Two weeks ago I ventured my way into the depths of the underbelly of Detroit, Harpos. For those of you not familiar with the Harpos, it's probably one of the sketchiest, most unsanitary venues you've ever set foot in. Now don't get me wrong, I don't expect it to be exactly germ-free, but come on, bathroom floors might want to get mopped after drunk metalheads vomit all over the place.
But I digress. Tonight was like every other show at Harpos, 10 bands on the bill….wait…did he say 10 bands….yes….10 bands. Four bands on the actual tour and six horendous local bands that believe that as long as you downtune a guitar and buy a double bass pedal your music is worthy of public performance. What happened to the days when you needed….ummm…what's the word I'm looking for…TALENT to hit the stage?
Well, after about 3 hours of mind-numbing noise, the actual bands meant for the stage finally hit the speakers. Diecast was a breath of fresh air on the tour. After hours of mindless, generic death metal, it was good to hear a band with some real chops. The only problem was that the local bands ran over and their set time ended up getting cut. Hooray for Harpos once again. My other big complaint is that not only is there no barricade for me to take photos from, but the stage is 7 feet tall. So the only way I can get real photos is if you know the band, and they let you up on the side of the stage, which even then, the photos are spotty at best. Luckily I happen to know their merch girl who hooked me up with them so I could at least get on stage for their set.
Sworn Enemy followed, putting on a fairly respectable show. I'm not all that familiar with their music, I'd only seen them once in the past, but they can definately throw down. The crowd was pretty pumped for their set, but you could still tell that a lot of people were there for the headliners, Sepultura.
When Sepultura took the stage, the crowd's roar started to build, everyone was ready and had been waiting for near 5 hours for them to play. The problem was, that after 5 hours of metal, it's hard to really stay interested in the set for an hour and a half. The crowd's ferocity went dull after about half of their set, and it really seemed to drone on because of it. What could have been a really dynamic, energetic set, went flat and un-noticed. It's really sad that such a metal powerhouse can have it's thunder taken away by the mis-management of a venue.
For a full gallery, click the photo.
