Getting to the point now, we prepared and toiled in tireless anticipation for the show. Not wanting to make our return to Modesto with the same set from last time, we made it a point to bring in two brand new songs into our repertoire, Transmigration and Thine Enemies Vanquished.
Transmigration started off as a riff idea that I had in mind when Alex was still in the band, but unfortunately did not see the light until after the fact. With it, I was eager to incorporate the juxtaposition of crushing and fast death metal riffing with the blackened flourishes and put some hills and valleys with tempo and mood changes in there as well. The latter is what resulted in the trade-off solo section working really well, something that we've only done previously with Moments. It might rear it's head again on future songs, but we'll have to wait and see...
Thine Enemies Vanquished was another one of those ideas that started off as a spontaneous bout of inspiration in the form of a random riff/melody you hum in your head. Luckily, it came to me not only as I was on my way home from work, but only a mere couple hours before band practice, so I was able to show it to the guys while it was still relatively fresh in my mind. From there, we played around with other riffs that flowed with the first one and structured it accordingly. Originally we wanted to do another trade-off solo thing, but that didn't seem to work right. When we did that lead guitar melody a couple bars then harmonized it, we knew it would work a lot better, and we're quite pleased with results. Sometimes you have to adapt to the song, and not the other way around. The song title idea was originally inspired by a quote in Conan the Barbarian when he is asked what is good in life. The same also inspired an Amenthes t-shirt that's currently in the works. When I pitched the idea to the guys, Buddah suggested we reword it somehow, since Crush Your Enemies was already in use by Chimaira, unbeknownst to me. Nevertheless, my imagination kicked in once I started looking closer at the artwork that's going to be used for the shirts, and realized that a caption in the past tense would be more appropriate, and everyone approved. Yay!
So moving on from the behind-the-scenes of the songwriting, we also were eager to make subtle improvements to the overall presentation of our show, thus we invested in a new customized drum head for Pete with our logo all nice and beveled. The way I see it, it's a lot easier than having a team of people deal with putting up a giant backdrop or banner with our name on it, not that we're opposed to that in the future should the need arise.
All the practicing and preparations lead up to the day of reckoning. Travis was not able to participate due to prior work commitments, so we had to soldier on without our bottom end. We arrived at the venue and took in the atmosphere of the gig. Alfred and I went to the taquería next door for a little pre-show grub, then we all took turns watching and supporting the other bands and babysitting our gear. On a side note, the latter is probably one of the most useful tidbits of band-related advice I've ever received from anyone: watch your gear like a hawk at shows, especially out of town. To say we stuck out like a sore thumb on the lineup is a major understatement. The rest of the bands played punk and rock in varying degrees, so we were a little skeptical of the response we would receive from the crowd. We already gave ourselves the clichéd football team pep talk of going in and playing our asses off no matter who or how many stuck around to watch us, after all we were to play last.
The moment of truth arises and much to our amazement, we didn't scare everyone away! By everyone, I refer mainly to the members of the other bands that passed along the good band karma and stuck it out through the night to watch our set. It was obvious once we blazed through Icon that we were not the type of band they were expecting to hear. We continued through our set, and afterwards chatted it up with the promoter and people from the other bands (Broken Note Undertone, Dying Image, and Broken Trojan... Gotta love that name!), and we were truly amazed and touched to receive such a great response from everyone that was there to get crazy with us. We felt extremely proud and accomplished with Alfred on our team and we can't wait to head back up to the 209 in August to see our friends there for our first appearance at the Workshop in Ceres.
Prior to that, though, we will be playing at Fulton 55 on June 28th with Azazel, Incisus (Manteca, CA) and Hymns To The Stone for my 30th birthday. It's going to be a brutal one for sure, so we hope to see you all out there!
Stay Brutal \m/
-Pierce
