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narsilianshard
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 23, 2018 12:36 pm 
 

Weird this didn't get posted earlier. Pretty stellar lineup and there are some tickets still available. I'm driving up there on Thursday.
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Goatfangs
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 30, 2018 8:45 pm 
 

I was here! I drove up Friday morning, mainly because I wanted to minimize the amount of time spent away from my leopard gecko. My mom was tasked with watching her while I was away, but she is also recovering from a major surgery and so I decided to bring the mantises with on this trip to ease the burden on my mom.

Where to start? I know... Cloud Rat. The minute they started playing I knew that this festival was going to be something extremely awesome and special. Their riffs were crushingly heavy and Madison was insane on vocals! I also swear they were more doom/sludge than grindcore. Couch Slut was very noisy and crazy sounding.

Fórn brought on some fucking DOOM. This was the first band I was really excited for before the festival (but the previous two bands were awesome!).

Derkéta was next. This was another band I was super excited for, because they are one of the earliest doom/death bands. Also the first (as far as I know) to have a frontwoman. Sharon's vocals gave me chills, because they truly sounded like some beast from the great depths being summoned forth with old school death metal riffs slopping on top. They even played a song from their 1989 demo... EIGHTIES DOOM DEATH MOTHERFUCKERS

Yellow Eyes was black metal. Pretty good stuff! I admit I wasn't paying attention because at this point my feet wanted to murder me.

I was also saving my energy for BONGRIPPER... These guys get the "Heaviest Band of the Night" award for Friday. Those riffs absolutely dominated my ears.

Khemmis did not disappoint. This band gets the "Best performance of the Night" award for Friday.

Zombi was the final band, a local Pittsburgh band. They started out with some intensely vibrating space drone done on keyboard, then jammed out some progressive rock on top. It was very interesting! Just two guys, one on drums, the other on bass and keyboards at the same time. Very spacey and droney at times! A change of pace, but quite enjoyable!

The highlight of my night on Friday, however, was finding out that Mournful Congregation were staying at my hotel. They were hanging out in the outdoor patio at Hotel Indigo after the show, so I hung out with them for a bit.

Saturday was truly Birdfest, with Immortal Bird, Deadbird and Pelican all playing that night. I heard several jokes about Immortal Bird and Deadbird doing a band duel. I also got to meet a really cool friend I've known for a while but never met in person in the afternoon!

Immortal Bird was first and they were quite a tweet treat. Crusty sludge with black metal.

Scorched played Old School Death Metal, but I was starving and needed food and sought out food instead of really paying much attention to them.

Ominous Circle and Mutilation Rites switched time slots because of travel issues for one of the Mutilation Rites band members. Both of these bands were really good! Yes, I know, a sparse description, but after 26 bands things are kind of blending together a little.

Deadbird was a very enjoyable set though. These guys really remind me of Crowbar with their melodic groove dominated sludge metal riffs and sorta clean vocals. Quite a bit Southern influenced, being that they are from Arkansas.

Spirit Adrift was a band I never heard anything from. When they went on though, I was engrossed by their epic doom metal sound. It sort of reminded me of While Heaven Wept, maybe not entirely the genre, but some of the atmosphere to the riffs really brought them to mind. That and Pallbearer.

מזמור was next (Mizmor for those that don't know). This is a one man black/drone/doom metal project from A.L.N. and definitely not one I ever expected to see live. When I first heard Yodh, I was absolutely blown away. When Mizmor took the stage, they played through the entirety of Yodh, a full hour of some brutally heavy and hauntingly atmospheric blackened funeral doom. These guys were both the "Heaviest Performance of the Night" and "Best Performance of the Night", hands down.

I want to give Pelican some credit though. That was a worthy follow up to the trail of destruction left by Mizmor. They put on an excellent show and it makes me really want to revisit their entire discography. If it wasn't for the fact that Mizmor nailed the entirety of Yodh without a single missed note, I would have even just given them "Heaviest Performance" and Pelican "Best Performance". Their last song was almost cut from their set list because the head of their one guitarist blew. However, they were given another head to borrow and continued with the final track of their set.

Finally came time to see what Krallice was about. They were definitely one of the weirder sounding bands of the festival. Clearly black metal, but with technical riffs and odd time signatures, lots of weird all over the place shit. It was an awesome set!

The lowlight of the night was after I got back to the hotel and decided to call Domino's (which was only a block away from the hotel) for delivery and got hung up on. Maybe it was a mistake, but after seeing the vast amount of negative one star Google reviews for that particular location I didn't chance ordering a pizza and getting it three hours later (or never) so I didn't call back.

Sunday I first had to do something to rectify the fact that my feet hurt minutes after putting these new and annoying shoes on. I had to get new shoes because my old sneakers are basically sandals now with how exposed my feet are. Dr. Scholls and Tinactin worked nicely.

I wanted to save energy for Mournful Congregation and Panopticon so I spent a lot of time resting and listening to the bands instead of also watching them. There were some comfortable seats on the second level of Mr. Smalls with a table. I nearly fell asleep, because I was so tired!

