This is part four of a multi-part series in which I discuss the sights, sounds, and smells I experienced while attending the 2025 edition of Louder Than Life (“America’s Loudest Rock & Metal Festival”) in beautiful Louisville, Kentucky. Part one is here, part two is here, and part three is here. If you wanna read all kinds of stuff about previous editions of Louder Than Life, you can find it all here.
We woke up to rain on Day Four, and at 10:40 AM, we got a notification in the LTL app that severe weather was approaching, and they were asking people to seek shelter. After last year’s hurricane-related cancellation, I was nervous. A little after noon, they announced that the gates would be reopening soon, and that shuttle service had recommenced for the day. A few early bands were axed from the lineup, and set times began at 1:00. I was bummed that Chained Saint got bumped, but after the exhausting day that was Day Three, there was no chance I was gonna get to see them anyway. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to see them again soon.
The kids are alright.
While we were walking toward the shuttle, a young fella approached us and said “excuse me. I’m sorry to bother you, but are you two going somewhere?” I told him we were headed to the shuttle pickup spot, and he said “the Louder Than Life shuttles?” I confirmed that to be accurate, then he asked if we minded if he walked with us, because he was from Michigan, and didn’t know where he was going. Once we got settled on the bus, we learned that his name is Brandon, he’d been to three concerts in his life (the only one I remember is They Might Be Giants), Day Four headliner Bring Me the Horizon was his favorite band, and he was gonna be seeing them live for the first time. We got separated at the entry gates and we never saw him again, but I hope he had a great time and made it back home safely. I thought about this scene the whole time we were together:
Kaitlin Olson plays drunk so believably.
The later start time meant everything got pushed back a bit, which worked in our favor in some ways, and threw a wrench in other plans. We technically arrived in time to catch part of Accept‘s set on the Reverb Stage, but given how long it would’ve taken to get there from the gates, we would’ve only seen like 10 minutes of it, so we opted for snacks and drinks in Top Shelf to start our day while Crown the Empire played on Main Stage 2. They weren’t really for me, but they were energetic, and they sounded good. They’re far from the worst thing I heard on Day Four of LTL2K25.
While they played, a dude who looked to be a little older than me, carrying two drinks and already quite shitfaced, walked up to me and hollered “WHADJA THINK OF SLEEP TOKEN?!” I told him we left before they played, and he looked at me in disbelief. “We were too tired from Day One, and the crowd was too thick,” I added, not having the heart to tell him I find them mostly boring.
This is the only Sleep Token video I’ve ever enjoyed.
My drunken friend then hollered “WHO’S YOUR BAND TODAY?!” I said “Testament. They’re playin way over on the Reverb Stage later.” He nodded disinterestedly, then shouted “HOW BOUT THREE DAYS GRACE?!” I told him I hadn’t really listened to them. He looked at me like I’d just told him his dog died. “THEY’RE FUCKIN AWESOME!” he hollered, nodding his head for emphasis. “Cool”, I responded. He then yelled “I’M DAVE!” and I said “Joel”, then he went in for a fistbump and I placed my open hand on his fist before realizing he wasn’t going for a handshake. We bumped fists, then shook hands, then he mercifully went to the other end of the table to shout at other strangers.
We started walking over to the Reverb Stage around 2:30 so we could find a good spot for Sebastian Bach at 2:45. We settled into what seemed like a friendly crowd and waited for 10 Years to finish their set on the neighboring Decibel Stage. When the band started to come on stage, a guy in front of me pulled out a full-sized flag and held it up toward the stage, blocking most of my view, and completely blocking the view of dozens of people behind him. After he held it up for the third time in the first minute of the first song, a dude to my right asked him to stop, and he said something about being from the same town as someone in the band. The guy next to him said “yeah, okay” and flipped him off.
By the time the first song ended, he had blocked half of my view no less than 10 times. Finally, about halfway through “Slave to the Grind”, I snapped. “PUT THAT GODDAMN FLAG DOWN!” I shouted. He turned to me and said the same thing he said to the other guy, and I said “I DON’T GIVE A FUCK WHY YOU’RE DOING IT, YOU’RE BLOCKING EVERYONE’S VIEW!” He told me to stand somewhere else, and I told him to go fuck himself, and he kept the flag down for a few songs, then during “Monkey Business”, he tentatively held it up again, saw that I was not going to punch him in the head (I wasn’t tryna get escorted off the premises before Testament played), and then felt emboldened to hold it up a few more times.
During a cover of Ozzy Osbourne’s “I Don’t Know”, a spot opened up in front of the flag-waving dickhead, and he turned to me and indicated that I could move up if I wanted to. I stared at him until he turned back around, and I tried my goddamndest to enjoy set closer “I Remember You”, but that twatwaffle really got my beans bakin. If he’d raised the flag up once or twice, I wouldn’t have minded so much (even though flags and banners are not supposed to be allowed inside the gates), but he was bein a world class asshole with that thing.
Fuck this guy. And if you are that guy, then fuck you.
The shift in set times meant that we were able to head back to the main stage area to catch part of Tech N9ne‘s set, which now started five minutes after Sebastian Bach’s set ended. I’m not overly familiar with Tech N9ne, but I love his rapid-fire rapping style, and I was glad I got to experience some of it live.
I’m all out of clever captions.
We watched from VIP so we could hang with Mitch and Amanda for a bit, then we re-upped our drinks and went back to the Reverb Stage for Queensrÿche‘s set at 3:55. Neither of us had seen them before, but we were pretty stoked. They sounded great, and frontman Todd La Torre was belting out the high notes from the inner depths of his very soul. The only complaint Sheila and I had about their set is that they did not play “Jet City Woman” or “Silent Lucidity”, and that was equal parts silly, disappointing, and befuddling.
Who needs Geoff Tate when you got this guy and his magic pipes?
I wanted to check out Counterparts on the Loudmouth Stage, but I desperately needed food, shade, and a seat, so we went back to Top Shelf for a bit as Slaughter to Prevail took to Main Stage 1, and they were fine. My respite was brief, as I had to book it back to the Reverb Stage to see Testament at 5:05. I’ve seen them a few times over the years, and in my experience, there’s no such thing as a bad Testament show. This one was no exception. They were on figurative fire, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a band smile so much while they’re playing. I was a little bummed that we only got one song each from The Legacy and The New Order, but they played “Return to Serenity”, which I did not expect, and that was awesome. I also saw some kids on who couldn’t have been more than 16 singing along with every word, and that made me very happy.
Every video from their set that day sounds like it was recorded from inside someone’s butthole, but this one seems a little better than the rest, and it’s one of my favorite Testament songs.
The adjusted set times caused Testament to finish halfway through Glassjaw‘s set on the Loudmouth Stage, so I did not bother trying to see the last 10 minutes of Glassjaw, but we did get to watch hometown heroes Knocked Loose on Main Stage 1, and they delivered the motherfucking goods. As with Testament, every Knocked Loose video I could find from LTL sounded like muddy buttholes, so here’s the studio version of the song they opened with.
It was a helluva show.
Three Days Grace followed on Main Stage 2, and I can confirm that my drunk buddy Dave was correct, they were “fuckin awesome”, as in “fuckin awesomely boring”. Apparently they got a new singer one time, then the old singer rejoined last year or something, and now they have two singers, but they both sucked pretty equally. We departed for the Loudmouth Stage to see The Dillinger Escape Plan, and it was good to get away from there. I hadn’t seen TDEP live before, and I don’t know very many of their songs, but I like everything I’ve heard, and I was looking forward to watching them.
Here’s a pretty cool picture I took before they started.
The band came out and frontman Dimitri Minakakis stood silent and still at the front of the stage, then held a single finger to his lips to shush the crowd, then they blasted into “Destro’s Secret”, and for the next forty-five minutes, absolute chaos ensued.
I’m baffled as to how Ben Weinman can play his guitar and move like that, but I’m also glad he can.
They closed with Certified Banger “43% Burnt”, and my body was at least 87% busted, but we still had to go back to Top Shelf to see at least a little bit of $uicideboy$ on Main Stage 2. Our nephew DJ told us about them a few years ago, and we hesitantly listened to a couple of songs and didn’t hate them, but that was pretty much the end of it. When the lineup was announced, we listened to some more of their songs, because that’s what we do when the lineup drops. We both liked them more than we thought we would, but we mostly wanted to check them out so we could tell DJ that we did.
Much to my surprise, I enjoyed the hell outta their set. I doubt I’ll ever listen to them on purpose, and I wouldn’t pay 2025 ticket prices just to see them headline, but I’d definitely watch them again if I could.
I don’t understand why/how mullets are in fashion, but I do not care for it.
They played for an hour, and we left when they were finished, because we saw Bring Me the Horizon in 2022, and they aren’t really our thing, plus, as I’ve mentioned repeatedly over the course of this series, it was hot, and I am old, and the new location is simply too goddamn big. I’m currently planning to write at least one more thing about LTL2K25, in which I’ll discuss some of pros and cons of the new layout in more detail, and I’ll include some pictures that didn’t quite fit the flow of the first four parts.
Thanks for reading. Tell a friend, if you have one. And be excellent to each other.
This is part three of a multi-part series in which I discuss the sights, sounds, and smells I experienced while attending the 2025 edition of Louder Than Life (“America’s Loudest Rock & Metal Festival”) in beautiful Louisville, Kentucky. Part one is here, and part two is here. If you wanna read all kinds of stuff about previous editions of Louder Than Life, you can find it all here.
Day Three was tight. Still too big, still too hot, still too many people, but overall, I gotta say it was a good day. Quannic was the first band I wanted to see (at 12:30), and I was worried about making it on time. In addition to the festival, there was also a University of Louisville football game at noon, plus Churchill Downs was hosting their first Saturday horse beatings of the season starting at 12:45, and all those locations are extremely close together. I was talkin about tryna leave at like 10:00 AM, just knowing that traffic was gonna be a nightmare.
As usual, Sheila was smarter than me, and she reminded me of something I already knew well from living in a college town: if you wait until the football game starts, you can get pretty much anywhere you want with very little hassle. She suggest we leave around noon, and I reluctantly agreed, and we ended up having the fastest, smoothest, simplest shuttle ride of the entire fest. We were in Top Shelf getting snacks and drinks before Quannic even started playing, and I got to watch most of their set, and hear all of it, and they were very cool. I could easily imagine them playing shows with Hum, Shiner, Jets to Brazil, and the like, circa 1997.
I couldn’t find any videos from Louder Than Life, so here’s a music video from a month ago. I don’t recall them sounding quite so “static-y” live, but they definitely brought the riffs.
Since the crowd was much thinner than the day before, we decided to make our way over to the vicinity of the Decibel Stage. Disembodied Tyrant was in full swing when we arrived, and they sounded so fucking good. We managed to score a little bit of tree shade and took in the scene. So many people in every direction. Aside from the lil food oasis we fought our way to and from the night before, this seemed to be where all the food in the entire festival (aside from VIP and Top Shelf) was located, and that seemed (and seems) like a bad idea.
Intensity in this particular city. I was nowhere near this close to the stage.
We met up with Mitch and Amanda in VIP and hung there while Superheaven played, and they sounded great. I didn’t know them until after they were announced, but I dig their sound, and I was hoping I’d get to see at least a little bit of their set, and I’m glad I did. I also hope to see them again someday.
This is so far up my alley it might come out the other side.
We had to bail before Superheaven finished, on account of SpiritWorld was playing at 2:10 on the Decibel Stage, and there was no way we were gonna miss that. They were Sheila’s #1 Must-See Band of the Festival, and they were in my Top Five. I’d listened to them a little bit prior to the announcement of the lineup, and I liked what I’d heard, but I hadn’t done a deep dive yet. Sheila was lamenting the general lack of bands “for her”, and I told her I thought she’d probably like SpiritWorld. Two months later, she’s blasting SpiritWorld in the shower and shouting along with every word.
She shouted along with every word here, too.
The only negative thing about their set was that lead guitarist Randy Moore was absent, which resulted in a severe lack of tasty dive bomb solos.
Some of those tasty dive bomb solos can be found herein. If you like this, all other SpiritWorld videos and albums are also recommended, though you could probably skip their 2017 demo. It’s not nearly as good as the albums.
By the end, we were drenched in sweat, and my neck felt like it was gonna snap in half. We started the long journey back to Top Shelf for snacks and drinks, and caught the end of Fleshwater‘s mid-afternoon set. I didn’t expect I’d get to hear any of it, so it was a pleasant surprise. If they hadn’t been up against SpirtWorld, I definitely would’ve watched them.
Failure took Main Stage 1 at two fiddy. I’ve only listened to one Failure album, 1996’s Fantastic Planet, and it’s great, but for some reason, I never bothered to dig into the rest of their discography. Still, I like their sound, and I wanted to check em out since I had the chance. They sounded great, but I found it hard to focus on them in those particular surroundings, especially in my newfound post-SpritWorld existence. Following SpiritWorld would’ve been a Herculean task for any band I can currently think of. The result is that I was kinda zoned out for almost the entirety of Failure’s set, and I remember basically nothing of it. I imagine seeing them in a dark space would be a mystifying experience.
