A bucket list item I’ve had since I was a teenager is attending a metal festival in Europe. I remember meeting a fellow teenage metal fan in an AOL chatroom when I was 12 or 13 and talking about wishing to attend Wacken Open Air Festival in Germany. While I didn’t attend Wacken this summer, I did attend three other European metal festivals: Obscene Extreme, Beyond the Gates, and Brutal Assault. I’ll be discussing my experiences from each one of these festivals in separate posts. I might also discuss the Artificial Brain show I saw in Prague, which had its own share of stories and characters. In fact, I might just turn this into a regular series whenever I attend a metal show. Lord Satan knows there are plenty of entertaining stories from metal shows I’ve attended over the years. The infamous Wolves in the Throne Room show at The Riot Room comes to mind…

Obscene Extreme (OE) in Trutnov, Czech Republic, was the first of the three festivals I attended. I had arrived in Prague a couple of days earlier from Bratislava and had bought my train ticket to Trutnov from Prague at least a month or so in advance. As a way to calm my anxiety about travel, I tend to arrive way too early at airports, bus stations, and train stations. The morning of my train from Prague to Trutnov was no different. As I stood in the waiting area at Prague’s Main Station, I noticed that the area soon became populated with people with black-colored band shirts, camo shorts or black jeans, black boots, and often many tattoos. It brought a smile to my face both that the day had finally arrived that I was attending my first metal festival and that I would be embarking on it with like-minded people. After the stream of black-clad passengers boarded the train, there was a party on the train. There was a Russian (or, at the very least, Russian-speaking) group who seemed to be continuing the party from the night before. A few of them were clearly loaded and had bottles of beer and liquor on their shared table. After 20 or 30 minutes, the one who was drunkest passed out.

Before even entering the festival grounds, there was a situation that had me momentarily worried. First, you should know that on the paper tickets and in various announcements, the festival organizers said they would not allow anyone with a duplicate ticket to enter the festival – no ifs, ands, or buts. I walked up to get my paper ticket scanned and ended up first showing my VIP camping ticket. The guy working at the entrance to the festival held up his scanner momentarily but hesitated to tell me that I had to go to another area to get my camping ticket scanned. So I did that and then set up my tent. After returning to the entrance to scan my festival entry ticket, a young woman working the front said it had already been scanned. I was in shock. How could this have happened? I didn’t share my ticket with anyone. It had been in possession the entire time. Was my e-mail hacked at some point? Why would a hacker want my OE ticket? The only logical explanation was that the original guy working the front entrance had accidentally scanned my festival entry ticket. Or he consciously scanned it but then got confused when he saw my VIP camp ticket and in the confusion forgot to give me my wristband (he gave me the other “freebies” awarded to attendees – just not the wristband). To make a long story short, a manager had to be summoned and the guy had to be tracked down. He apologized and everything was resolved. However, it was certainly a nerve-wracking period!

When I first walked into the festival grounds after feeling the relief of having been allowed in, I had an overwhelming feeling that I was an imposter. Call it imposter syndrome if you will. I think the simplest way to describe it is that I felt like everyone around me seemed to have much of their identities wrapped up in the music. And I think having more of your identity wrapped up in the music perhaps illustrates a deeper dedication to the music. I had this dedication as a teenager with my long hair and beard and mostly black wardrobe, but I lost it as my appreciation for metal just became one of many parts of my identity as opposed to the major part of my identity. I guess I felt like a weekend warrior in some sense. It’s just not a lifestyle for me as it seemed like it was for most others around me at the festival. There were crust punks with dirty patched clothing. There were metalheads with long hair, black-colored band shirts, and knee-length camo cargo shorts. And here I was with a side part, a mustache, and above-the-knee jean shorts. I’m really focusing on physical appearances here because that was the first thing that I saw and fashion is an indicator of subculture allegiance (as well as socio-economic class and blah blah blah). But I will talk about a revelation I had about metal “fashion” in another post.