Pyrolatrous brought some great black metal riffs and I definitely had to pick up their CD. Daeva, from Philly, was pretty good. Tomb Mold had an excellent old school cavernous death metal sound. I forget what The Cancer Conspiracy was like since that was when I almost fell asleep, but it's no diss to them because of how tired I was.

Hell was next. This is when I found a spot to settle in and get comfortable and found one up in the balcony with a clear view of the stage. I guarded that seat like a hawk for the next several hours. Hell was so heavy that if I ever hear someone say "That was heavier than hell!" I would respond with "Nope." - M.S.W. did the lead guitar while A.L.N. was on drums and backing vocals (a couple other guys whose names I don't know were also there to provide even more UMPHGH), so there were some distinct similarities to Mizmor. What is even more amazing is that M.S.W. had a cast on his leg and performed on three out of five songs on drums for Mizmor Saturday night. He was doing double duty this festival in spite of using crutches! How is that for dedication? Hell gets Sunday's "Heaviest Performance" award.

False is probably the closest sound to DSBM I have heard performed by a live band. I really enjoyed it and their frontwoman Rachel projected a degree of pure insanity in her performance. Memorable moment was when she started a song with a kind of creepy and insane laugh that went IMMEDIATELY into throat ripping shrieks.

Thou was a band I was excited for! I like their logo with the bat. Bats are cute. Thou had an absolutely massive sound with crushing riffs, but also a sense of melody that was unique among any band I have heard. The one song they played was very majestic and melodic, with sweet clean vocals (I think done by someone named Emily) but with some MASSIVE riffs playing at the same time. Their frontman, Bryan, definitely was funny and charismatic with his intersong banter.

Mournful Congregation was next and I was absolutely blown away. They started off with Whispering Spiritscapes, then Suicide Choir, then they played the instrumental Weeping off of their first demo (What an unexpected treat!) and dove right into Mother - Water, The Great Sea Wept. My only complaint was their set was too short. I think they should have had at least four hours. The performance was nearly perfect as well! This is the band that inspired me to get advance tickets to this festival, book a hotel in a city I've never been before (except as a kid when my family went to Kennywood) and more or less spend probably around a $1,000 total when everything is added up (weekend pass, hotel, merch, Uber rides). Worth every penny!

Panopticon got on stage, and the realization that this fest was almost over just hit me. It all went by so quick. There was no point where I was looking forward to going back to the hotel, no matter how tired I was or how much my feet hurt. Pretty much every band captivated me at some point (with some exceptions for when I was seeking food or just damn tired). I knew Panopticon was good, but they proved why they were headlining this entire fest. This was the finest performance I have seen by any band of any genre in over a decade. I need to go back and look up their set list that is hopefully posted on setlist.fm to relive the entire thing. Words cannot describe how I felt after the last note was played. They did an encore, and finished off their set and the entire festival with The Moss Beneath the Snow. What an amazingly beautiful song. It actually moved me to tears. I cannot imagine a better song to end this absolutely phenomenal weekend off on. Panopticon not only was the best performance of Sunday night, but they are the best performance of the entire weekend.

I would rank the top ten best band performances as such:

1. Panopticon
2. Mizmor
3. Mournful Congregation
4. Pelican
5. Hell
6. Thou
7. Khemmis
8. Bongripper
9. Derkéta
10. Deadbird

Also, this is hands down the best concert I have ever been to. This exceeds some past concerts that were themselves truly glorious and epic. For the longest time I considered Therion's show in 2007 at the Jaxx to be the best concert I have been to (it's now second place). Some other notable stellar concerts that I can name off the top of my head: Metal Masters 2008 with Judas Priest, Heaven and Hell, Motorhead and Testemant; Slayer with Lamb of God, Mastodon, Children of Bodom and Thine Eyes Bleed in 2006; Mournful Congregation in Baltimore, 2014; Esoteric in Baltimore, 2013; East Coast Tsunami 2013 with Hatebreed, Wisdom in Chains and many others; Therion with Beyond the Embrace, Carfax Abbey and Fountain of Tears in Philadelphia, 2005 (my first metal show); Killswitch Engage, Allentown, 2006 (don't hate, I got a set list from them and I was right up front for the entire show); Ozzfest 2007; Iron Maiden, Philadelphia, 2017; Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Beethoven's Last Night tour, the first time they visited Reading;

I'm not on cloud 9, I'm on cloud 50.

I hear Migration Fest is a biannual thing (the last one was in 2016)... so if that is the case, OR if it is held next year, count me in!
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narsilianshard
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Joined: Fri Aug 14, 2009 12:22 pm
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Location: PDX
PostPosted: Mon Aug 06, 2018 11:57 am 
 

Glad you had a good time! This was my third Gilead/Migration Fest, and they are all this unbelievably great. The rumor is it will be less than two years until the next one, but who knows. It was basically a fluke that this one was in Pittsburgh (20 Buck Spin just moved there) so I would guess the next one will be in the midwest again.

Personally, I think Khemmis, Spirit Adrift, Ominous Circle, Pyrolatrous, Scorced, Tomb Mold and Immortal Bird were the highlights.
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