See? Mystifying.
I was interested in checking out Devildriver on the Decibel Stage, but the crowd was starting to pick up in the bottleneck zone, and I didn’t wanna stray too far from the Main Stage area, so we went back over to VIP to hang with Mitch and Amanda and watch a bit of Black Veil Brides on Main Stage 2. I’m a little embarrassed about how much I enjoyed their set. It was very “Hot Topic Metal”, but it was better than a lot of other stuff I experienced over the weekend.
I spent the last half of their set standing in the midst of General Admission, Main Stage 1 looking for my pals Stevo and Carmel, who were in for the day, and were gonna watch my #1 Must-See Band of the Festival Acid Bath with me. I found them as BVB was ending, and we moved up closer to the stage in preparation. Long-time reader (sic) may recall that I previously stated in this blog that if Acid Bath were added to the Louder Than Life lineup, I would shit everyone’s pants. In the interest of full disclosure, I feel it is my duty to inform you that I did not shit anyone’s pants, not even my own.1 I did sweat the hell out of my sleeveless shirt, though.
Acid Bath was every bit as amazing as I hoped they’d be, and the setlist, while short, was stacked with a lot of my favorites. I love the extra-heavy Acid Bath songs with the extra-harsh vocals as much as the next guy, but I’m a biiiiiiig fan of Dax Riggs’ singing voice, so it was extra cool to experience “Graveflower”, “Bleed Me an Ocean”, and “Venus Blue” live. “Paegan Love Song” and “Tranquilized” and “Dr. Seuss is Dead” and “Dead Girl” were pretty amazing too, even if I would’ve rather heard the original version of that last one.2
I owe everyone in this video a pants-shitting.
When “Dr. Seuss is Dead” ended, Stevo said “jeez, go dry your shirt off, will ya?”, and he was right to call me out – I was a regular ol Sweaty Betty. We parted ways for the time being, and I reconvened with Sheila, Mitch, and Amanda while Motionless in White played on Main Stage 2, and I don’t remember anything about them. I had some interest in seeing Kittie over on the Reverb Stage, but I wasn’t interested enough to actually make that trip again yet, plus I wanted to be near the main stages for Stone Temple Pilots at 5:50.
I sadly never got to see STP with Scott Weiland (RIP), but I did get to hear them with then-new singer Jeff Gutt at LTL 2019. I was pleasantly surprised with how well Gutt pulled off Weiland’s vocals, and I was stoked to have a chance to give the band my full attention while they played. They ripped through a nine-song set of classic bangers from the first three albums. Personal highlights were “Big Empty”, “Plush”, “Interstate Love Song”, and “Trippin’ on a Hole in a Paper Heart”, but the whole set was pretty flawless.
Promises of what I seemed to be, only watched the time go by.
I was also interested in seeing Machine Head at 6:55 on the Decibel Stage, but it was hot and I’m old, plus dinnertime snacks went out in the Top Shelf tent at 6:00, and I was in need of nourishment, post-haste. I Prevail on Main Stage 2 was the soundtrack, and I don’t recall anything specific about them, so I figure they must not’ve sucked.
A Perfect Circle was on Main Stage 1 at 7:35, and under most circumstances, I would’ve hung around for that, but on this day, Cypress Hill was playing on the Reverb Stage at 7:40, and that definitely took precedence. Even having never seen APC live before, I can safely say I made the right decision. Cypress Hill played for one hour with a full band, and it was amazing.
Get my four-footer, and bring it on…
Sheila and I met up with Stevo and Carmel at Caduceus Wine Garden and caught up a bit while Trivium played on the Decibel Stage. I only know a couple of Trivium songs, but they sounded really good, and I suspect I would’ve enjoyed them if I’d paid them more attention. After Trivium, we parted ways with our friends while Bad Omens played on Main Stage 2. They wanted to find a suitable spot in GA for Day Three headliner Deftones, and we wanted to sit in some conditioned air, so we headed back to Top Shelf.
Not pictured: forty pounds of sweat.
This was my second time seeing Deftones, and they sounded much better this time, plus I’ve become more familiar with their discography, so I enjoyed it quite a bit more than the first time, even though I enjoyed the hell outta them that time, too. As during the Slayer set from two nights before, I made a Show Friend while watching from the Elevated Viewing Area. We sang along together and banged our heads mightily. Sheila had to bail about halfway through, but I managed to stick it out until nearly the end, making my way toward the shuttle as the penultimate song of the night, “Engine No. 9” started. I woulda liked to’ve heard closer “7 Words”, as that was the first Deftones song I ever heard, but as I’ve mentioned before, it was a hot day, and I’m an old man, and I had still more rockin to do on Day Four, which will be covered here soon.
Thanks for reading. It’d be cool if you shared it with your friends and loved ones who appreciate aggressive music and fart jokes.
My guts were a bit rumbly by the time I got back to the hotel, but that was because of the delicious sesame cauliflower that was out for both lunchtime and dinnertime snacks in the Top Shelf tent, and how I couldn’t stop eating it. I actually dreamed about eating it that night, but no pants-shittery occurred that day from me. ↩︎
I fully understand why they don’t bust out a seven-minute acoustic song in the middle of their set, but it really is the superior version. ↩︎
This is part two of a multi-part series in which I discuss the sights, sounds, and smells I experienced while attending the 2025 edition of Louder Than Life (“America’s Loudest Rock & Metal Festival”) in beautiful Louisville, Kentucky. For part one, click here. If you’re interested in other nonsense I’ve written about past Louder Than Lifeseses, click here.
As mentioned previously, Day Two was the least interesting day for me, and it was the same for Sheila. I wanted to see XCOMM, but their set started at 11:45, and there was a zero percent chance in hell that I was gonna be able to get there that early after the workout that was Day One. This band has been around for a little over two years, and I dunno how old these dudes are, but they are obviously young, and they kick a ton of ass. Just now, when I tried to find their ages, I learned that Scott Ian’s son Revel is the drummer, and now you know that, too.
No way I woulda been able to resist gettin the fuck down down to this.
I had some interest in seeing Nonpoint on Main Stage 1. I don’t actually remember Nonpoint from back in the day, but when Sheila and I did our pre-festival homework, I enjoyed them enough that I figured I’d probably also enjoy it live if I happened to be close enough to experience it. My main interest in their set was that my buddy Mitch really wanted to see them, and one of the things I enjoy most about live music is seeing other people losing themselves in the experience, especially people I know and care about. Anyway, we didn’t get there early enough for their 12:45 start time, but Mitch assured me they sounded great.
I bet this sounded tight as hell live.
Sheila and I had a bit of interest in watching Gloryhammer on the Reverb Stage, just for the silliness of it, but as I mentioned above, Day One was so fucking exhausting. The blazing sun and 90° F temperatures didn’t help, but the worst part easily is the sprawling nature of the new location. We had to really ease into Day Two. It was gonna be another hot one out there, and general Admission and Single-Day VIP passes had sold out several days before the fest began, largely due to Sleep Token‘s spot as headliner. No disrespect intended to official headliner Avenged Sevenfold (or my homeboy Dustin), but in terms of drawing a crowd, Sleep Token was definitely the headliner that day.1
Everything about this band is goofy as shit, and I don’t really fuck with power metal that much, but I defy you to listen to this song one time and try to forget that chorus.
We were both very interested in seeing Walls of Jericho on the Loudmouth Stage, but due to our slowness, and the increased traffic on the ride in, we only got to catch their last two songs. They were great, and I’d love to see them again, but, like, for real next time. We popped into Top Shelf afterward for some snacks and drinks, then fought our way through the crowd over to VIP, where we hung out in the shade with Mitch and Amanda and watched Static X. I don’t think I ever listened to Static X on purpose before this year’s lineup was announced. While doin our pre-fest homework, I learned that I knew their song “Push It”, and I figured I could do worse than hearing that live, if I happened to be in the vicinity. Their stage show was hella fun, and they sounded good, and they played “Push It”, and they played another song I kinda knew, so I was happy enough.
More fun than a basket full of puppies. I’m just kidding. Nothing could be more fun than that.
We went back to Top Shelf after Static X and stayed there for the next few hours. One of the two reasons I even bothered to leave the hotel that day was Insane Clown Posse, and they were playing Main Stage 1 at 4:10 PM. My homeboy Jim was pretty into them for a few years in our late teens, but that was when I was getting super into hardcore, post-hardcore, and emo, and I never really gave them a fair shake. I knew a few songs prior to the lineup release (all thanks to Jim), and I’ve always been fascinated by their weird lore, and by the Juggalo community, but most of my juggaknowledge was gleaned from the commercials for the Gathering of the Juggalos, the “Straight Up Juggahos” episode of Workaholics, and of course the Saturday Night Liveparody of their song “Miracles”.
So silly. I always forget “fuckin magnets, how do they work?!” is not from the parody version.
Anyway, ICP’s set was fuckin lit, as the kids may or may not say.2 It was forty minutes of non-stop mayhem, silliness, and Faygo Breaks.
I could never be all up in that Faygo splash zone, but I would not hesitate to see them live again.
I was interesting in checking out Suicide Silence on the Loudmouth Stage at 5:00 PM, and as it was the closest stage to the Top Shelf exit, it would’ve been doable, but unfortunately the Loudmouth Stage was also the closet stage to the shuttle entrance, and the foot traffic was only increasing, plus like I said already, it was hot and the place was too big and I’m old and I’m out of shape even though I walk like 8-10 miles a day at work and I eat lots of vegetables and whole grains and protein.3
I don’t really fuck with deathcore all that much, either, but it woulda been dope to hear this live.
Dayseeker played on Main Stage 2 next, and I found them fairly boring, but I did see a shirt that said something like “I cried at a Dayseeker show and all I got was this lousy t-shirt” on the back of it, and I thought that was pretty funny. Mudvayne came along next on Main Stage 1, and while I appreciate what they do, they are not for me. Some other time I’ll tell the story of when I happened to see Mudvayne live before they were known outside the general vicinity of Peoria, Illinois.
Mudvayne played from 5:50-6:35. Somewhere between 5:30 and 6:00, I walked to the top level of the elevated viewing area in Top Shelf to take some pictures. Here they are now.4
That’s Main Stage 1 on the left, and Main Stage 2 on the right. I’m pretty much as far back as I can be on the top floor of the Top Shelf Elevated Viewing Area.
The Elevated Viewing Area used to be much closer to Main Stage 2. The General Admission area in front of the main stages in the new location isn’t nearly as deep as the old spot, so they made it wider.5 One of many cons for the new location.
That structure on the left edge of the picture is the Brand-New-This-Year VIP Elevated Viewing Area (EVA). Now assholes have their choice of three levels in which they can camp out and prop their feet up on chairs all the live long day.6
The VIP section used to be closer to Main Stage 1, also. DWP got the gold mine, VIP and Top Shelf got the shaft.
Moving to the left. The exit from the VIP area is just to the left of the EVA.
In previous years, the entrance to the VIP area has been right next to the exit from the VIP area, but this year, because of the aforementioned lack of depth of the new location, the VIP entrance is way back behind the EVA, which, due to bottlenecking with the entrance/exit to Kentucky Kingdom, added at least 10 minutes to the walk from Top Shelf as compared to Day One
Portajohn corrals just like that one on the left are one of the reasons we originally sprang for VIP four years ago. The assholes in VIP who camp out and prop their feet up on chairs all the live long day are one of the reasons we’ve gone Top Shelf the last three years.
Note the yellow “circle” on the right side of the picture. I used technology to indicate where the Brand-New-This-Year General Admission Shaded Viewing Area (GASVA) begins, and also where the GA main stage area food vendors start. Both of those things will come into play shortly.
The Loudmouth Stage is on the other side of those trees.
Trees were definitely a pro of the new location, even if every bit of shade was taken up at all times by people looking at their phones. Still, they were nice to look at, and they helped us breathe.
That’s the Top Shelf entrance/exit in the lower right portion of this picture, and the entrance/exit to the shuttles is in the hypothetical space approximately one inch to the left of the tree on the left edge, scalarly speaking.
The people in the vicinity of the Loudmouth Stage (in the center of the above picture) are about to be watching/listening to Whitechapel, and after missing them at the last two LTL’s, I planned on being among those people. The plan was to head over that way and get some food before meeting Mitch and Amanda there.
This is inside the Top Shelf area, and behind those trees lies the Highland Festival Grounds, former home of Louder Than Life. The building on the left, just above the Angel’s Envy tent is the shuttle pick-up/drop-off site.
I took the above photo at 5:48 PM, and we left Top Shelf no later than 6:00, which is when Whitechapel was scheduled to start. It took us less than 5 minutes to walk to Top Shelf from the Loudmouth Stage after Walls of Jericho finished their set at 2:25, so we thought that’d be plenty of time to hear/see the bulk of Whitechapel’s set. The joke was on us; it took us almost 10 minutes to walk over there, only to find that there were absolutely no food vendors in that area. I texted Mitch that we were gonna find food, then we’d meet them there. Due primarily to the people sitting on/in every possible surface in that GASVA, the lines at the food vendors had to split into like four or five lines per vendor, regardless of how many lines any given vendor was set up to handle at one time.
