Day 3 Friday

After breakfast I started chatting to some people from Ohio trying to blag a car ride too and from the venue but i turned out they didn't have a car so instead hung out with them and got a bus together to the fest. As we got there way too early we walked into the nearest hotel we saw and hung around its pool.

After standing around in line for well over an hour to get in and after joking about how shit it would be to have no re-entry we got in and found it was no re-entry....

The frist band up I had no clue what they were called only that it started with an X and they were shit. The layout was a big stage and a smaller one each alternating so there was no down time but also no overlaps would have worked great in practice but the PA on the smaller stage was shocking.

The first band on the smaller stage was Nails and as I suck at describing stuff was just quality. Following them was a series of Texas bands, Power Trip, Crucified and possibly on more who were all pretty good. On the main stage was No Tolerance playing fast, hard straight edge stuff with a YOT and AF cover to boot. Some other band went on who I can't remember, it was about the that I went to check out was food was going and found out literally the only stuff to eat was meat so went hungry.

The next band on the main stage was Get The Most starting with a YOT cover and continuing with well done youth crew. The Carrier played but it was just bland from what I remember so didn't bother watching them. The same went for Alpha and Omega who where alright but nothing special at all. Up next was Mother Of Mercy who I've got 7"s of but never really listened too (apparently the lp's the one to go for anyways) so was kinda surprised by how good it was. Following was Dry Rot who really suffered from the shit PA but were still fucking great and fully pulled off the nuts front man thing without looking contrived at all. On the main stage then was Knife Fight who were the main band for me that day and one of the reasons I decided to include this on the trip. They played everything I wanted to bear bar the Nihilists cover but covered YDI and Discharge which more than made up for it. I even broke my self imposed stage dive ban (I injure myself badly to often doing stupid shit) during Hypocrit. Straight after KF played I also scored their first 7" and the Oath 7" on green for $5 each.

The Mongoloids followed and I'd never heard them until I saw them in London recently and was pleasantly surprised. The reaction for them was nuts, giant circle pits and a ton of stage dives. Iron Age went up next and I don't really get how this band is quite so big, I've never really bothered to listen to them beyond maybe 1 or 2 tracks but it just sounded like hardcore trying to be metal but not going far enough and aimed at people who want to say they like metal but don't really. But ton's of kids were going off to it so they must be doing something right I guess. Also during their set a fight broke out for some reason and I saw some guy leaping off the stage to punch some guy and the guy that got punched was then led out by security bleeding they also had a power cut during one song.

After that the whole lack of food thing was really taking it
s toll and as the remaining bands (Blacklisted, Ceremony, Trapped Under Ice and possibly one more were ones I'd either seen before or weren't that interested in me, Scott, Lukas and Ariel (the people from Ohio I'd met) went off to get some food and relax in the hotel hot tub until getting kicked out of
it by the staff cause it'd been closed for an hour.