w/ ManWitch

What a difference seven months make: at our last show in Oct, the future seemed so unsteady. Now, it’s looking brighter than ever. Cruella has been back at rehearsal with us for a few months now, and her breast cancer battle seems so in the past. We have 5 new songs, and considering how long they all are, that’s pretty much a new cd’s worth. Seas of Blood has gotten a LOT of good reviews. True, there were some bad ones, but the bad were very much in the minority. People are referring to us as unique and ground breaking. we can ask for better than that.

On to the show: ManWitch is a total hoot, sort of a GWAR-like parody of euro power metal bands. The perform in capes and viking helmets, and all their songs are ridiculously dramatic. Their stage set is totally over the top as well, and it takes them forever to break it down, hence only two bands on the bill. As I was manning the merch table, I could only listen and not watch, but I have caught them before and can only assume they were their usual entertaining selves. They actually played a bit longer than expected, but the crowd loved it.

We had not debuted this much new material since our very first show in 2004, and were a bit nervous about how the new tunes would go over. We had been pretty open about the fact that this would be an entirely or almost entirely new set, so a lot of people were quite eager to hear what we had been working on all this time. Opening with “Drive All Night” (which sort of has an Ace of Spades/Hammerfall groove), the new tunes went over great, and we did play one classic, Serpentarius. It was so great to be back onstage and prove that we wouldn’t disappear in the face of adversity.