We finally managed to get in near the end of one of the lines for what we hoped would be big honkin slices of pizza, and eventually we scored our dinner (three big honkin slices of cheese pizza), then we proceeded to fight our way back through the vicinity of the GASVA, and longer story short, by the time we got back to the Loudmouth Stage, Whitechapel was finished, and now I’ve missed them three years in a row.
I was unhappy about that, but at least the pizza was good (and a relatively good value, as far as festival food goes), and anyway the next band on the Loudmouth Stage was the other (and primary) reason I bothered to leave the hotel that afternoon: straight outta Bridgeport (CT), metallic hardcore heroes Hatebreed.
The first time I heard Hatebreed was also the first time I visited the late, lamented Black Flag Music and Skate in Bedford, Indiana. The store owner/future homie Pat played their debut album, Satisfaction is the Death of Desire (1997) for me after finding out I was into Sick of it All, Suicidal Tendencies, and Pantera, and I purchased it immediately. I listened to it all the time for the next couple-few years, then I started smokin dope and got super into the Beatles for a while, and I never got around to listening to much after that first album. I liked everything I heard from them, I just didn’t think about listening to them so much anymore.
I was supposed to see them live in 2001, but it didn’t happen. I’ll tell that story another time, but as for this story, at 7:20 PM on Friday, September 19, my wildest seeing-Hatebreed-live-related dreams finally came true.
This is not my footage, but I can see Mitch and Amanda in it, and I was very close to them, so it’s a kinda somewhat faintly accurate representation of what I experienced.
Every band on Earth is lucky that they didn’t have to follow Hatebreed on that stage. For forty minutes, Hatebreed was the only thing that was real, and somewhere in time, twenty-one year-old Joel was smiling, and wondering why. He might’ve even started stomp-moshing all by himself like Scott Ian, which he always preferred to actual mosh pits.7
It’s surprisingly hard to find a gif of Scott Ian stomping around the stage while he plays guitar. I found two videos on YouTube that highlight it, but both were recorded from the front row (two different shows), and both were hard to watch, but for different reasons. If I’d somehow managed to watch the first one while listening to the second one, I think my brain would’ve caved in.
Forty-eight year-old Joel was also smiling, and he definitely knew why, but he was stomp moshing more like Messiah Marcolin, because it’s a little easier on the joints.
I am bewitched.
Forty minutes until Sleep Token took to Main Stage 2, and people were still steadily coming in from the main gates. None of us cared enough about Sleep Token to deal with all that bullmess, so the four of us took that opportunity to call it a night. I would’ve liked to have stayed for Avenged Sevenfold, if only to show Dustin that I don’t hate them, but based on what I’ve heard and read about the People Who Were There for Sleep Token, my night would’ve only gotten worse before A7X started playing, and besides, I had to save my strength for Deftones’ headlining set on Day Three, which was scheduled to end at 11:30 PM, aka two hours past my Bedtime.
Day Three also featured both Sheila’s #1 Must-See Band of the Festival and my #1 Must-See Band of the Festival, plus a bunch of other cool shit happened, and also a bunch more walking. I’ll be writing about all that and more soon. Like, soon soon. I’m holding myself to it.
As always, thanks for reading. Subscribe for updates, if you wanna. If you have any cool friends, maybe you could tell them about Clockwise Circle Pit. Later skaters. 🤘
Hello! And welcome to the first installment of my long, rambly thing about the spectacle that was Louder Than Life 2025 (“America’s Loudest Rock & Metal Festival”). If you’re a glutton for punishment, or perhaps you’re on doctor-ordered bed rest and need something to pass the time, you can find all the stuff I’ve written about previous years here. As I mentioned in a post a few weeks ago, this year’s festival was moved to the parking lot adjacent to the Highland Festival Grounds, making the layout completely different than the past five installments, all of which were already varying degrees of different than each other, layout wise. I personally found very few pros with regards to the new location, but I’ll get to all of that later.
The new layout was much bigger and more spread out, and included access to Kentucky Kingdom and an “expanded VIP section”, plus the merch tent was no longer a tent, but was instead inside the air-condtioned Kentucky Exposition Center. All those things sound great for crowd control, don’t they? The problem is, you gotta factor in all the people that will be filling up that expanded space, and the people are one of the main things that can really make or break one’s enjoyment of a large event.
I was jazzed to see Italian death metal freaks Fulci open up the main stages, and we planned things carefully so we could get there in time to see their entire set. I went much easier on the open bar at the Day Zero welcome party this year, on account of our traditional Day One breakfast date at Wild Eggs on Floyd Street was set for 8:30 AM on Thursday, which would give us plenty of time to catch our shuttle and get inside the gates before Fulci’s scheduled 11:45 start time.
Here’s me posing with my doppelgänger at the welcome party.
Speaking of our shuttle: that system was very different this year as well. In past years, Pegasus Transportation has provided the service, with pick-up spots downtown at both the Galt House (the hotel where we stay1) and the Marriott, and with drop-off approximately 100 yards from the entry gates. This year, every ticket/hotel package included a shuttle exclusive to that hotel, which seemed like an even sweeter deal (though Pegasus Transportation was never mentioned by name). Then on August 26, we learned that the shuttle system had been changed, and pretty drastically. Danny Wimmer Presents (the company who puts on the fest) took over the shuttle service, and there was now one downtown pick-up/drop-off spot, located at the Convention Center. While it was annoying that we were gonna have to walk extra before and after getting inside the gates and walking all day, that part wasn’t so bad, as we were only 3 blocks from the Convention Center.
Here’s where it got less good: our driver got us to Gate 1, only to be yelled at by a woman working there, who informed him that shuttles were no longer permitted to enter Gate 1, and instead had to go to Gate 6. Our driver told her he wasn’t from around there, and didn’t know where that was, and she told him to “put it in [his] GPS”. Very helpful. He then spotted another shuttle ahead of us that had turned right, away from the festival gates, and began to follow. Time was no longer on our side. At 11:45, he finally found the drop-off spot, and we began the 1/4 mile walk to the gates behind a whole lot of people with absolutely no sense of urgency.2 Less than 60 seconds later, we hear Fulci frontman Fiore bellow “WE’REFULCIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!” and all hell broke loose from that stage, and I was so sad and angry that I wasn’t there watching it.
We got inside pretty quickly and easily, and I hauled ass to Main Stage 2 to catch the rest of their set, and it was fucking awesome. Scenes from legendary Italian director Lucio Fulci’s films played behind the band, and the blood and terror on the screen added a ridiculously fun element to the set. At one point, this bizarre sound started coming from the stage, and kept looking back and forth between the two guitarists to try and figure out which one of them was making that unholy, inhuman noise, but they both seemed to be playing fairly standard riffs. I soon realized that the sound was coming from Fiore’s mouth. It was so intense and amazing, and I no longer cared about the shuttle nonsense, because I remembered that I had a full day of kick-ass metal and hardcore ahead of me.
That lunatic vocalization I was talkin about happens around the 1:30 mark. This is not my footage. In fact, none of it will be my footage, unless otherwise noted.
After Fulci, I met up with Sheila in the Top Shelf area to cool off and get some snacks and drinks before we made our way to the VIP area to meet up with our friends Mitch and Amanda, who also attended with us in 2022. We started the journey as Fear Factory took to Main Stage 2. I wore out a cassette of their 1995 album Demanufacture when I was in my early college years (aka the beginning of my Wilderness Years), and they’re touring on the 30th anniversary of that album, so I was pretty pumped to hear some of those songs live. I would’ve much rather heard them with original vocalist Burton C. Bell on the mic, but c’est la vie. Milo Silvestro did a great job, and “Demanufacture”, “Zero Signal”, “Replica”, and “H-K (Hunter-Killer)” all transported me straight back to 1995-96, and I screamed along with “I’VE GOT! NO MORE! GODDAMN! REGRETS! I’VE GOT! NO MORE! GODDAMN! RESPECT!” just like I did in my car, and it was glorious and extremely cathartic.
Desensitized by the values of life, maligned and despaired by government lies.
They finished out their set with two songs from Demanufacture‘s follow-up, Obsolete (1998), and one song from 2001’s Digimortal, and then Richmond, Virginia thrash masters Municipal Waste kicked off an energetic, whirlwind 12-song set spanning a large chunk of their discography. At one point, frontman Tony Foresta demanded non-stop crowd surfing, saying “Pearl Jam made it famous, we made it cooler!” They kicked a ton of ass, and I’m glad I finally got to see them. Personal highlights for me were “You’re Cut Off”, “The Thrashin’ of the Christ”, and “The Art of Partying”.
I couldn’t find any decent sounding footage of any of my personal highlights, so here’s a video instead.
The Black Dahlia Murder brought some Michigan death metal to Main Stage 2 next, and I wanted to stay for the entire thing, but unfortunately, Big Ass Truck‘s set at the Big (Ass) Bourbon Bar started 25 minutes after TBDM’s set, and the BBB stood on the far end of the grounds from where we came in. By the time we arrived, the tent was so full that we could barely even see the band. We listened/kinda watched for a couple of songs, then I made my way over to the “second stage” area, with grindcore institution Full of Hell already in progress on the Decibel Stage. They were incredibly loud and chaotic, and I loved every second of it, even if I did watch on the big screen to the side of the Reverb Stage.
This is obviously not from LTL, but I couldn’t find any clips from their performance, and this is an excellent representation of what they brought to LTL, albeit in blazing sunlight and stifling heat.
The reason I watched on the big screen to a side of the Reverb Stage is because I wanted to secure a spot on the rail for Santa Cruz, California hardcore/crossover heroes Drain, because I wanted to receive as much of their energy as possible before hustling back to Main Stage 2 for as much of Exodus‘s 35-minute set as I could possibly see. Vocalist Sammy Ciaramitaro came out jumping, yelling, and smiling, and didn’t stop moving for the entirety of the 10-15 minutes I was in the vicinity of the Reverb Stage, and I’m sure he didn’t stop after I left, either. He was crowd surfing before the first verse of opening song “Feel the Pressure” even started, and he spent the rest of the song on the ground, letting various members of the crowd sing most of it. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a more energetic frontman. I really look forward to catching a full set from these dudes, hopefully sooner than later.
I was way over in front of the screen on the right side of the stage for 12-ish minutes of hardcore magic.
I hated to leave, but I really wanted to see Exodus, and I figured I’ll have more chances to see Drain than I will Exodus, just from an “age of the members” standpoint, so I walked as fast as possible through a whole gaggle of clueless dipshits with no sense of urgency, and arrived at the back of the crowd about two minutes into the epic “Deathamphetamine”, off their monstrous 2005 album Shovel Headed Kill Machine. I’m stoked I got to hear that song live, but the length of it meant they played fewer songs, which resulted in a 7-song set, which was a bit of a bummer. Another bummer is that the sound didn’t seem quite right for what they do. I don’t really know how to explain it any better, but they didn’t sound as good as they should have, and it was clear that it wasn’t the band’s fault. The crowd was enthusiastic, though, and the pit was appropriately violent and fun. I’m glad Rob Dukes is back on the mic, and barring the miraculous resurrection of original frontman Paul Baloff (RIP to the OG poseur killer), I hope they keep him around until the end.
Everybody’s doin the Toxic Waltz, good friendly violent fun in store for all.
The gigantic new layout meant that I missed all of Sanguisugabogg‘s set on the Decibel Stage, because there was simply no way to see any real amount of it without missing Exodus’s set and more than half of Cavalera (aka Cavalera Conspiracy), featuring brothers Max and Igor Cavalera, formerly of Sepultura. They’re on tour performing Sepultura’s 1993 album, Chaos A.D. in its entirety. The album was part of the soundtrack to the second half of my high school years, and there was no way I was gonna miss it. They unfortunately weren’t able to play the whole album, as their set time wasn’t long enough, but they played most of it. They kicked off with album opener “Refuse/Resist”, which is more of a soundtrack to our times than I ever thought possible, then tore through six more songs from the album before shifting gears slightly to play “Symptom of the Universe”, which Sepultura recorded for the 1994 album Nativity in Black: A Tribute to Black Sabbath (another album that soundtracked my mid-90’s life). They closed with all-time party-starter “Territory”, and sixteen year-old Joel heard it and felt it and moshed to it and sang along with it, and he saw that it was good.
Let there be riffs.
At this point I really needed to rest, but nuts to that, because the mighty Cannibal Corpse was up next over on Main Stage 2. Luckily, the Top Shelf section is closer to MS2, so I was able to pop inside the tent while they played set opener “Blood Blind” (from their most recent album, 2023’s Chaos Horrific) to get some quick conditioned air, a bite to eat, and lots more free water, so as to avoid dying of exhaustion.3 Every second of their 40-minute set right up through “Hammer Smashed Face” was flawless, and I was happy as a pig in shit to be in attendance for it.
Men of violence doomed in death, their reward for a life of sin.
