Day 4 Saturday

After all the bands on Friday a lot of it started to blur together apart from the bands I particularly wanted to see.

The first of these was Mammoth Grinder who are half of Hatred Surge and another guy on drums playing grindy metalic stuff really fucking well. After that was Deep Sleep who although didn't really fit really sound wise with most of the other bands playing were really great. Also chatted to them for a while as they'd played with The Shitty Limits and one of them put out the Beware The Limits CD in the states.

They'd sorted out In's and Outs for this day so I shot out to grab food and got back to see Hatred Surge finally after hearing tons of good shit about them and having a bunch of their records and they more than lived up to it. Only down side was there was another fight during their set although I haven't got a clue why.

I then missed a bunch of bands as I was chatting to guys from Deep Sleep, watching their merch and trying to flog a bunch of 7"s I had with me. I know Brace War played then and a bunch of others but nothing I could really care about. Ceremony played a second set on the small stage whilst I was sitting at the merch table so it was right on the other side of a perspect plastic window and it was going so nuts that at several times I thought the window was going to bust through and I'd have 20 odd kids and a window on top of me. I also totally forgot that they cover Pressure's On by Red C which is, baring SOA's tracks and maybe Void, the highlight of the Flex Your Head comp for me. I also got a chance to talk to the singer of Deep Sleep about how great Pillsbury Hardcore are and found he had a live tape of 80 tracks of theirs (including a ton of covers) that I'd never heard before. I also bumped into a guy from Newcastle who knew Barlow and who's band (Wraith or Writhe, I get the two confused all the time sorry) had done a long weekend with Hang The Bastard and played the Rot In Hell release gig I drove part of HTB to.

The next band I watched was Despise You who I've been wanting to see for years and in fact came close to seeing them about 2 years ago when I was in Cali and they were playing 2 days after I flew out but despite my frantic efforts to change flights it failed and I missed it. They were fucking great and well worth the wait and played everything I wanted to hear.

The next band I was was Cold World, not a band I ever listen to on record or actually own any of but they were pretty entertaining live in London a couple of years back. It was pretty good watching them just because of the crowd response. Part way through the set however some kid must have taken a really bad head shot as he legged it out and collapsed in the corner in the fetal position clutching his head. All security did was make him move a few feet away from the stage power transformer and then walk away so I legged it to get him a bottle of water. When I got back he was on his feet and walking heading to the back/outside but I didn't see him again to see if he was better (I later found out from a message from him on a message board he wasn't too badly hurt in the end just had a ban migraine for about 12 hours luckily).

After this it was Mind Eraser as the second to last band of the night and I'd heard they were great live and they definatly lived up to it, starting with a cover of Systems Overloaded and getting better from there. What was strange though was the crowd reaction to it. I expected the people who watched Despise You to be into it but it was seeing the sheer amount of "bro moshers" standing looking bored and uninterested during the stuff with odd time signatures, the blasts and the dirgy parts then going off with windmills and kicks to the moshy bits.

Finally it was Floorpunch who were great and played all I wanted to hear, so good I even broke my no stage diving rule twice in 1 weekend. Nothing more I can add to how good it was. I did although have to ask someone if my nose was straight after one song as I was pretty sure I'd broken it but as it was straight and no blood was gushing out I guess the noise could have been someone else's or something.