After my shock wore off and my eventual acceptance of the fact that I’m now an untrve poseur, I noticed that there was a vomiting contest being held. Note: this was not a drinking contest although drinking was part of it. The winner of the contest would be the person who filled a cup with the most vomit. I’m not sure what the contestants were given to drink to induce their vomiting, but based on the repulsed expressions on their faces, I can’t imagine it was anything great. One contestant was having a really hard time inducing himself to vomit while another one was vomiting after nearly every gulp of whatever shit juice they had been provided.

Unfortunately, I missed the majority of the spanking contest which preceded the vomiting contest. What I do know is that the contestants got bare-assed and bent over and that the woman in charge would smack them with different BDSM tools, including a whip and flogger. My guess is that the spanking got gradually more intense as the contest dragged on and that the winner was simply the one who didn’t throw in the towel.

The bands at OE tended to fit into one of a few categories: grindcore/powerviolence, gore metal, mid-paced death metal, or some variety of punk (d-beat, fastcore, hardcore, etc.). As I looked around the crowd, I saw fans representing all of these genres of extreme music. The crust punks tended to congregate on the hill that overlooked the festival from one side. The older metalheads tended to keep to the auditorium seating that conveniently populated the area just behind the standing area in front of the stage. And the real grind freaks were at the front of the stage moshing, headbanging, getting on stage, and stage diving.

Malevolent Creation played as the first post-headliner directly after Infest on the second day of the festival. While their brand of early 90s Floridian death metal was certainly consistent with the other headbanging-worthy death metal bands performing, it was what occurred onstage that made their performance one of the most memorable. At one point in the middle of a song, the drummer suddenly started slowing down in a sloppily, uniform way while also being totally out of sync with what the guitarist and bassist were doing on their instruments. Within a few seconds, the drummer came to a complete stop and puked on his side. I don’t ever remember seeing this happen on stage before. I’ve heard of a time in which Dixie Dave of Weedeater placed a bucket on stage and puked into it every once in a while, but this was the first time I had been present for something like this. I was shocked at first but then just started laughing. After he regained composure, the band soldiered on. At another point during the performance, a crust punk got on stage, pulled a bag of white powder out of his jacket, put some of the said powder on his finger, and held it up to the bassist of Malevolent Creation. The bassist leaned over and snorted it off of his hand. The stage security guard just put his head in his hand and laughed.

Drugs were certainly around. On the first day of the festival, there were two guys walking around who were clearly selling weed. One of them was wearing a suit jacket in which the design was a recurring image of a marijuana leaf. His partner was carrying a huge satchel. At one point, I saw the latter pull out a huge bag in the middle of the crowd in order to sell some to an inquiring mind. Right before Midnight played, a guy was literally trying to get rid of a gigantic spliff because he didn’t want it anymore. Some guy had given it to him and he did not know where that guy had gone. No one around this guy wanted to smoke it except for yours truly.

Weed was everywhere, but there were also powders like those that the bassist of Malevolent Creation snorted. I met a German guy on the second day of the festival who seemed a bit hippy. He was a bike mechanic named Florian who was barefoot (and ended up falling down a couple of times). We hung out for most of the day, bought each other beers, and watched the bands together. As the night was approaching, I was losing steam.

I said, “Man, I want to stay up for the bands tonight, but I’m so tired!”
Florian said, “Well, I have speed and MDMA.”

The alcohol did flow as well. There were numerous beer tents selling a variety of Czech beers. There was even an IPA that was made specifically for OE. As a 37-year-old, I can’t imagine drinking all day for four or five days straight. But I saw people clearly older than me absolutely plastered. My favorite was a guy who was blackout drunk for several hours the first day, and then I saw him drinking at 8:30 a.m. the next day. Actually, he was blackout drunk every day of the festival. He once laid down in the middle of the aisle between rows of seats. He also once fell back into some brush. Wherever you are blackout guy, I hope you’re ok. And I wonder how much of the festival you actually remember

Midnight‘s performance was another personal highlight for me. I had listened to them a little bit here and there. I even played them on Malicious Intent every once in a while. But seeing them live made me a fan. What was perhaps most impressive about their performance was how physical it was while the band never missed a beat. The guitarist and bassist were often running around the stage, standing and balancing on monitors, and holding up their instruments like some pagan sacrifices. At one point, the bassist took hold of someone’s first and used that person’s fist to hit himself in the head. But never once did I hear a missed note from either the bassist or guitarist. And every song they played absolutely ripped.