Sludge/groove metal supergroup Down followed back over on Main Stage 1, and I was pumped to see them for the first time. Their debut album NOLA came out in 1995, and like Fear Factory’s Demanufacture, it kept me sane during my early college years. I have a variety of thoughts about Phil Anselmo as a person, but the fact is, the man is partially responsible for some of the most formative music of my youth.4 And it doesn’t hurt a single bit that the band is rounded out by Pepper Keenan (Corrosion of Conformity) and Kirk Windstein (Crowbar) on guitar, the incomparable Jimmy Bower (Eyehategod) on drums, and Pat Bruders (Goatwhore) on bass. Absolute titans, every one of them.
I’m staring right back at myself, and through its frozen image, I’m laughing right back at my hell.
Marilyn Manson was next on Main Stage 2, and I’d planned on being anywhere but within earshot of him, but it was so hot outside, and the fact that it was still Day One and I was already fucking exhausted, plus the fact that dinner is served at 6:00 in the Top Shelf tent means that I sat in the tent and ate and drank and somehow managed to shut the noise out. In fact, I didn’t notice anything about the band until they started their cover of “Sweet Dreams”, and then I was like “oh yeah, I forgot they covered this. I still hate it”, and went right back to ignoring it. Long story short, Marilyn Manson is a garbage human being who makes mediocre music, and he should not be celebrated.5
Anyway, Lamb of God was next back on Main Stage 1. I was really looking forward to their set, as I wasn’t able to properly appreciate their set when they played back in 2022, on account of my dad dying the day before, and the fact that I had to drive back home twice in two days. It was worth the wait. They were fucking incredible from start to finish. Randy Blythe is a phenomenal frontman, and the entire band is just elite.6 They also performed the second Black Sabbath/Ozzy Osbourne cover of the weekend, “Children of the Grave”, and it was badass.
“A lot of people would be a lot happier if they went to concerts where flames shot out of the stage every now and then.” – Sheila
Up next was Rob Zombie, performing White Zombie’s 1995 album Astro-Creep 2000. If you’re keeping score, that’s the third of three thirty year-old albums being celebrated on the Day One. As if spending 12 hours in the late summer heat and humidity of the Ohio River Valley wasn’t already making me feel old enough. I enjoy White Zombie just fine, but I never really gave much a shit about Rob Zombie’s solo stuff. Sheila, however, is a White Zombie superfan, and is into quite a bit of Rob Zombie’s solo stuff, so this was her #1 Must-See Set of Day One. It was a lot of fun, and I had a great time singing and shouting along to all the songs from Astro-Creep 2000, followed by “Living Dead Girl” (from Zombie’s first solo album Hellbilly Deluxe), followed by White Zombie’s “Thunderkiss ’65”, followed by “Dragula”, also from Hellbilly Deluxe. A good time was had by all, except for those who do not enjoy fun.
I was unable to find any footage from that night that didn’t have the sound blown all to hell, so here’s a video instead.
The headliner for Day One was none other than (Fuckin) Slayer, whose appearance last year was cancelled due to one of those famous northern Kentucky hurricanes. They kicked off with “South of Heaven”, which was really just a fucking perfect way to start a show, and they never let off the throttle, hitting every studio album except for 1996’s hardcore punk cover album Undisputed Attitude and 1998’s Diabolus in Musica. They also played “Chemical Warfare”, which was just tremendous for me. We watched their set from the elevated viewing area in Top Shelf, as they were playing on Main Stage 1, and we didn’t wanna have to walk anymore than necessary for the rest of the day. I’m too old for actual mosh pits, and as I’ve mentioned, we still had three days to go, but you better believe I banged my head and screamed myself hoarse for the entirety of the set, and there was this one dude up in the elevated viewing area who was losing his goddamn mind. Several times he moshed his way over to me so we could sing along together, and during “War Ensemble” he jumped up from the level below me and threw his arm around my shoulder just in time for us to shout “WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!” together, and it was awesome. On the off chance that dude is reading this, just know that you were a hoot, and experiencing Slayer with you was a real treat.
“A lot of people would be a lot happier if they went to concerts where flames shot out of the stage every now and then.” – Sheila
Speaking of flames shooting out of the stage: biiiig shout-out to Gary Holt. That motherfucker played a 35-minute set with Exodus in the blazing sun, then came back out with Slayer less than six hours later and played for another 90 minutes, surrounded by fire and explosions, and he’s 61 years old.
After Slayer’s set, we filed out of the gates along with everybody else, only to find a sign guiding us inside a building to catch the shuttle back downtown. As we arrived inside the building, we were met by row upon row of security gates and caution tape, filled with a sweaty river of exhausted Slayer fans. The line never stopped moving, but about halfway through it, Sheila had to pee, and the only way to remedy that (other than inside her pants) was to duck under some caution tape and hustle across the building to a restroom. Just one of many less-than-ideal parts of the New and Improved Louder Than Life. I’ll still get to all the pros and cons, but I’ve already gone on for too long, so that’ll have to come later (maybe in a separate post).
Thanks for reading. Be sure to subscribe for updates so you don’t miss my Day Two write-up, which will hopefully be ready for your perusal within a few days.
Highly recommended if you’re in Louisville, Kentucky. ↩︎
People with no sense of urgency came into play a lot on this journey, as they also do in my day-to-day life. See also, “World’s on Heroin” by ALL. ↩︎
The water is not actually free in Top Shelf, but rather is pre-paid, which sure beats paying who knows how much per bottle, or walking 10 minutes to find a refill station. ↩︎
I’ll admit I don’t know Phil Anselmo as a person, but I do have eyes, ears, and the internet. ↩︎
See also R&B singer/abusive-piece-of-shit Chris Brown. ↩︎
The chronically online might refer to them as “S-tier”, but I wouldn’t. ↩︎
I’ve been dealing with some work-related nonsense for the past few weeks, and some allergy-related nonsense for the past few days, and as such I haven’t really been in the headspace to write anything worth sharing with anyone, but I have to pop in quickly to mention that Louder Than motherfucking Life is LESS THAN ONE MOTHERFUCKING WEEK AMOTHERFUCKINGWAY. To say I’m excited would be like saying that Ryan Gosling and Eva Mendes make a kinda cute couple, or like saying that a few parts of Blazing Saddles are sorta funny. To paraphrase my cousin Jeff, if I was any more excited, there’d be two of me. I’m already sad about going back to work after it’s over.
This world’s fucking so fucked up.
I’m lookin at seven-and-a-half glorious days off work, four-and-a-half of them spent with good friends, kick-ass music, delicious food and drinks, and some of the best people-watching this side of an Insane Clown Posse show. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Day One is unbelievably stacked from start to finish, and I’m gonna have to make several difficult decisions, beginning at the beginning: are we really gonna make it through that gate in time for me to see Fulci’s entire set without having to run in public? We haven’t been able to get inside the gates before the first band of the day started playing yet, though we came close with Soul Glo last year. I really wanna see Fulci, though, so I’m gonna try my goddamndest. I pretty much wanna stay camped out at the main stage(s) all day, aside from Marilyn Manson’s set (*insert barfing emoji*), but there’s also a ton of stuff I wanna see on the second stage(s)(Decibel/Reverb), which are way back on the other end of the newly enlarged festival grounds. Not to mention the stuff I wanna see inside the Big Bourbon Bar and inside Kentucky Kingdom. Luckily there’s nothing on the third stage (Loudmouth) that floats my boat at all on Day One. My brain would probably shut down if I had to factor that in as well.
What kind of sociopath decides that Exodus should overlap with both Drain and Sanguisugabogg?
Day Two is the weakest overall as far as I’m concerned, and I’m glad I’ll have a day of relative rest right after a day of full steam ahead. Looking forward to finally seeing Hatebreed (I’ll tell the story of the time I almost got to see them sometime soon/soon-ish) and Whitechapel (they overlapped with Jesus Piece two years ago, and they were part of Hurricane Day last year), plus Insane Clown Posse is playing that day (at 4:20 PM, natch), and I’m real pumped about seeing juggalos doin their juggalo thing. It’s gonna be off the hook.1
I’m unironically looking forward to Insane Clown Posse, even though I only know like three of their songs. Their entire mythos fascinates me.
Day Three promises to be an excellent day for several reasons, most notably that I finally get to see Acid Bath. I’ve been purposely avoiding live footage lately so I can go in fresher, but when I was still watching new live footage, the band was only getting better. Gotta remember to pack a clean pair of underwear for everyone in attendance that day. SpiritWorld, Deftones, Cypress Hill, Stone Temple Pilots, Failure, and hopefully Disembodied Tyrant will also be seen and heard and celebrated by me.
This is the first time I’ve seen any band scheduled at the same time as the main headliner. I daresay DWP rounded up too many bands this year.
Day Four – lotsa cool stuff, more tough decisions. Chained Saint plays at 11:40 AM. Deftones don’t finish until 11:25 PM on Day Three, so odds are I won’t be seeing Chained Saint (or Gates to Hell immediately following). Hopefully we can make it in time to see Accept. Sebastian Bach and Tech N9ne overlap way too much for my comfort, and Bruce Dickinson and The Dillinger Escape Plan overlap completely, and on opposite ends of the festival grounds.
Rrreeeaaalll pumped about Testament.
As of right now, I plan on leaving during $uicideboy$’s set to try and beat traffic. I enjoy what I’ve heard from them more than I ever thought possible (based solely on their appearance), but I figure I’ll be too tired to care about seeing their whole set. It’s like they say, never judge a book by its cover, even if the book has a really dumb looking cover.
Here’s the song the title of this post came from. It’s my favorite Acid Bath song, and I’m so unbelievably stoked about hearing it live. If it doesn’t happen before, the shitting of the pants will definitely commence when they start playin this one.
You’re screaming because there’s nothing left for you to say.
As usual, I’ll be writing something about the experience at some point after it’s over, so be sure to check in for that, if you’re interested. As always, thanks for reading.
I’m sorry I said “natch”, and I’m sorry I said it again just now. I’m not sorry I said “off the hook” though. ↩︎
NOTE: This post has been updated to add one very important FAQ, which I only realized last night (8/11/25) that I’d overlooked. You can find it immediately following the Simpsons meme. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
I’ve written a lot about Louder Than Life since I started this blog, and I’m gonna write a lot more about it in the future, and surprise, motherfucker, the future is now! I was writing about Day Three recently when it occurred to me that I’ve never seen a comprehensive guide of tips and tricks intended for first-time attendees, so I decided to create the world I wanted to live in, and here we are.
Thankfully, this future isn’t here yet. It sure feels nigh as fuck sometimes, though.
I’m not gonna lie, it’s pretty fuckin long. WordPress estimates a 35 minute read time. Clockwise Circle Pit cannot accept any responsibility for falls caused by your legs falling asleep if you try to read the entire thing in one toilet-sitting. I can be very long-winded when I’m passionate about the subject, and I will not apologize for that. I understand completely if you don’t wanna proceed any further. Thanks for your time, and feel free to check out some of my other posts, both here at Clockwise Circle Pit, or at my old blog Stay Heavy. I haven’t posted anything there in a little over 5 years, but it still gets more regular traffic than this site. Anyhoo…
Some of these tips may seem obvious to you, and many of them seem obvious to me, but if I’ve learned one thing in my 47 years on this plane of existence, it’s this: you can’t assume anything is obvious to anyone else, even if that same thing is blatantly obviously to you. Being a member of several LTL fan groups on facebook has confirmed that statement to be 100% factual. Many of these tips will apply to any outdoor festival experience, but some of them are specific to Louder Than Life. Without further ado…
Q: What the heck is Louder Than Life?
Louder Than Life is a four-day music festival held in Louisville, Kentucky in late September. It’s put on by a company called Danny Wimmer Presents, and they do a fuckin great job every year. I’ve never attended a multi-day festival put on by any other production company, but I’ve read many times over the years about how festivals put on by other companies pale in comparison to DWP festivals (*cough* Blue Ridge Rock Fest *cough*).
The first iteration was held in 2014 in Champions Park (also in Louisville, KY), and after it was cancelled in 2018 due to flooding, it was moved to its new home at the Highland Festival Grounds in 2019, where it has been ever since. It was cancelled in 2020 for some reason, and the second day was cancelled this year (2024) due to dangerously high winds from Hurricane Helene. Otherwise, it goes on rain or shine, and it’s a blast. The lineup is always a mixed bag, but if you like hard rock, heavy metal, punk rock, hardcore, and/or hip-hop, you’ll almost certainly find at least a few things to enjoy. It gets bigger and better every year. For me personally, 2024’s lineup was the best I’ve seen so far, and I’m still stoked that I got to be there.
Q: Who, exactly, are you, and why should I care what you have to say?
That’s a really good question. I’m just a dude who, when he is not actively attending Louder Than Life, is looking forward to attending the next Louder Than Life so much he can hardly stand it. I do not profess to be an expert, but I have attended every day of the fest for the past four years (plus one day in 2019) so I could certainly call myself a veteran “Loudmouth” at this point, even if I don’t sport the telltale neon lime green that many of the self-professed Loudmouths wear. I’ve made my fair share of mistakes over the years, and I’ve learned a thing or two along the way, so I figured I might as well put together my own comprehensive guide to help answer questions you may have about attending Louder Than Life. You’re welcome.
