New England Metal & Hardcore Festival

4/22/05 - 4/24/05 the Palladium - Worcester, MA

Live review

Home | Interviews | Live Pictures | Reviews | News | Tourdates | Message Boardz | Links | Search | CD Store | Trade Index | Mailing List | This year's Metalfest lineup looked to be the lamest yet, as it's steadily gone downhill in the last few years. The majority this year were your standard Headbangers Ball fair, consisting mostly of bands playing recycled hardcore and thrash riffs with downright horrible vocals...all dressing the same with their tight vintage shirts and jeans, or worse, wearing makeup and having pretty boy haircuts. Of course there were the Hatebreed ripoffs, including Hatebreed themselves...why not just book Agnostic Front and do it the right way? Thankfully, there was no onslaught of the now incredibly-overdone-in-MA Shadows Fall spawn. Needless to say, I only caught a few bands. Kylesa were the closest thing I saw on the 3 day line-up to resemble stoner rock or doom. No one seemed to know who the hell they were, but they put on a good show around 3:30pm on Friday afternoon. Obituary were the next band I really wanted to see, they came on around 9pm and tore the crowd a new one with their grindy old-school death metal. I finally got to hear "Slowly We Rot" live. Killer. Now if only Carcass would reform as well... Day 2: I missed Strapping Young Lad...damnit. I'm sure they were insanely metal as usual. Danzig went on sometime after 10pm, and opened with several new songs (bad idea when your best material is from the first 3 Danzig albums). Then came the part we were all waiting for, (all of us over 20 who know who the Misfits are) Doyle came out in full Misfits garb, and they played a way-too-short Misfits set. Misfits songs average in around 2-3 minutes long, so I was hoping for a nice half-hour set with say, 10-13 songs...I think we got about 5-6. "We Are 138", "Skulls", "Mommy Can I Go Out and Kill Tonight?", and of course, "Die, Die My Darling". No "London Dungeon", "Death Comes Ripping", "Braineaters", or "Green Hell" though. I missed the 3rd day...one can only hope for a better lineup next year. Reviewed by: Wolfie Wolfie/AbsolutMetal ©2005