October Spawned A Monster

So the Through the Noise tour which I was waiting on for awhile now just rolled though Van a few days ago and I must say it was pretty goddam wild. For those of you that don't know the tour is currently making its way across Canada and the lineup is stacked! Grave Maker, Outbreak, Shai Hulud and Bane are all on the roster so if you dont make it out to one of the stops you are really missing out! (Misery Signals and Comeback Kid are on the lineup as well...if you are into that kinda thing.) The Vancouver show was at a venue called the Plaza, which is more of a club than a venue for a hardcore show but I guess since it was a big tour the promoters wanted it at a big popular venue. Me and Lennea headed to the show and had to wait in a real long line to get in. Once we got to the front we had to shell out 22 bucks to get in, which is pretty pricey if you ask me but whatever, I get to see some rad bands. Once we got inside, Grave Maker set up pretty quickly. Their set was hog wild. Dudes were mashin' hard and the guys had alot of energy on stage which was alot of fun to watch. That band is quickly becoming one of the bigger sets in hardcore. I figure I should put this in now, but Grave Maker got in a pretty hefty van accident on their way to one of the stops after their Kelowna show and probably won't be on the rest of the tour, and if they do make it back to play some of the later shows then they are some tough mofo's. If you want more info on it I'm sure you can read about it on their myspace (http://www.myspace.com/gravemaker). Hope all the guys can make a speedy recovery!
Back to the show. After Grave Maker played Outbreak set up, I was super jacked on seeing them as they are one of my more liked bands and they definetly delivered a fun set. Lots of kids singing along and having fun. Although they didn't have their regular guitarist and the guy filling in didn't rep the solos as hard which was kind of a bummer. Shai Hulud played 3rd and alot of the Vancouver kids weren't into it which is kind of odd to me. Hulud has been around for a long time and lots of bands that came up after them were influenced alot by them and I don't think Hulud gets the credit they deserve. Granted, their latest album was kinda meh...but their old shit with Chad and Geert on the mic is minters. That shit is some of the stuff that got me into hardcore back when I was in grade 8 and it is definetly still a good jam. If you disagree, stop reading now.
The 4th band to play was Bane and they were the band that I was most jacked on seeing, no doubt about it. I've been listening to Bane for a long ass time (back before I even knew what hardcore was and I just considered them an ill punk band) but I had never gotten a chance to see them before. So I was super jacked on that. They played the craziest set of the night by far. Kids were going off, singing along and stage diving everywhere. They closed their set out by playing "Can we start again" and right at the beginning of the song I was up on stage attempting to get the mic, but I got mobbed by tons of kids in the process and fell off the stage with everyone ontop of me while I was still holding the mic. The mic chord got wrapped around my legs and I was on the ground with a bunch of kids on me and more kids stage diving on top of them which was pretty scary. Eventually everyone got off of me and some people were trying to help me up but I couldn't even stand cause the mic chord was still around my ankles and people were pulling on it trying to find where the mic went. It was pretty sketchy laying on the ground trying to get a mic chord unwrapped from my ankles while kids were stage diving and moshing all around me but I finally got that shit off me and continued to enjoy the last bit of the song. After Bane finished me and Lennea decided to head back home. I kinda wanted to stay for Comeback Kid cause I do enjoy Turn it Around and I'm sure they would have played a bunch of songs from that album but I didn't wanna wait through Misery Signals, so we just packed it in.

Saturday night I was supposed to go see Horizons and Ill Intent play but I totally pulled a weak ass move and stayed home to watch the Red Sox game. I thought it would be done by the time Horizons/Ill Intent played but it ended up going into extra innings and being hella long, and I couldn't just walk away and turn my back on my team! So if any of the Horizons dudes are reading this....which I highly doubt, I am sorry for not making it out. The Red Sox ended up losing by the way, total bummer.

In other news, I have been studying pretty hard lately since I have midterms next week. Hopefully I can manage to do fairly well on them. Also, my birthday is coming up in a couple weeks which I am psyched on since my family is coming down and me and Lennea are going with them to David Copperfield, its gonna be all magical n' shit. Wicked. Halloween is also coming up which is gonna be rad (I hope) so you people from Vernon should plan a trip to Van so we can all party together!

Anyways, that's all for now. October has been good so far and after my midterms it only gets better!

- Dan Slay the Rays!

ps. everyone should scope this band, im hyped on them latley. http://www.myspace.com/badfuckingmouth