A quick note: I decided halfway through writing this to present it in the form of a FAQ, because I thought that would be funny, and I think I was right. You might disagree, and that’s okay. There’s still plenty of good advice here.
I have to assume I would also be this.
Q: Should I wear earplugs?
Good lord, yes. It’s not called Louder Than Life because things happen at a reasonable volume. I use Loop brand, but there are lots of quality options available that are designed specifically for concert settings, which is to say that they are designed to dampen the volume of the music without muffling it/making it sound shitty, and they allow you to have a conversation without having to remove them or scream absurdly loud to be heard. I didn’t know how they work, exactly, but I assume it’s your standard combination of science and magic.
At the very least, get some cheap foam jobbies from CVS or wherever. I’ve attended hundreds of live concerts over the past 31 years, and I very stupidly only started wearing earplugs on a regular basis about 10 years ago, and I promise you tinnitus is not a fun thing to deal with.
Q: Should I drink plenty of water?
Yes, you should drink plenty of water every day that you’re alive. This should absolutely go without saying, yet every year, people have to go to the medical tent to be treated for dehydration. You can bring an unopened bottle of water inside with you, and they have “hydration stations” located throughout the grounds. There’s no reason to not drink water. If you don’t wanna bother with carrying a water bottle in, I recommend bringing a couple of bottle caps in your pockets, because if/(hopefully)when you buy a bottle of water, they will take the cap off before giving it to you. I’m not 100% sure why they do this, and I’ve read a few different possible explanations, but all that really matters is that they do do it. (Haha, I said “do do”.)
Q: Should I pace myself?
Yes. Don’t get drunk too early. Get plenty of rest. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. This is especially true if you’re in it for the whole weekend, but even if you’re only going for one day, if you plan to be there for more than a couple of bands, it’s a very good idea to pace yourself and make time to rest.
Q: Should I bring a whole bunch of shit with me?
I don’t even know how I would express myself if the Simpsons didn’t exist.
I recommend travelling as light as possible. Clear backpacks are allowed, as are fanny packs under a certain size, and lots of people use those. I’ve tried both, but I ended up feeling kinda burdened, so I just wear cargo shorts to carry things I need on my person, including glasses case/sunglasses, beard comb, ink pen, Sharpie®, lip balm, and one or two bandannas. I say if you don’t need it, leave it outside the gates. If you might need it, get a clear backpack or a small fanny pack, or rent a locker on the premises. We did that for the first time this year, and it made things much easier, especially when the rains came.
I asked the missus if she had anything to add, and she recommended tissues, feminine hygiene products, hand sanitizer, deodorant*, and sunscreen. This is where the clear backpack and/or fanny pack and/or locker would come in handy. If you’re using the portajohns in GA, some wipes would probably be a good idea, too. A portable phone charger could potentially come in handy as well. I’ve taken one in before, but I didn’t need it, as I don’t really use my phone that much while I’m inside the gates. If you get a locker, those are equipped with chargers
*Please fucking wear deodorant.
Q: What kind of shoes should I wear?
I highly recommend close-toed shoes or boots, preferably waterproof. I had a pair of Merrells that served me well every year since 2021, but I had to retire them after surviving through this year’s fields of filth. Which reminds me, I’d also recommend a spare pair of socks, especially if rain is the forecast. You will almost certainly regret wearing flip-flops or sandals, especially if you’re attending more than one day.
Q: What will the weather be like?
Every year that I’ve attended (before this year), the temperatures have ranged from very warm to hot-as-balls, with minimal cloud cover. This year, the rain started falling toward the end of Day One, and it didn’t completely stop until well into Day Four. September in the Ohio River Valley tends to be extremely humid.
Speaking of September in the Ohio River Valley, if you have seasonal allergies, plan on suffering. I mean, take your medicine and all, but know that it will likely not be as effective as usual.
Q: What’s the scoop on shade and/or seating?
There’s not much shade available in the General Admission area, aside from the drink tents, and a bunch of selfish dickheads are definitely gonna be camped out in whatever little shade there is pretty much all day, so plan accordingly. You can hang out inside the big drink tents, but good luck finding anywhere to sit or put your drink down for a few minutes. Basically, if you need to sit down and you have GA passes, you’re most likely gonna have to sit on the ground, in the sun (you can bring a towel or a light blanket). There are picnic tables around, and the larger drink tents have tables and seating, but people in general are awful, and they won’t let you sit in the empty seat next to them, because their friend is just over at the main stage for 40 minutes, and that seat is for them when they get back.
There’s a big tent in VIP that provides a lot of shade, but people are even worse about claiming seats in there. I think many of them forget that everyone in VIP paid extra to be there, and I assume the rest are just assholes. Top Shelf has an air-conditioned tent and a double-level elevated seating area that is mostly shaded. We’ve never had a problem scoring a place to sit inside that tent, but seats on the elevated seating area can be harder to come by.
Q: Should I wear a hat?
Yes, you should absolutely wear a hat, or a bandanna, or some damn thing. Just make sure you cover your noggin. It would be wise to keep your ears covered as much as possible, too. Skin cancer likes earlobes. I used to wear a big dumb straw hat with a lanyard, so I could keep the sun completely off my big ol’ John Cougar Melonhead, and when the sun went down, I could just let the hat rest on my back. That sucked for a few reasons:
It’s a pretty dumb-looking hat.
It could pretty easily block the view of people behind me, and I try to be conscious of that.
Having the lanyard tugging on my neck while wearing the hat on my back got uncomfortable very quickly.
It’s too big to do anything with it besides wear it.
I got a new hat this year, and it looks kinda dumb too, but not as dumb. It’s much more practical, comfortable, and convenient. It’s a cooling bucket hat from a company called Mission. I receive no compensation from Mission, but I highly recommend you get a cooling bucket hat from Mission, and here’s why:
They come equipped with UPF 50 sunblock protection.
They come equipped with chemical-free cooling technology. Just get it wet, wring it out, and wave it in the air briefly, and you can experience cooling effects of up to 30° F (-1.1° C) for up to 2 hours.
They’re very lightweight, so the lanyard doesn’t tug on your neck as much when you’re wearing the hat on your back, and you can also fold them up and stuff them in one of your cargo pockets (or your clear backpack and/or fanny pack).
They’re machine washable.
They’re quite affordable, and they also come in handy for yard work, nature walks, outdoor parties, etc.
Here’s me and the Missus. You see why I say my hat is kinda dumb-looking. Damned if isn’t practical, though, and as comfortable as a hat can be.
Q: Should I research the lineup and try to learn about some new bands?
Fuck yes you should, bud! After the lineup drops, absolutely take some time to research the bands you’re not familiar with. We’ve discovered some new favorites just by checking out every single band every single year we’ve gone. We’ve also discovered some bands we do not want to be in the vicinity of at all, and that’s good knowledge to have as well. As I mentioned in a previous post, after the lineup gets released, I’ll make a list of all the bands, and on Saturday nights over the next few months, we’ll spend a chunk of time havin some drinks and watchin videos from all the bands. We’ll usually start with either the newest song or the song with the most plays on YouTube, and we’ll work our way through the lineup over the course of a month or two.
When we’ve made it through all four days, we’ll go back through and watch a second video of each band, this time focusing on older songs when possible/as needed. After we’ve finished a second run-through, we’ll go through the whole list once more, this time watching live performances from each band. We each assign a grade to every song, using the standard A-F grading scale used in public schools in the US.
After all three run-throughs, we’ll average out the grades, and anyone who averages a B- or better makes it onto our short list of bands we want to watch. In addition to learning about new bands and helping us make decisions, it also helps maximize our Louder Than Life-related excitement throughout the year.
The real challenge comes much closer to go-time, after the daily schedules get released. That’s when you find out that, for example, two of the bands you wanna see on Friday start at the same time on two different stages, and a third band from the short list starts playing on the other stage halfway through those sets. It can be a gut-wrenching experience. That leads me to my next tip…
Q: Should I brace myself for possible disappointment?
Oh my goodness, yes. You’re almost certainly gonna have to miss at least a couple of bands you wanna see, due to scheduling conflicts. It’s just the nature of the beast. When I have to decide, I take a couple of factors into account:
If I’ve seen one of the bands before, I’m usually gonna go with the one I haven’t seen. There are a few bands that don’t fit that scenario for me (I’ll always watch Clutch when they’re playing), but I cross that bridge when I come to it.
If a band is from another country (especially if they don’t tour the States often), they’ll almost always take precedence.
In addition to schedule-based disappointment, bands cancel every year, sometimes as late as the day of their scheduled performance. As discussed above, there’s also the possibility of weather-based cancellations and delays. All disappointing. All things you have to learn to be okay with.
Q: So how do the stages work?
There are a total of five stages. Main Stage 1 and Main Stage 2 are side-by-side, and while one band is playing, the next band is setting up and sound-checking on the other stage. There’s a five-minute break between bands. No main stage bands will ever play at the same time, and no other band will ever overlap with the main headliner.
What used to be the “second stage” became two side-by-side stages a few years ago. This year, they were the Decibel Stage and the Revolver Stage. They work the same way as the main stages.
The third stage area/fifth stage (known as the Loudmouth Stage this year) is a single stage, so the breaks between bands are a bit longer.
This should help it make more sense.
A lot of people like to complain (imagine that) about such-and-such band being on one of the smaller stages because they think it’s not fair to that band. For example, Sum 41 headlined the Decibel Stage this year, and people are still bitching about it (“they did Sum 41 dirty, they should’ve been on the main stage, blah blah blah”). There was a huge crowd watching Sum 41, and I would definitely call their set a rousing success. The thing is, the crowd has to be spread out a bit, and having bigger bands headline the “second stage” while the #3 headliner is on the main stage is a great way to do that.
Speaking of complaining, and headliners, don’t complain about the headliners. It won’t do any good, and it makes you look like baby.
If you haven’t watched Wanderlust, you should change that ASAP. But only if you like to laugh.
Q: What about food?
I love food. There’s a lot of awesome food available for purchase inside the gates, and the portion sizes are often very large, but the prices are usually even larger. Think about the beloved brewpub in your town that charges 20 bucks for a sandwich, but that sandwich is big enough for two meals if you don’t gorge yourself. A lot of the vendors are like that, except that you won’t have anywhere to safely store your leftovers until you’re ready to eat them. There was one vendor this year who had a baloney sandwich for something like $25.They can go straight to hell with that nonsense, and frankly, I hope they went out of business.
My advice is to eat a big meal before you enter the gates for the day, so you won’t have to eat as much once you get inside. If you’re anything like me you’ll want to time it out so that you can empty your bowels before you get inside. I live my life trying to not use a toilet outside my home, especially if I’m not getting paid for it.
Q: Speaking of toilets, what’s the deal with toilets?
Easy there, Seinfeld. Portajohns are all you get in GA. They’re in the sun all day, and as you might imagine, they get progressively worse as the day goes on. The VIP area has air conditioned restrooms, and Top Shelf VIP has even nicer air conditioned restrooms, but you’ll still be sitting on a toilet that thousands of other people have sat upon and shat into (and sometimes upon).
Q: How much walking should I plan to do?
You should plan to walk a lot while you’re there. I recommend walking as much as possible every day, just in general, but I’m not your doctor or your father. If you don’t already walk much in your day-to-day life, it’s best to start doing it well before the festival begins so you can build up your strength and stamina. Why not start today? I’m not sure how big the festival grounds actually are, but I personally walked/danced for approximately 34 miles plus over the course of this year’s LTL, and as I mentioned above, one whole day was cancelled due to one of those famous Kentucky hurricanes. If I didn’t already walk 5-8 miles a day at my job, I almost certainly I would’ve been able to manage that.
Q: Where should I plan to sleep?
The City of Louisville is lousy with hotels and motels (it is a city, after all). There are several options located within walking distance of the festival grounds, but we always stay at the Galt House downtown, which is our preferred hotel anytime we’re in Louisville. Be advised that hotels are already filling up fast, and they are also charging a lot of money for that weekend, because capitalism. There are also a lot of hotels across the river in Indiana (New Albany, Jeffersonville, Clarksville, etc.), and I assume they don’t charge quite as much, but will have to drive or use a rideshare (more on that in the next FAQ).
Airbnb is also an option, I guess, but after my single experience booking an Airbnb, I’ll never do that again. I do know that a lot of locals leave town and rent out their houses/apartments for the weekend, so it is technically an option, but I’d rather not pay hotel prices to clean up after myself.
We spring for a suite, which includes a mini fridge and a wet bar. Having the extra space to spread out before we leave for the day and after we return for the evening really makes the weekend more enjoyable.
Camping in the campgrounds adjacent to the fest is also an option, but we’ve never done that, because Sheila doesn’t like to camp, and if I slept on the ground, I wouldn’t be able to stand fully upright. I do know that the campsites sell out very quickly (I think they’re already sold out, in fact), but you can also sign up for a wait-list.
I talked to a guy in 2021 who was sleeping in his car in a parking lot, and I’ve read accounts from others about doing that, but your safety and well-being are important to Clockwise Circle Pit, therefore, Clockwise Circle Pit can neither endorse nor recommend that solution.
Q: What about parking and/or transportation?
