“It’s good to see all these new faces tonight, I mean the scene is fucking growing…”, said Inner Guilt’s frontman Sako when apologizing on behalf of his band for not being able to perform that night. The fact is no one cared about the lineup; the 15+ bands event had been postponed a while ago and the location was moved to a relatively small pub in Jbeil, but that didn’t stop 200+ Metalheads from showing up to support the scene as well as the local events.
Truth is Metal 101 was more of “raising moral” kind of event, one which was fueled by the local Metalheads’ reactions to the recent false accusations of Satanism which were aired on national TV. 30% of the attendees didn’t actually enter the venue, but simply came to hangout outside, enjoying the music airing from the Monster drink truck with their beers in hand. While that may be a bad thing for the organizers (especially after the local police came and forced everyone to either go inside the pub or clear the area), I was personally glad the venue didn’t pack the 400 attendees which the organizers had officially set as their maximum capacity. As an advice, the venue will not withstand more than 150 happy attendees, and by happy I mean not suffocating with a reasonably clear view of the stage. This is mostly the main issue with the venue – its 2-floor architecture will not allow a “pleasurable experience” for most of the attendees.
What about the sound? Well props to Roy Nawfal (RockRing) for managing to output the best sound you can have in a short amount of time, but even that proved to be average. Again, no one cared, the bands had an ultra quick soundcheck and just went with it; the musicians and the fans weren’t picky about the sound.
All the bands played with passion for their music: 3-piece Punk band Shake Well Before Use raced through their setlist with fast-paced songs, awkward transitions (the kind you expect from Punk) and an overall negligence for musicianship. They are the coolest Punk band around and they know it.
Local Hair Metal band Eruption keep getting better each live performance, as they finally settled with a good lineup that successfully reproduced the looks, compositions and attitude of the Hair Metal era musicians.
The event also featured performances from several Black Metal bands like Morbidia, Hatecrowned and Melankoly, all of which brought the intensity up a notch after the event’s slow start. I felt from the crowd’s reaction that Hatecrowned stole the Black Metal show with their aggression and self-proclaimed Tripolian Black Metal. Another band that had lots of potential is Melodic Death Metal band Deathtone, their main influence is mostly likely to be Children Of Bodom and they had a good show.
The remaining bands were all-star band Legion and “guest band” Kaoteon, both of which I unfortunately didn’t watch. Why you may ask? Well some of the bands took 20+ minutes to setup before they perform, and standing there after 5 hours of listening to musicians tuning their instruments, debugging their feedback problems and seeing random attendees have a go at the drums while no one was looking was a downer for me, so I bailed (you can sue me by emailing admin@lebmetal.com) at approximately 11:20. That being said, Legion is a band comprised of experienced members from several local bands like Postmortem, Kimaera, Kult and Kaoteon who’s playing quality covers of legendary band Death. Kaoteon on the other hand need no introduction, they haven’t performed locally in a while due to timing difficulties with the members. If you stuck around and watched these bands, your feedback is welcomed.
Big Metal events are coming our way in Lebanon, and that’s easy to guess with the latest interest in Rock / Metal events by major companies like 2u2c, Buzz Productions and Poliakov Vodka among others. However, the real glue which holds the Lebanese Metal scene together is these local events which guarantee the scene’s continuity and growth.
Check out all the pictures from the Metal 101 event on our Facebook page.
