and Still Life in Baltimore, in front of 10 people at a garage called the Shuffle House back in 1995.)  Now they’re older, their hair is shorter, but they’re still as beefy and mighty as they used to be.

Day 2: Friday, May 27
THE IMPALERS – 4:00 – 4:30
NOCTURNAL – 4:25 – 5:00
NAILS – 4:45 – 5:15
FUNEBRARUM – 5:15 – 5:55
PULLING TEETH – 5:30 – 6:00
AURA NOIR – 6:00 – 6:50
MACHETAZO – 6:40 – 7:20
CORROSION OF CONFORMITY – 7:20 – 8:20
CRIPPLE BASTARDS – 8:25 – 9:05
NEUROSIS – 9:10 – 10:45
KYLESA – 10:45 – 11:25
EXHUMED – 11:40 – 12:25
MARDUK – 12:40 – end

Friday gets thick with great acts starting at 6 pm with Aura Noir, a Norwegian black metal act that nods heavily to old-school thrash metal.  Corrosion of Conformityare one of the big vintage acts at MDF, a hardcore punk band from North Carolina that led the crossover to underground metal back in the 80s.  I saw the version led by Pepper Keenan that got signed to a major label back in the early 90s, but apparently the original trio from their “Animosity” heyday will be playing tonight.  Kylesa are indie-rock’s favorite metal band of the moment, with two drummers and probably the only woman on stage all weekend (guitarist/vocalist Laura Pleasants); their latest album is a tad too alternative for me, but I’m betting they’ll be pulling the Pixies-sounding numbers from their setlist in favor of their old sludge metal classics.  The evening closes with the self-proclaimed “most blasphemous band in the world,” Swedish black metal icons Marduk.  This isn’t your quasi-psychedelic lo-fi black metal, but some of the fastest, loudest, and most “brutal” (an adjective that will get overused this weekend) metal I’ve heard.  Frankly, it doesn’t make sense at all when played on an iPod, so I’m especially looking forward to hearing it on stage.



http://youtu.be/gxRKXIUaaDY

Day 3: Saturday, May 28
MASAKARI – 12:30 – 12:55
INNUMERABLE FORMS – 1:10 – 1:35
CREATIVE WASTE – 1:50 – 2:20
MAMMOTH GRINDER – 2:35 – 3:05
CRETIN – 3:20 – 3:55
AVULSED – 3:50 – 4:30
THE KILL- 4:10 – 4:40
CIANIDE – 4:35 – 5:10
BLOOD FREAK – 4:55 – 5:30
NUNSLAUGHTER – 5:30 – 6:10
IN SOLITUDE – 6:10 – 6:50
DROPDEAD – 6:25 – 6:55
HAIL OF BULLETS – 6:55 – 7:45
DOOM – 7:10 – 7:55
IMPALED NAZARENE – 7:55 – 8:45
EXHORDER – 8:50 – 9:40
VOIVOD – 9:45 – 10:45
DEFEATED SANITY – 9:55 – 10:30
ACID WITCH – 10:45 – 11:25
HOODED MENACE – 11:40 – 12:20
INQUISITION – 12:35 – end

We’re not attending this date either, but the one everyone’s talking about is Voivod, a Quebecois thrash-cum-prog metal quartet that goes back to the mid-80s.  I like Voivod on paper, but their music has often left me cold.  Long ago I sold their 1986 album Rrröööaaarrr, which I found too poorly produced, too amateurish, and too arch at the time (confessing this action now discredits any extreme metal credibility I have in 2011).  I also sold their big commercial album from 1989 Nothingface, which went the opposite direction—too slick and too commercially ambitious (including an unexciting version of Pink Floyd’s “Astronomy Domine”).  However, I’ll still put 1988’sDimension Hatröss on the turntable from time to time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6POGP9r_As&feature=player_embedded
Day 4: Sunday, May 29
VISCERAL DISGORGE- 1:15 – 1:45
OAK – 2:00 – 2:30
NIGHTBRINGER – 2:45 – 3:20
BAD ACID TRIP – 3:35 – 4:10
GRAVEHILL -3:45 – 4:25
DEAD CONGREGATION – 4:25 – 5:05
NOKTURNEL – 5:00 – 5:40
REPUGNANT – 5:40 – 6:20
MALIGNANT TUMOUR – 6:00 – 6:45
SKINLESS – 6:45 – 7:30
ORANGE GOBLIN – 6:45 – 7:30
LOCK UP – 7:30 – 8:15
BASTARD NOISE – 8:15 – 8:55
NUCLEAR ASSAULT – 8:20 – 9:10
CORONER – 9:20 – 10:50
CITIZENS ARREST – 9:50 – 10:30
WORMED – 10:45 – 11:25
LAST DAYS OF HUMANITY – 11:40 – 12:15
GHOST – 12:30 – end

Not sure if we’re going to stay late into the night, but the two bands we’ll definitely catch are Nightbringer and Dead Congregation. Nightbringer is essentially what you want from black metal: not so fast and pummeling to veer into death metal territory, with a wash of distorted guitars that makes up in sonic depth what it loses in attack, and dudes in face-paint and/or hooded cowls singing odes to Satan, oblivious to the absurdity of their mission.  You could be more Scandinavian and more lo-fi than these guys, but they illustrate black metal’s generic charm about as well as anyone. Dead Congregation are responsible for probably the best album I picked up in preparation for MDF: very brutal (there’s that term again) death metal that feeds back all over the place.  What do occult themes sound like from a Greek Orthodox perspective?  We may get to find out with Dead Congregation.  I’d be interested in checking out Bastard Noise, who like Tragedy are an offshoot from 1990s DIY hardcore legends—in this case, Man Is The Bastard (truly a great band name).  It would be a gas to see Nuclear Assault, one of the few east coast bands from the 80s thrash metal heyday that I thought were worth listening to.  And I’d like to stick around until the end to see what the crowd makes of Ghost, a Swedish metal band who sings Satanic themes in—I kid you not—some super-catchy 70s arena-rock/80s glam-metal trappings.


http://youtu.be/E8siC5hBjnY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=/http://youtu.be/pQHeRlFAAGs[/youtube