Parking is available on the property, and I think it costs 30 or 40 dollars per day. Yes, that is a lot of money to park your car for the day, but know that DWP does not set the prices for parking. I personally can’t imagine driving to and from an event like this, especially not four days in a row, but I’m not here to tell you what to do. Wait, that’s exactly why I’m here.
Other options are walking (if you’re staying close enough), renting one of those terrifying Lime scooters (if you’re staying close enough), or Lyft/Uber/other rideshare (we paid $30 for an Uber to our hotel about 8 miles away in 2019). The best option, in this asshole’s opinion, is getting a shuttle pass.
For the past 3 years, we’ve purchased a shuttle pass through Pegasus Transportation, and they pick up at the Galt House and the downtown Marriott and drop off about 100 yards from the gates. When you’re ready to leave, they pick you up at the dropoff point and take you back to the Galt House and the Marriott. When I was purchasing our package this year, all the hotel options I saw had an option to add a shuttle pass, and Pegasus Transportation was not mentioned in the description, so I’m not sure exactly how it’ll work, but it does seem like a shuttle could be an option for many of the hotels this year.
Q: Will some asshole take advantage of the situation and steal my phone/wallet/other stuff?
There’s a very good possibility of this. Assholes are everywhere, and people ruin everything. Based solely on my experience browsing Reddit and the facebook LTL fan pages, reports of phone thefts were lower this year than in 2023, but I plenty of people still got their phones swiped right out of their pockets (front pockets, even). I personally haven’t had an issue with that yet, but I also don’t generally pack into the deep crowd in front of the main stages, which is where I assume most of the thefts happen (more people = more opportunities to be piece of shit thief).
Q: Should I take advantage of the situation and steal someone’s phone/wallet/other stuff?
Of course not. Don’t be an asshole.
Q: How are the mosh pits?
I can’t answer this one with a lot of experience, because I’m too old for that shit, but I’ve been next to plenty of pits at Louder Than Life (especially at the smaller stages), and from what I’ve seen, people in the pits have generally respectful. Mostly push-pits and classic circle pits, with hardcore karate-style pits when appropriate. People seem to understand the cardinal rule of pits, which of course is if someone falls down, pick them up. Occasionally, a pit can get dangerous with surges and whatnot. This happened during Korn’s set on Day Four this year. The band had to stop playing for a bit, and the crowd was asked to take a few steps back so people would stop getting crushed. That happened after we left, but a lot of people were talking about it.
I was right next to this big ol’ lovefest in 2019. Andrew W.K. puts on one hell of a fun show.
The main things to remember while you’re in the pit also apply to everyday life:
Have fun.
Don’t be an asshole
If someone falls, help them up.
Don’t pull someone in if they don’t wanna be there.
Stay hydrated.
Nazi punks fuck off.
If you are in the pit and need assistance, or see someone who needs assistance, cross your arms in an “X” above your head. The first time I saw Sevendust (LTL2K21), they stopped their show because their singer, Lajon, saw someone making an “X” and told security about it, and they were able to get the person to safety. “X” marks the spot, friends.
Crowd surfing is commonplace and generally accepted, but a lot of people don’t do it right. If you insist on crowd surfing, the safest way to do it is the “Jesus Christ Pose”: arms out to the side, feet crossed. Don’t flail around like you’re having a seizure unless you want to increase the chances of kicking someone in the head, and your chances of getting dropped.
Speaking of “don’t”, don’t assume everyone will help you stay up once you go up. You paid good money to be there, and as long as you’re not hurting or harassing anyone, you should get to have fun in your own way. Likewise, everyone paid good money to be there, and they should also get to have fun in their own way, and if watching the bands they came to see while not getting kicked in the head while helping you crowd surf is their way of having fun, that’s something you need to be okay with.
The other side of that, of course, is not getting bent out of shape over crowd surfers if you plan to ride the rail directly in front of the stage. It’s not like you don’t know there’ll be crowd surfers, I just told you there will be. Some bands even encourage it. When we saw Anti-Flag (RIP) in 2022, they told the crowd they wanted us to make the security guards earn their paychecks, and holy shit, the number of bodies I saw being passed to the front was staggering.
If you’re deep in the pit area and you’re not crowd surfing, and you hear someone near you yell “heads up!”, this means a crowd surfer has been spotted in your area, and you should expect them to pass near you very soon, possibly directly overhead. Act accordingly.
One final thing about crowd surfing and pits (and day-to-day life in general): say you’re deep in the pit area, and you’re not crowd surfing, and you hear someone near you yell “heads up!”, and you look behind you and see a scantily clad lady coming your way, and you think to yourself “I like touchin butts, I think I’ll pass her forward and cop a feel”, fuckin think again, motherfucker.
I cannot believe this is a thing that ever has to be said, but I know it does, and it’s just one more example of, to quote Slipknot, “People = Shit”: DO NOT EVER TOUCH ANOTHER PERSON IN ANYTHING EVEN RESEMBLING AN INTIMATE WAY ON PURPOSE WITHOUT THAT PERSON’S PERMISSION. NOT A CROWD SURFER, NOT A MOSH PITTER, NOT A STRANGER ON THE STREET, NOT EVEN IF YOU’RE THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, NOT ANYONE, NOT ANY TIME, NOT EVER. If you insist on copping a feel on that scantily clad crowd surfer, don’t be surprised if you leave with fewer teeth than you came in with. Speaking of scantily clad crowd surfers…
Q: Should I expect to see people in various states of undress?
You should expect to see pretty much everything short of people having sex, and frankly, I’m a bit surprised I’ve never seen that. I’m absolutely sure it’s happened.
This year, it seemed like butts finally replaced boobs as the preferred skin for purposes of exposure, but unless you (or your child) are blind, you (and your child) will see asses and titties in all shapes and sizes. Don’t be such a prude, it’s just the human body. We all have one. And to reiterate from above: it doesn’t matter how much skin is exposed, and it doesn’t matter how drunk/high you are, and it doesn’t matter how horny you are, and it doesn’t even matter if you’re a former/future president of the United States, DO NOT EVER TOUCH ANOTHER PERSON IN ANYTHING EVEN RESEMBLING AN INTIMATE WAY ON PURPOSE WITHOUT THAT PERSON’S PERMISSION.
Quick side note: you’ll also see t-shirts and flags and banners and other things that may offend you, but no one cares. That’s also good advice for life outside the festival grounds.
Q: Is VIP/Top Shelf worth it?
I see this one asked a lot in the facebook fan groups and on reddit, and since I have experience with GA, VIP, and Top Shelf VIP, I feel like I’m qualified to answer. The “thing” about this question, though, is that phrase “worth it”. No other person can really know how much value you’ll find in something, but I can try to help you make that decision.
I’ve already covered a few of the downsides of General Admission, but all in all, it’s a fuckin great value, especially if you don’t drink alcohol (or don’t drink much alcohol) and you take my advice and eat a big deal before you enter the gates, and especially especially if you’re young and in relatively good shape. When we went for the one day in 2019, we got GA passes and by the end of the day it honestly felt like we might not make it. Temperatures topped out near 100° F (37.8° C), and being the first year on the new grounds, things were very open and exposed to the sun. Dust clouds erupted every time a pit broke out, and every single inch of shade was occupied all day. Also, the hand washing stations outside the portajohns were completely out of water, soap, and paper towels before the sun even went down.
We went the GA route again in 2021, and we both agreed afterward that if we were ever gonna go back, we’d have to upgrade to VIP so we could have access to shade, seats, and cleaner bathrooms.
We did just that in 2022, and I’m here to tell you, the fuckin joke was on us. The only real perk to VIP ended up being the better restroom facilities, because as I mentioned above, people are the worst, and no one would give up their precious chairs to anyone, for any reason, ever. I saw a pregnant woman walking around in the tent looking for a place to sit, for Chrissake, and not one person offered her any of the empty chairs at their tables, because they were saving them. There are a few food vendors inside VIP that are not available anywhere else, but there’s no shortage of food in GA, either. There’s also a dedicated viewing area to the left of Main Stage 1 which can get you some decent views of that stage, but for the most part, people line up along the rail and stay there all day, just like they do in GA.
After our VIP experience, we decided to give Top Shelf VIP a shot. Within minutes of being inside the Top Shelf area, we agreed there was no way we could go back to GA or VIP again. I will say this first: Top Shelf passes are not cheap. The price went up substantially this year, but we still got em within minutes of the Early Bird pre-sale for previous year ticket holders. We know there’s gonna be a ton of bands there we wanna see, and we barely have to travel to get to Louisville, which is a city we love, and were already visiting several times a year before we started going to Louder Than Life. We don’t take traditional vacations because Louder Than Life is our vacation. We are privileged to be able to make it happen again this year, and I’m glad, because there really is no going back. If I ever found myself in a strange hypothetical position where I can’t quite swing Top Shelf, but I could easily snag GA if I delivered pizza for my buddy Jim for a couple of months, I think I’d rather stay home and pretend like there aren’t a ton of bands I wanna see, and Louisville is much to far away for convenient travel, and I never liked that city anyway, and as a matter of fact, I ain’t ever even been there, truth be told, I’ve never even heard of Louisville, than not have the air-conditioned tent and the ability to poop comfortably. Your mileage may vary.
First of all, the very idea of an air-conditioned tent being available if we needed it made it seem worth it, but here are the other perks of Top Shelf:
All alcoholic beverages inside the Top Shelf area are included in the price of admission. Angel’s Envy has been the primary sponsor for Top Shelf every year since they’ve offered it, and as such, Angel’s Envy bourbon and rye are the well whiskies inside Top Shelf. They also have all the other major spirits available, along with Budweiser products. Considering drinks can cost as much as 20 bucks or more at some of the tents in GA, you can see how quickly you could burn through a hefty amount of money in a day. If you don’t enjoy alcoholic beverages, Top Shelf might not be worth it for you.
Renowned local chef Anthony Lamas (who you might know from TV’s Bar Rescue, with that insufferable prick John Taffer) and a crack team of cooks and food runners prepare small bites throughout the day, and those are included in the price of admission. We’re both vegetarian, so we haven’t tried everything they’ve offered, but everything we have tried has ranged in quality from very good to oh-my-fucking-god-that’s-incredible. They alternate cold and hot food, and they always have things like potato chips and trail mix available. We’ve had things like Strawberry Caprese Salads, Cheese Enchiladas, Falafel Balls, Spring Rolls, and French Fries, and some of the omnivore options we’ve seen include meatballs, Salisbury steak, and bratwurst. If I had one complaint about the food, and I do, it’s that sometimes there are no vegetarian options at all. This happened at the last service of Day Four this year. It was disappointing. At any rate, as I mentioned previously, food is expensive inside the festival grounds, and having the option to pop into the tent and have snacks throughout the day saved us a lot of money over the course of the weekend. If you don’t like delicious food, Top Shelf might not be worth it for you.
The restrooms are flushable and air-conditioned, and that’s a real nice perk. If you have no qualms with potentially not being able to wash your hands after using a portajohn that’s been sitting in the sun all day, Top Shelf might not be worth it for you.
That air-conditioned tent is fucking awesome, and it’s outfitted with TVs and a sound system that play whichever band is on the Main Stage at that time, so if you’re outside watching it and you wanna grab a beverage or a snack or even just rest your feet for a few minutes, you don’t really have to miss the action. I would never stay in there all day, because if I was all I wanted to do, I’d just stay home in my own air conditioning and watch YouTube, but it’s a wonderful option to have when you need to get out of the sun (or rain). And outside of feeding times, there is no challenge whatsoever in getting a place to sit. If I had one complaint about the tent, and of course I do, it’s the volume at which they play the Main Stage performances. I know the word “louder” is literally the first word in the name of the festival, but as a dude who can easily suffer from sensory overload, it would be cool if the volume was just a bit lower, so that regular conversation could happen (not to mention how much easier it would be to talk to the bartenders). If you don’t care about chairs, shade, and cooling off, then Top Shelf might not be worth it for you.
Top Shelf wristbands also give you access to the VIP area, and, of course the GA area as well.
Q: Should I talk to strangers?
Yes, absolutely. I know that answer runs counter to everything I’ve said here about people, but I stand by what I said: People (with a capital “P”) are the worst, and they do ruin everything. On the other hand, people can be pretty cool sometimes. I’m a very awkward and introverted person, and the idea of talking to someone I don’t know goes against my very nature, but the answer is still a resounding “YES!” You’ll meet some awesome people from all over the world, and almost everyone you interact with will be friendly, as long as you don’t ask to use one of the empty chairs at their table.
In my day-to-day life, I’ve been known to cross the street to avoid the very possibility of having to talk to another person. At this Louder Than Life this year, I made a bee-line toward a stranger holding a “FREE HUGS” sign and I gave him such a hugging, and it was fuckin awesome.
Q: Is Louder Than Life a cashless event?
Yes, Louder Than Life is a cashless event. I still bring cash in for tipping bartenders, but no place inside the festival grounds accepts cash as payment. They have those newfangled reverse ATMs on the grounds, where you can put in cash and get a prepaid debit card with the amount you put in, so if you don’t have a debit/credit card, or just don’t wanna bring it in with you, that’s an option.
