Adam “Doc” Fox is our resident Renaissance man: A mountaineer, film editor, Columbus Crew fanatic, self-identified anarchist, and our digital marketing director. He’s also a seasoned music columnist for the Source and has covered Sonic Temple and Inkcarceration with reviews, artist interviews, and insights into the regional music scene. Please enjoy his musings from this year’s festival.
My Chemical Romance (MCR) fans might be the Juggalos of the emo scene – only way cuter and not so white-trashy.
It was a metal and emo mix for the first day of Sonic Temple Art & Music Festival in Columbus, with tons of black-eyeliner-wearing listeners donning the MCR high school band button-laced black outfits in the crowd.
Here are the top 10 shows that absolutely killed it – not based on how “good” the band actually is, but how they completely took over the audio space, willed the crowd into euphoria and generally tore it up!
#10 Cradle of Filth
In 1999 I was a senior in high school and saw Cradle of Filth on their first real U.S. tour for “Cruelty and the Beast.” They played that title track to a quaint crowd on Thursday and it still ruled. The soprano keyboard singer, the corpse paint, the scary spikes – it was all there. Hitting the high notes was proving difficult with age, but the legends of black metal did not disappoint.
#9 My Chemical Romance
The hate mail is already filling my inbox after the lede to this story, but don’t get me wrong – they put on a good show full of Soviet-era, Constructivism and neoclassical graphics and songwriting.
When emo hit a wall with the Midwestern style of the Get Up Kids and the endless crying of Dashboard Confessional, MCR changed the genre and added more emotion (if that was possible), rock and stage theatrics.
#8 Cattle Decapitation
This band had a ton of hype leading into the festival, with a mix of classic old school metal blended with the speed and riffs of black metal. The crowd was instantly thrust into violence when they appeared onstage.
A young teenage-looking girl had her mom fix a smudge on her white face paint before she went running into the pit.
#7 Carnifex
Repping the best city in America, San Diego, Carnifex took all that surfer broh culture, crumpled it into their hands, smashed it into a fire, and when it was pulled back out it was a new SoCal deathcore sound.
They simply put a new energy behind classic grindcore.
Lead singer Scott Ian Lewis yelled something close to, “Three words: out goes in,” right before the out-of-the-breakdown and into-the-thrash moment.
#6 Whitechapel
When a band is named after the area in England where Jack the Ripper did all his slaughtering, they better live up to it, and Whitechapel definitely did. To put it simply, they have the gurgling Brawndo that metal fans crave! They brought the deathcore from Knoxville and did not disappoint with the energy and rage.
#5 Pierce the Veil
I was actually blown away by their live set – they owned the entire crowd inside Historic Columbus Crew Stadium. Fans out of their seats, unified singing, swaying arms over heads – the humans were there for Pierce the Veil.
#4 Dying Fetus
Mid set, a baby crying was blasted through the speakers, and all the parents and especially moms instinctively jerked their heads in a protective movement toward the sound, in a “someone help that poor kid out mode.” But there was no child, only the speed and offsetting slowdowns of Dying Fetus.
Sometimes when listening to versions of grindcore and metal, it’s hard to make out what the lead singer is saying. I like to imagine what they are singing about, like maybe Dying Fetus was talking about the plight of leaves in the fall? “Leaves finally free themselves of the chlorophyll bond, only to die! Let’s get this circle pit going!”
#3 Fleshgod Apocalypse
Everything was amazing from the Italian death metal band– skulls on mic stands, white face paint and dirty outfits, looking like the killers from “House of 1,000 Corpses.” That oh-so-needed and expected but not so easy to pull off double bass on the drum kit, the soprano singing of opera-like belts in the background.
Veronica Bordacchini’s vocals echoed out throughout Sonic, and her face paint of a horizontal black stripe, a red stripe across her eyes and a black stripe on her forehead, so intimidating, looking like Magua’s war paint.
Fleshgod sound is as if Czar Nicolas the II order metal to his court in 1895.
#2 Napalm Death
How could a band from England, created in 1981, and with no current founding members, make it this high on the list? ‘Cus they absolutely still rule, and anyone who grew up in the scene in the ‘80s and ‘90s can appreciate what they built in the scene.
You could argue they are really more of a hardcore band in metal clothing, but there weren’t 100 subgenres of metal decades ago. The band is very anti-religion and tries to be welcoming to humanity.
“Refugees are not dirty people, they are you and me in different circumstances,” lead singer Mark “Barney” Greenway said.
#1 Bodysnatchers
Right when their set started, I was in the porta-potty and I thought Columbus just got hit with a nuclear strike, as the whole container shook and vibrated with the panic-inducing bass.
You could feel Florida-based Bodysnatchers‘ music in your chest, and it created a survival instinct of fear and horror. In the wild, most people, when they feel that sensation would run away, but the metal fans at Sonic flocked to the fear.
Mid-song, right before it picked back up, lead singer Kyle Medina instructed, “Everybody go ahhhhhhhhhhhh,” and the crowd went, “Ahhhhhh,” and then the smashing started. Of souls, dark outfits, sweat, beer and a little bit of love.
A young man came out of the pit with a literal shoe print on his forehead.
Other Day One Festival Notes:
Most likely, Slaughter to Prevail would have made my Top 10, as they usually do, but their set was at the same time as MCR and Cradle of Filth.
Honorable mentions: Coheed and Cambria, Attila, Dayseeker and Fozzy.
More and more women-led music has made its way into the scene, with bands like The Pretty Wild.
If you’re not much for metal cry-o, Wind Walkers wouldn’t be for you, but when hundreds sing “Without Me” in chorus, it’s fun, like reading Stephen King or watching Megan Fox in “Transformers.”
Same goes for the The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus – emo kids everywhere in the early 2000s could be heard singing “Face Down,” and how domestic violence is like, not cool, man!
It’s fitting for a fest in Ohio that Dayton-based Hawthorne Heights would be on the bill, so we could all crowd-karaoke “Ohio Is for Lovers.”
Nekrogoblikon vocals come off at first like you’re in for some black metal, but then it slows down into classic ’90s metal, then adds keyboards, xylophone, marimba, tambourine and a little glockenspiel for good measure. Oh and, as the name might suggest, a green goblin running around the stage.
“More disappointing than a box of rats on Christmas / More worthless than a dumpster filled with pogs / More disgusting than the time I took a bath with lots of slugs,” lyrics from the Nekrogoblikon song “Powercore.”
The fest really does a good job with dedicated accessible sections with ramps for access around the grounds. And the oh-so-talented sign language professionals, interpreting these performances with vigor.
Saving seats in the stadium should be illegal.
About 2% of fans had their phones out, for any reason, at any time.
And the best shirt I saw, as a writer and a dork, was: “A semicolon is used when a sentence could have been ended but wasn’t.”
