Oakland Black/Death Fest 2011

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Much respect to anyone these days crazy enough to put on a metal festival without the help of a mega-corporation.

In this case, it’s Shelby Cobras of Illogical Contraption. This weekend, he’s putting on the Oakland Black/Death Fest. Saturday is Black and Sunday is Death. The lineup is above in metal fonts and below in plain English.

Day 1
Dispirit, Valdur, Mutilation Rites, Necrite, Pandiscordian Necrogenesis, Pale Chalice, Chronaexus

Day 2
Embryonic Devourment, Ontogeny, Rings of Saturn, Truculence, Feast, Slaughterbox, Apocryphon

Cobras has provided a free digital sampler of most of the bands playing this fest. Warning: it’s just a pile of MP3s (and one stray AAC file). A carefully curated compilation this is not. It is purely functional as a sonic introduction.

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Necrite – “Bathing Open Wounds with Shards of Glass”
[audio: NECRITE_BATHING.mp3]

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Day 1 is the runaway highlight, with every band worthy of attention, except for Pandiscordian Necrogenesis and Chronaexus, who make weak showings on the sampler. Attendees of Scion Rock Fest ’11 might remember Dispirit and Necrite. The sampler includes one side of Dispirit’s Rehearsal at Oboreten demo and a ridiculously-titled Necrite tune that makes me wonder if I should revisit their Sic Transit Gloria Mundi album. You can hear it above.

Day 2 is a bunch of lo-fi, fleet-fingered death metal bands, with Truculence’s Gorguts-isms catching my ear most.

For more details, see here.

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VENUE INFO

Oakland Metro
630 3rd Street
Oakland, CA

Doors 5pm
Show 6pm
$10 – single day
$15 – 2 day pass

www.oaklandmetro.org

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