The wristband that gets you inside the gates can also be linked to a card so you can pay with that, but I tried that in 2021 and forgot the PIN I set up for it (plus I accidentally wore the wrong bracelet anyway), so I don’t bother with that myself.
Q: This long-winded thing has been extremely informative and entertaining. Thank you so much for taking the time to put it together. What if I have other questions about things that aren’t covered here?
Thank you, that’s really nice of you to say. It took a very long time to write, and on more than one occasion I almost flung my Chromebook into the sun.
If you have further questions, the official website has a much more comprehensive and less long-winded Info page that covers a lot of the things I mentioned here, and much more. If you have a question about something that you don’t see covered on the links there, there’s a good chance you’re not looking hard enough or reading carefully enough, but in any case, you can email them at info@louderthanlifefestival.com. They’re very friendly, and they will get back to you.
Alright, I have to stop here. Holy shit this is long. If you made it this far, thank you! If you have any cool friends with half an hour to kill, you should tell them about it.
Note: this is Part Five of a multi-part series about Louder Than Life 2024. This will be the final installment of the series, technically speaking. I’ll be writing a lot more about Louder Than Life, still, in case you’re worried about that for some reason. Tickets for 2025 are on sale, and we locked our 4-day passes in on Wednesday. Here are the links for Day Zero, Day One, Day Two, and Day Three. There are supplementalpartsalso. Thank you for being a friend.
By the time we woke up on Sunday, the chance of rain was down to 20%. I watched a couple of videos on Instagram of a bunch of the DWP crew (with the help of the Bellarmine University wrestling team) out laying mulch on the grounds in an attempt to alleviate some of the mud, and that alleviated some of my mud-related anxiety. I wouldn’t call Operation: Mud Control a total success, but things certainly could’ve been much worse. Look at me – barely one paragraph in, and I’m already getting ahead of myself.
Day Four was set to be a real corker. We intended to watch Gozu on the Loudmouth Stage at noon, as well as Project MishraM on the Decibel Stage at 1:00, but we definitely needed a little extra time to get going, so we missed both. Who knew that drinking whiskey in the rain and mud could be so exhausting? Instead, we started our day with Oxymorrons on Main Stage 1 at 1:30.
This footage isn’t mine. None of the footage is mine, unless otherwise indicated.
We saw Oxymorrons in 2022 on one of the second stages, and they were fuckin fun. They play a super high-energy hip-hop/punk hybrid, and their personal energy absolutely matches that of the songs. They were on the main stage for the first time this year, and fuckin good for them. They definitely deserve it. We weren’t quite ready to get all up in the mud and the crowd yet, so we watched them from the elevated viewing area in Top Shelf instead. That certainly had an effect on my enjoyment of them, and I regret the decision. They sounded great, and the energy level was the same as it was 2 years ago, but they’re a band that needs to be experienced from up close to really appreciate them.
We went into the tent while Saliva played on Main Stage 2. You might know them from the song “Click Click Boom”, from their platinum-selling debut album Every Six Seconds. That’s how I know em, anyway. They played that one, and some others, and they were fine – far from the worst thing I’ve heard at Louder Than Life.
While searching for a clip to post here, I was reminded that a chant of “USA! USA! USA!” broke out during their set for some reason, and that was pretty goofy.
Eagles of Death Metal followed on Main Stage 1, and neither of us were/are terribly familiar with them, but we like the way they sound, and we decided to go up to the Skybox (a.k.a. the Upper Decker) to watch their set.
The red circle shows our location during Judas Priest’s set later that evening. To quote a buddy of mine from New Orleans, just a little FYI for you, there.
Like Oxymorrons, I would’ve definitely enjoyed them more if I’d been closer, but there was still a lot of rockin ahead of us, and as I’ve mentioned before, we are not particularly young.
They came to make a bang.
Toward the end of EoDM’s set, we made our way back to the Decibel Stage to watch Winona Fighter. If Winona Fighter had been around when I was in my early twenties, they would’ve been one of my favorite bands. It was a super-tight, super-fun set, and I will absolutely catch them live again when I get the chance.
In addition to giving you a taste of Winona Fighter, this video provides a good example of the mud and filth we were dealing with on those side stages. The amount of people I saw sliding, splashing, and wrestling in it was truly horrifying. More on that later.
I got a few pictures of Winona Fighter, but as you might imagine by now, they aren’t very good, so I’m only gonna share the two “best” ones.
Here’s an action shot of sorts.
Here’s Coco signing “that giant fuckin hog” (aka inflatable cock ‘n’ balls), which ended up right next to me a short time later.
Narrow Head were up next over on the Revolver Stage, and I wanted to be closer for them, but I didn’t wanna lose my spot on the rail in front of the Decibel Stage, because Drug Church was up after them, so I just slid closer to the stage and watched Narrow Head on the big screens. They were great, and I look forward to seeing them properly at some point in the hopefully not-to-distant future. Like Winona Fighter before them, they would’ve been an absolute jam if they’d existed in a different time.
The 20% chance of rain turned into a 100% steady drizzle just as Narrow Head started to play. Sheila took that opportunity to use the restroom and get a drink (and get out of the rain), arriving back during their last song, just in time to experience Drug Church with me.
Their music sounded perfect in the rain.
I first heard DrugChurch a little over a year ago, when I was listening to a lot of Turnstile in the run-up to Louder Than Life 2023. The Algorithm brought them to my attention on the same day as Militarie Gun, and I loved them both immediately, and even though I watched dozens of shows from both bands on the YouTube, I somehow didn’t realize they shared a guitar player (the incomparable Nick Cogan) until about a month before he left Militarie Gun to focus on Drug Church. I can be a bit of a doofus at times. But I’m talking about Drug Church.
Drug Church pretty quickly went from “I’m really digging this band I just found out about” to “I don’t ever wanna stop listening to this band and I wanna see them live so bad I can fucking taste it”. I damn near shit my britches when the LTL2K24 lineup dropped and I saw them and Touché Amoré on there. I mentioned this in one of my last posts before this year’s fest, but while Touché Amoré was helping me process and deal with grief, Drug Church was helping me process the absurdities of modern life and deal with the absolute baked potatoes one encounters on a near-daily basis at work, at the store, and in traffic (with apologies to baked potatoes, which are fucking delicious).
Sheila took pictures of Drug Church for me, because her camera is better than mine, and because I am incapable of remaining still when they’re playing.
The rain stopped in the five minutes between the Narrow Head and Drug Church sets, and the sun came out just as Drug Church took the stage. The feedback began, frontman Pat Kindlon said “Sun came out just for us, huh?! Inflatable penis came out just for us, huh?! Mud Man came out just for us, huh?! Pack it in, let’s have a good time! We’re fuckin Drug Church!” and then they kicked into “Fun’s Over”, and I blissed out for the next 30 minutes, and when they were finished, I was so happy and so exhausted and was so, so glad we started out the day slowly, because we still had a minimum of 4 1/2 hours to go, and there was no rest for the weary or the wicked.
Nick Cogan (r) is such a fuckin stud. He makes it all look completely effortless.
I will absolutely be writing more about Drug Church in the near future, but for now, if you enjoy fun, watch this:
This band is seriously so fucking incredible. Also, that’s “Mud Man” on the giant screen above.↑
As soon as Drug Church finished, the lady standing immediately to my right started yelling “SETLIST! SETLIST!” toward the stage, and I was angry with myself for not thinking to do that. Nick handed a setlist to one of the security dudes and pointed to that lady, and the security dude handed it to her, and I asked her if I could take a picture of it, and she said “this is yours”, and I said “say what?”, and she said “this is yours”, and I said “are you fucking serious?” and she said “I got this for you; you knew every word”, and the dude with her said “this is obviously your band”, and that was very fuckin cool of her.
Thank you, anonymous strangers. I hope y’all are having an absolutely kick-ass day, wherever you are.
Gojira was set to start less than five minutes after I got the setlist in my hands, and we were planning to try and meet up with our pal Stevo and his daughter Carmel, who were coming for the evening to see Gojira, Judas Priest and Korn, so we started the trek over toward the regular VIP section, which is closer to Main Stage 1, where Gojira was already playing. We went inside VIP and got a bourbon, then went back out into General Admission to look for our friends. We found them about halfway through Gojira’s set, and what a gloriously heavy set it was.
So many flames shot out of that stage, and if that band was any tighter, I think my butthole might’ve permanently closed up. We all banged our heads and screamed and hollered, and as soon as it was over, I became consumed by an awareness of how sweaty and heavy my shirt was. Luckily, I’d picked up a brand new shirt earlier in the day with one of our merchandise vouchers and stashed it in our locker. We all walked toward Top Shelf so I could change shirts and we could re-up our drinks, and then we were all gonna head back to the Loudmouth Stage to watch Detroit, Michigan alternative rock legends Sponge.
As we were walking, Staind started playing on Main Stage 2, and we suddenly remembered not only that Staind exists, but also that they were scheduled to play right after Gojira. We commiserated about what a shame it is that Aaron Lewis is such a miserable pile of shit, especially considering how good the band sounds, and we got ourselves out of earshot as quickly as possible. We arrived at the Loudmouth Stage with a few minutes to spare before Sponge started, and Sheila and I were pretty stoked. Sponge has never been a favorite of mine, per se, but I like them well enough, and they got a couple of certified bangers that I was looking forward to singing along with.
If you think for a second that Sheila and I didn’t dance like a couple of idiots while they played this song, then what are we even doing here?
If you thought for an instant that I might not’ve screamed myself hoarse singing along with this song, then I suppose we might never really know one another.
Here’s a picture we took shortly before Sponge took the stage:
That’s a beautiful group of human beings right there.
Toward the end of Sponge’s set, Stevo showed me an alert on his phone that singer/songwriter/actor/activist/badass Kris Kristofferson had passed away. I said “thanks for ruining my fuckin weekend, bud”, and I didn’t really mean that, because Stevo could never ruin my weekend, but it did bum me out quite a bit, especially coming, as it did, one day after the passing of Drake Hogestyn, best known as John Black from the long-running soap opera Days of our Lives.
That’s a fact.
I digress.
We parted ways so they could get a good spot for Judas Priest on Main Stage 2, and so I could get a spot for motherfucking Biohazard. Seriously, fifteen-year-old me is absolutely seething with jealousy that I not only got to see Biohazard live, but that I got to have that experience with an awesome woman who also happens to be my wife. And goddamn, were they on (figurative) fire.
Up yours, fifteen-year-old me!
They played all the “hits” and I was livin it up inside the teenage bedroom of my mind, but Sheila departed soon after they started, because Judas Priest was scheduled to start 25 minutes after Biohazard, and she was never a fifteen-year-old boy.
She did get a couple of pictures for me before she left though, because she’s the best.
The pictures aren’t great, but they’re miles better than what I would’ve gotten.
I stayed through “Punishment”, and when they started their last song, “Hold My Own”, I began my final journey (of 2024) across the entirety of the festival grounds to try and catch as much of Judas Priest as I possibly could. A very large crowd had been gathering in front of the Decibel Stage in anticipation of second-stage headliner Jinjer, and Sheila and I would’ve been among them if not for the Gods of Metal.
The mud had caused people to crowd together on the gravel and straw pathways, making it impossible to walk anywhere on that end of the grounds without stomping through what everyone was politely calling “mud”, but was by then absolutely a mixture of mud, blood, feces, urine, vomit, beer, whiskey, spit, sweat, tears, semen, hair, and probably chili dogs. What would have taken 5-8 minutes under normal festival circumstances became a 10-minute-plus trip, and I finally entered the home stretch just as Judas Priest kicked off a flawless rendition of “Devil’s Child”.
A quick side note: this was Judas Priest’s first appearance in Louisville since 2021, when guitarist Richie Faulkner almost died from an aortic aneurysm while ripping out the “Painkiller” solo. I’ve had plenty of time to process that, but it’s still hard to believe that happened, and that he survived it. Metal Gods, indeed.
Fucking legend.
Anyway, I found Sheila on the rail in the Top Shelf area in the last couple minutes of “Sinner”, and much to the seeming displeasure of the cranky old butthole behind us, we fuckin rocked our asses off while they tore through “Turbo Lover”, “Invincible Sheild”, “Hell Bent for Leather” (complete with Halford riding his Harley onstage), and “Painkiller”, then an encore of “Electric Eye” followed by “Livin After Midnight”, and it was incredible.
So much fuckin fun.
We intended to try and meet back up with our friends for Korn’s headlining set, but the odds were not good of us livin after midnight if we stayed much longer, so we popped back into the tent for a couple of bottles of water, got all of our stuff out of our locker, and headed for the gate while Korn played “Dead Bodies Everywhere”.
I should mention that I haven’t been a Korn fan in any sense of the word since sometime before their third album came out, but I was still looking forward to watching their set, as I hadn’t seen them since they opened for Megadeth in 1996. And while I was a little bummed about leaving early, history indicates that there’ll be another Korn headlining set at Louder Than Life sooner rather than later.
