The mood was almost as heavy as the music Friday night at The Jinx. Weedeater always draws a good crowd, but the room was filled with past Jinx regulars, out of town musicians and other rarely seen faces from the Savannah heavy music scene, in addition to the current crop of local metal fans. Everyone was there for the music, or maybe even some catharsis through the music, but I suspect a good many people there were seeking some comfort in each other’s company after the loss of our mutual friend, Athon.
The room was at capacity, with a “one in, one out” policy in place much of the night. Each band expressed their condolences and appreciation for being there in their own way and multiple toasts to the Black Tusk bassist were offered during the evening. Atlanta’s insanely tight 3 piece Lazer/Wulf opened the show with their mostly instrumental, mathy, and technical metal gymnastics. I’ve been in awe every time I’ve seen them, and Friday was no exception. I had trouble keeping my head banging in sync with the musical time changes more than once. Highly recommended if you get a chance to see them.
I’d never seen Full of Hell before, and when they started their set I was toward the rear of the room. Over the roar of the music I could hear throat shredding vocals, but couldn’t figure out who was doing the “singing”. I finally located the vocalist on the tv monitors above the bar and realized he was on the floor with the crowd which erupted into a pulsing circle pit several times. Super heavy duty and brutal stuff.
The last time that I saw Weedeater, frontman/bass player Dixie Dave was having some kind of “issue” with his equipment and was attempting to fix it (read as “he was beating on his amp”). Athon jumped onto the stage to try to help and when Dixie realized it was him, he hugged him and the amp magically was working again. Weedeater has a history with Black Tusk, having shared many stages over the years, many pictures of the two bands together made it into the memorial posts and both bands are featured in Slow Southern Steel, a highly recommended documentary on the Southern metal scene. Dixie’s ever present bottle of Jim Beam was raised many times over the course of the night in memory of “J.V.A.”. Andrew from Black Tusk also joined the band on stage for their cover of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Gimme Back My Bullets”. Good stuff.
I took some pictures, heavy on the Weedeater. Here’s a few, click through for more.
Full of Hell
Lazer/Wulf
Weedeater