Bandit, thanks to the antics of the vocalist Gene Meyer, had one of the best performances of the festival. But even without his antics, the three-piece bassless grindcore act had one of the tightest and most exciting performances. Looking around at the start of the set, I could tell that most of the crowd was most likely not familiar with them, but they were one of the bands I was most looking forward to seeing after having listened to them for 5 or 6 years. Their riff-heavy Pig Destroyer-influenced grindcore has grabbed my attention since the beginning. But it was really thanks to Meyer that the crowd was eventually whipped into a frenzy. Throughout the performance, Meyer gradually stripped down to his (Sponge Bob Square Pants) underwear, hit himself with the microphone and his own fist to the point that he was bleeding, jumped into the mosh pit, and ended the set by kneeling on stage and puking.

Crisix was perhaps one of the best overall live performances I’ve ever seen at a metal show. And again, this is not just because the band was so incredibly on point. But the band was having tons of fun while the crowd was going absolutely apeshit. A huge circle pit opened up as fans crawled up on stage in droves like there was no tomorrow. Toward the end of their set, the band all switched instruments and performed a medley of classics. From what I recall, there was a Metallica song, “Walk” by Pantera, and I think some punk song I didn’t know. After switching instruments yet again, this time to their original owners, the band performed one or two more songs as the bassist and one of the guitarists got in the mosh pit and were held on the shoulders of a couple of fans.

Easily one of my favorite parts of OE was seeing one of my favorite metal bands Pig Destroyer not once, but twice. Pig Destroyer headlined the last night, but they were also the “secret” headliner for the following night’s afterparty show. I have been listening to Pig Destroyer for over 20 years and this was the first time I had seen them live. I’m pretty sure 38 Counts of Battery was the first Pig Destroyer album I bought after hearing “Unwitting Valentine” on a Relapse sampler. But I remember my friends and me obsessing over Prowler in the Yard, which was one of the biggest influences on one of my high school bands, It Would Be Fate. During OE, Pig Destroyer ended up playing quite a bit from that album for both sets. I found myself thinking of my old bandmates PJ and Jay especially and all of the music we played together, but I also thought more broadly of those formative years in middle school and high school.

It would have normally bothered me that there was quite a bit of overlap between Pig Destroyer‘s two sets. But I think since the overlap was mostly Prowler in the Yard songs, and the fact that that weekend was my first time seeing them, it hardly bothered me at all. I felt a bit of nervous anticipation with my newly-made French friend Ronan. There was no way we could be sure that Pig Destroyer was the one playing the headlining set until we saw them watching Hellbastard and other bands that were opening the afterparty show. They started their second set with a series of punk covers – some of which I knew (Minor Threat, Black Flag) and some that I didn’t.

Besides the bands mentioned above, there were great performances by Memoriam (former members of Bolt Thrower), Gatecreeper, Belzebong, SxFxCx, Onslaught, LIK, Dismember, Vole, PxLxFx, and Benediction.

Besides OE’s penchant for attracting quality bands and ecstatic freaks from across the heavy music spectrum, I will remember the festival for its convivial atmosphere. Almost everyone was extremely friendly and just there to have a good time even if they, to quote Exodus, were having some good friendly violent fun. People were almost always ready to help someone up in the mosh pit or catch someone stage diving (and people were stage diving constantly). Even the guy who was camping next to me, who barely said a word the entire festival said in a gravelly voice, “Alright, guys. See you next year,” after he packed up his tent.