It's a shame that so many youngsters were too hung over from Hadad's to make it to the BFD bike lot show on Sunday. Despite the lousy turnout, it just might have been the best show of the weekend.
First up was Dry Spell, local Richmond hardcore dudes who seem to get added to every local show. They played an honest set and didn't disappoint, but I have seen them live so many times, and although I like their sound a lot, they have never really stood out to me from other hardcore bands in the area and in general. Still, they provided a good soundtrack as people slowly trickled in for the day.
Next up was Little Ozzy, the infamous dwarf known for his Ozzy impersonations and his trusty Zakk Wylde-era Ozzy tribute band. I have been a die-hard Ozzy fan since middle school, and was fully expecting to be annoyed by an obnoxious imposter pushing a funny gimmick to overkill. I was very pleasantly surprised, however, to discover how much talent the band and frontman actually have. Little Ozzy himself was silly, hitting a giant bong during the song "Sweet Leaf" and getting the audience to sing along at multiple points during the set. However, he was also excellent vocally and knew all the words, and the band was on point as well. The BFD crowd was hungry for Sabbath covers rather than solo stuff, but despite their apparent rusty reaction to playing so much older material, the guitarist nailed every solo, and the bassist and drummer hit every beat and note.
Magrudergrind played next. They have been one of my favorite grindcore bands for a long time, and they never seem to disappoint live. Sunday was no exception, and they chugged fast and furiously through some older material and some newer, bringing the force of the small, packed clubs they are used to playing to an outdoor arena. The crowd responded well to an act that wasn't as familiar as Dry Spell or as predictable as Little Ozzy, and began to throng around the stage and mosh a lot more, finally awakening from the stupor that Saturday's festivities had caused.
Jesuit, who were added to the show at the last minute, played next. I had heard of them before and knew that Nate Newton from Converge was in the band, but I hadn't heard them and was looking forward to checking them out [EDITOR'S NOTE: Jesuit was a mid-90s VA Beach band that featured members who went on to play in Converge, Dillinger Escape Plan, and Count Me Out, among others. They reformed and played several shows this summer in celebration of the release of their discography on Magic Bullet Records.]. And I was not disappointed--Jesuit put on one of the best performances of the weekend. They are described on Last FM as sludge and doom influenced metal, but they are much more original then many bands that fit this description. They immediately hit the audience with an onslaught of extremely hard hitting grind n' roll in the vein of Leng T'che, even reminding me slightly of bands like Genocide Superstars. There were only a few points where they ventured into stuff that droned along so slowly that I lost interest, and the crowd seemed to have a great reaction to them, even though they were one of the less well-known bands to play.
I was also unfamiliar with the next band playing, Iron Lung, but I had high hopes for a two-piece power-violence band from Seattle. Sadly, their set disappointed the hell out of me. They had that grungy sound and were relatively unique, but combined with the faster stuff they were trying to play and the flatness of their sound, they came off sounding like nothing but breakdowns and slow, punky interludes, without any of the violence that is supposed to accompany power-violence. The two-piece thing works well for bands like Black Cobra, who get a guitar tone that is both extremely powerful and heavy on the low-end so that it almost sounds like a bass, but Iron Lung were making no attempt to make up for the fact that they only had two instruments to work with.
After the brief but brutal rainstorm that had everyone fearing a last-minute move to the Hat Factory, the sun came back out and Victims took the stage, so I grabbed a vegan cupcake and a Diet Coke to keep me going and headed up front to check them out. Victims are a Stockholm hardcore band, and it seemed like they were as big of a deal to some people at the show as headlining hardcore legends C.O.C. themselves. I must admit that hardcore isn't my first love, and while I enjoyed Victims' set a lot, I didn't quite catch anything that makes them stand out way above the pack. All of their songs were extremely well executed and well performed Swedish hardcore, and seeing them live was cool, but I'm not sure they would hold my attention to listen to at home. In all fairness, though, I was a bit burnt out myself at this point, and ready to see the main attraction.
Finally, Corrosion of Conformity took the stage. I was super happy with what they played, since they incorporated a lot more of their 90s/00s-era Southern rock-sounding stuff into their set than they had at Maryland Deathfest and other recent shows, where they stuck strictly to Animosity-era material. Granted, I would have been totally stoked if they had decided to play their 2005 LP In The Arms Of God in its entirety, while the rest of the audience would probably have fled in terror. But they didn't go that far, and managed to strike up a pretty good balance between their two different sounds. I was a bit disappointed that a lot of people seemed to leave after Victims or in the middle of C.O.C.'s set. The turnout was much less then I expected for such a big act. Still, I have to hand it to the BFD crew that it was a perfect ending to the weekend--watching C.O.C. play while the sun set and people slowly headed home to get some much needed rest. Here's to next year being even more brutally friendly!
Words by Addison Herron-Wheeler
Images by Jake Cunningham