Mayhem Festival - AT&T Center (San Antonio TX; Aug.14, 2009)

It was a brutally hot day when the Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival rolled into San Antonio at the AT&T Center on Friday. While it wasn’t a huge festival there were about 13 bands performing, nine of them played outdoors during the day on stages set up in the parking lot in the blazing Texas sun.

Regardless of the heat there was a huge turnout. There were people lined up to get in starting at about 6am. As you can imagine it was almost totally a metal crowd and although it’s the dead of summer and we’re in the midst of a heatwave with two weeks straight of 100+ degree temperatures almost everyone that showed up dressed in black.

To kick off the Mayhem Festival were a few pretty much forgettable bands, Whitechapel, Negative 263 and Job For A Cowboy. Now don’t get me wrong, the bands weren’t bad they just didn’t have anything special. All the parts were there, loud distorted guitars, incomprehensible growling vocals, and double bass drums.

By the fourth band things started to kick into high gear with more widely known bands. God Forbid fired things up with a very anthemic set that had the crowd singing right along. Next up was Behemoth. These guys were interesting, all decked out in some sort of gothic battle dress. The music was decent but the stage show was what the band was all about. It was sort of like a more mature Gwar. There was a little blood spitting and stuff. It was good fun if nothing else.

Next up were a couple of bands that I had heard good things about but they pretty much left me cold. All That Remains took the stage and played a set of pretty much generic hardcore metal, again, not bad just not impressive either. Black Dahlia Murder was a pretty big disappointment, they played some uninspired tunes but the part the really annoyed me most was that the singer was running around in a swim suit and no shirt with his fat belly flopping around. I felt embarrassed for him.

Up next was Trivium who put on a great show. Lots of energy and good music that was heavy yet catchy. Trivium is a very well put together band and I expect them to go places.

The last outside band I was eagerly expecting. I had heard lots of good things about Cannibal Corpse. With a name like that how can you go wrong? Well, once again it was just run-of-the mill metal with cookie-monster singing. Nothing new or exciting. With Cannibal Corpse over the outside part of the festival was moved indoors.

On the inside Bullet For My Valentine started up. They played a kinda middle of the road set. The music alternates between MTV friendly metal ballads with a little screaming thrown in for good measure lest they get compared to Creed or something in that vein. I’d like the music if I was an angsty 12 year old.

Killswitch Engage pick up where they left off. Although they aren’t quite as hardcore or metal as some of the other acts they had a more genuine sound, not at all poppy but radio friendly nonetheless. They put on a good show with crowd interaction. The guitar player was kind of a mystery, he was dressed up in short shorts, a dew rag, and a cape with 80’s style running shoes on. It was as if Angus Young and Rick Neilson had a retarded butt baby together. He wasn’t annoying until he addressed the crowd with his inane comments.

You could feel the excitement building as the next band was getting ready to take the stage. The majority of the crowd was here to see them and the place was full. This band is one of the heaviest bands ever to exist and in my eyes are the best thrash metal ever.  Slayer had a setlist of all of their best songs including Disciple, Dead Skin Mask, Angel of Death and Raining Blood. There were no breaks in between songs. The band just tore through the set taking no prisoners. The twin guitar assault of Jeff Hanneman and Kerry King was spot on as well as Dave Lombardo’s insanely fast and precise drumming. Tom Araya’s voice was great hitting every note and every scream perfectly. It sounded just like the records. Superb.

Why anyone would want to follow Slayer is beyond me, but Marilyn Manson closed out the show. The AT&T center emptied out quite a bit after Slayer, but Manson still had droves of fans. This was the first time I had ever experienced Marilyn Manson. As I expected the music is good but not great. The stage show is great. There are all kinds of cool props and theatrics. Manson spends a lot of the time pouring beer into his mouth and spraying it all over the place. At one point I got beer spit straight into mouth, which was pretty unpleasant to say the least.

All in all I had a pretty fun day at Mayhem, it was quite hot but there was plenty of water to keep hydrated with. The fans were very well behaved for metal heads. I saw no fights even in the pits and only a few wasted people. There were actually quite a few scantily clad hot chicks as well, which was a welcome and unexpected surprise.

If I had to do it all over however, I would have skipped everything but Slayer.

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