And with that, Louder Than Life 2024 came to an end. I’m gonna write a follow-up post soon to discuss a few festival-related elements that didn’t really fit in the narrative I’ve been spinning here, and I’m also planning on writing a comprehensive list of tips and tricks for newer festival attendees, to hopefully help other people maximize their enjoyment and minimize their chances of heat exhaustion, dehydration, and trench foot, among other things. Keep an eye out for those things, if you’re interested.
Thanks for reading, and if you liked what you read, why not tell a friend? If you didn’t like what you read, I suppose you could still tell a friend, and then y’all can talk shit about it together.
Note: this is Part Four of a multi-part series about Louder Than Life 2024. I’m not sure how many parts there’ll be, but it seems like it’ll be five at least. Here are the firsttwo. There are supplementalpartsalso.
By the time we woke on Saturday morning, the wind had diminished significantly, but we were still concerned about the rain. There was a 100% chance of rain the entire day, and the chance of the rain continuing on Sunday was still quite high, though by then it had dropped to a much less intimidating 60%.
We were soon greeted by some good news: the day was set to go on as scheduled, albeit with a couple-few changes…
First, and least important to us: two of the smaller acts from Day Two were rescheduled for Day Three (no disrespect intended two whoever those two bands were, but as neither band was on our short list, this news had no impact on us).
Another change, this one much more significant to us: “due to weather and travel issues”, Falling In Reverse would no longer be performing.
If you’ll recall from Day Zero, we do not like Falling in Reverse.
Their music is like razor blades all over my face, and not in a good way.
Here’s an example of razor blades all over my face in a good way. Musically speaking, you understand.
But anyway.
The final change, this one much more exciting for us: Till Lindemann decided to stay in town for whatever reason (maybe it was just in case someone else had to cancel, maybe it was so he could get into some weird shit, I don’t know and I don’t wanna know), and he was going to fill the turd-shaped hole left by Falling in Reverse. I suppose if anyone is gonna fill a turd-shaped hole, it might as well be Till Lindemann. And, forgive my crudeness, but fill that turd-shaped hole he did, my friends.
I’ll talk more about Till Lindemann’s turd hole later, though.
One hour after that announcement, I received the following email:
I hadn’t even though about the soundboard experience since the last email I got from DWP!
Not to get too far ahead of myself, but one thing I forgot to mention in my earlier post, where I talk about the passing of my mother-in-law Susan: Susan was born in Louisville, and was Louisville through and through, but both sides of her family were from The Old Country (Bavaria). If Susan had been any more German, she would’ve been terrifying. One of the most-German things she loved was Rammstein. She used to blast them on the stereo while she worked out, and/or worked in her sewing room.
What this means for our purposes is that when we found out we’d get to watch Rammstein’s frontman and his solo band perform one of only thirteen US shows in 2024 from a (relatively) exclusive location within the festival grounds, it seemed pretty obvious that we were gonna be experiencing that with Susan.
But again, this hasn’t happened yet. In fact, we haven’t even left the hotel room yet…
I quickly confirmed our receipt of the notice, and asked whether we’d be allowed to leave the area early in order to get over to the Revolver Stage to catch Body Count’s set. I was assured that we could leave the area whenever we were ready, and with that newfound peace of mind, we proceeded to get ready to head out for the day.
We’d already missed every chance of seeing Local H, which was a bummer, but with a 100% chance of rain, we knew the day was gonna be a slog, so we weren’t in a major hurry to get out in it anyway. I did wanna see CKY, but they also weren’t crucial for me, and Sheila wasn’t as into it, and didn’t really care one way or the other.
If you only know one Local H song, this is probably it.
Here’s the other one you might know. I’m pretty bummed we missed them, but those are the breaks.
After a frustratingly slow shuttle ride to the festival grounds, we approached the gate as CKY started to play “Sporadic Movement”. As we passed through, Sheila headed straight for the restroom, then made her way to the Top Shelf tent in an attempt to stay out of the rain. I jogged as gingerly as possible, hopping around puddles, banging my head, and kind of skip-moshing, Scott Ian-style, across the middle of the mostly-empty area in front of Main Stage 2 toward the barricade that divided us from the area in front of Main Stage 1, where they were playing.
They came to a stop at almost the same time I did, and then they tore into a kick-ass rendition of their best-known song, “96 Quite Bitter Beings” just as I was beginning to realize how much I was already sweating, due to the high humidity, and also the raincoat, plus the light exercise, as well as the fact that I sweat more than almost everyone I’ve ever met.
This was a pretty cool way to start my day. This is not my footage. I was standing about 20 yards behind the person who filmed it, and maybe another 20 yards to the right. I just made 20 yards up out of nowhere. I have no idea how far it actually was, but not too far.
They finished their set with a cover of “All My Friends Are Dead” by Turbonegro (with members of Crobot), and it sounded great, even though I don’t know the song.
Also, just wanna mention that I really wanted to see Damnage, but their set was at the same time as CKY’s, so it really wasn’t feasible. Once again, those are the breaks.
Kurtis Blow wants you to know.
I very much wanted to check out Unity TX on the Decibel Stage next, but I was already dripping with sweat, so instead I met Sheila in the tent to try and dry off a bit, then we headed way, way back to the Loudmouth Stage to watch San Francisco, CA thrashers Hemorage play what I’m pretty sure was their first ever festival show. They were fuckin awesome.
Not a good picture or anything, but it gives you a good idea of my POV.
They self-record and release their own music, they make their own merchandise, and for a stretch of time, they just drove around the country, parking and setting up their custom-built, DIY van/mobile stage, playing shows wherever the fuck they decided they wanted to play a show. And people started showing the fuck up.
They also played Aftershock this year (another Danny Wimmer Presents event, and the one that usually competes with LTL with regards to overall lineup I like most), and they deserve every bit of exposure and recognition they’ve been getting.
Here’s a short (9-10 minute) documentary about the band. You should watch it. Even if you don’t like the music, surely you can get behind the positive message. I think a lot of us could stand to receive a positive message right about now.
Anyways, Hemorage were fuckin rad, and they were so unbelievably gracious and hyped to be on that stage. I sincerely hope I get to see them again as soon as possible, and I hope that you get to see them as soon as possible, too.
Holy smokes, what a band! Also not my footage.
At some point during their set, I realized that my rain coat was useless; I was already completely soaked, and it was really only making me sweat more. I walked back to Top Shelf while P.O.D. kicked off their set on Main Stage 2, put my raincoat in our locker, and met Sheila inside the tent to take a load off and stop getting rained on for a few minutes. We enjoyed some snacks and drinks, chatted with some friendly strangers, did some people-watchin, and watched P.O.D. absolutely own that stage.
There went the boom.This is not my footage. I was inside the tent, remember?
Regarding P.O.D.: I liked their song “Alive”, from their breakthrough album Satellite when I first heard it, back in late summer 2001. I was working at a corporate music store in the mall at the time, and it was on one of the mix CDs we were approved to play in store. The song ticks a lot of boxes for me, and it was a right place, right time kinda situation. One time I heard it when I was high on the pot and I experienced pure bliss. I was also familiar with “Youth of the Nation”, the single they released after “Alive”, and I’ve been known to enjoy it as well, although not as much as “Alive”.
My point is, I don’t dislike P.O.D., but I also had no intention of going out of my way to watch them perform. I was an idiot, frankly. They put on an amazing show, and while they might’ve played from 2:05-2:35, they had that crowd moving like they were a Six-o-Clock Band. (a “Six-o-Clock Band” is a band that plays the main stage starting at or around 6:00 PM., which also happens to be the fourth band from the top of the billing – the president pro tempore to the presidency of the main headliner, if you will. Examples of past 6:00 bands include Run the Jewels, Ice Cube, Megadeth, and Chevelle, who we’ll get to shortly).
One of the perks of the Angel’s Envy Top Shelf VIP tent, along with delicious food and drinks and not getting rained on, is that is has TVs spaced all around playing a live feed of the main stages, which comes in especially handy when you want to be present for a performance, but you don’t want to get rained on.
What I’m saying to you is that we stayed in the tent while Filter played over on Main Stage 1.
Filter sounded great, and I really would’ve rather been watching them from outside on a slightly overcast day instead of on a TV inside a tent, but break it up, break it up, break it up, because those are the breaks.
I can practically feel the dampness in this video. This is not my footage. By this time I was on my way up to the Skybox, which you can see in the background on this thumbnail. It’s the structure toward the left, above the person in the chartreuse flannel.
We also wanted to watch The Armed over on the Decibel Stage, but the rain was picking up, and we still had miles to go before we slept, so instead we went up to the Upper Decker, which is what I like to call the new Top Shelf Skybox, just for a change of scenery (and also because it was kinda cold inside the tent, what with the air-conditioning and the wet clothes). We ended up hanging out up there for most of Sleeping With Sirens‘ set. I knew absolutely nothing about Sleeping With Sirens prior to our pre-fest research, but their name, along with the time period when I first became aware of them, made me assume they were a metalcore-ish, emo-esque band. Turns out I was pretty much right. I liked them more than I thought I would, even if I didn’t know any of their songs.
This is angsty, y’all. Also, it’s not my footage. I was in the Upper Decker, remember?
I didn’t take any pictures of Sleeping With Sirens, but I did take a couple of pictures of the crowd from the Upper Decker.
Here’s one of them.
Here’s the other one. Fuck, was it ever wet.
I found out later that The Armed brought Frank Turner out for a song, and I really would’ve rather watched that on a slightly overcast day, instead of not at all, but here we are.
I wasn’t gonna let rain keep me away from everything, and Better Lovers on the Revolver Stage at 4:10 was one of those (not every) things. I got a spot on the rail pretty much right in the center of the space between the Revolver and Decibel stages, and witnessed an unbelievably good and tight 30-minute set from the relatively new post-hardcore “supergroup”.
This is Better Lovers. They were tight.
ALLso Better Lovers. I’m ALLways excited to see another ALL shirt in the wild.
Fuckin tight! Not my footage. I was a bit to the right of the person who filmed this, as my photos above will attest.
When Better Lovers finished, I moved back and found a tiny bit of real estate along the side edge of the ADA-platform that was both not occupied and not 100% mud so I could watch Joey Valence & Brae on the Decibel Stage. We caught their set at Louder Than Life 2022, and they were a lot of fun, so we were definitely looking forward to seeing them again. They did not disappoint, but the rain very much fucking did, and even though we were both reeeaaally looking forward to Three 6 Mafia after them, we had to retreat to the tent before JV&B were finished.
Just excellent. This is not my footage. I was quite a bit farther back, but pretty much straight back.
We ended up sitting in the tent while Dropkick Murphys played on the Main Stage 1, and they were fine.
And listen: I was a full-on, 100% bonafide Dropkick Murphys Super Fan (DKMSF) back in the day. I first heard “Bar Room Hero” on the Hellcat Records compilation Give ’em the Boot, and if you’re ever gonna know a single thing about me, you should know that I’m a sucker for gang vocals and singalongs. “Bar Room Hero” has em both by the truckload.
Do or Die, their Hellcat debut, was easily one of my most listened-to CDs from 1998 until around the spring of 2001.
Fuck, I even bought a DKM windbreaker when I saw them live in Cincinnati, for cryin out loud! I can’t imagine how much I paid for that thing, adjusted for inflation. Certainly more than I could afford at the time.
It’ll be nothin but pride that kills him.
What I’m saying is: there was a significant stretch of time in my life where, if I wasn’t sad, I was listening to Dropkick Murphys. They were one of my absolute jams when I was 22 years old.
Shake the hand that shook the world.
Here’s the facts, though: Dropkick Murphys doesn’t sound like Dropkick Murphys anymore. I mean they don’t sound a n y thing like they used to.
And don’t misunderstand: I don’t think they’re a bad band by any means. Like, I enjoy “Shipping Up to Boston” well enough, and “Rose Tattoo” is a good song and all, but how does a band with a back catalog like theirs not play a single song from prior to the year 2000? Are we really meant to pretend that “Road of the Righteous” and “Caps and Bottles” don’t exist?
I mean, come on.
And frankly, having seen both Flogging Molly and Dropkick Murphys in the past year, there really is very little difference at all between the two anymore, and that difference seems to get smaller all the time.
This is good and all, but I wanna hear “Skinhead on the MBTA”, man. Also, this is not my footage. I’m still inside the tent.
Anyway, the whole time DKM was playing, I kept thinking about Three 6 Mafia, but I didn’t go watch Three 6 Mafia because I was too tired, and that’s a lame ending to that story, but sometimes stories have lame endings.
They eat so many shrimp he got IODINE poisinin, y’all!
Chevelle played Main Stage 2 next, and we remained in the tent, and they sounded great, and that’s that. I hope you weren’t expecting more.
This is my favorite Chevelle song, and I couldn’t find any versions from Louder Than Life that I was happy with, so you get the official video instead. It’s much like suffocating, you know.
L.S. Dunes played over on the Decibel Stage at pretty much the same time, and I wanted to watch them, but there was still the whole non-stop rain thing, plus the Soundboard Experience that I mentioned earlier was pretty much nigh at this point, so we didn’t wanna venture too far from our base.
Speaking of the Soundboard Experience: we arrived outside the Top Shelf gates at approximately 6:48 PM, in anticipation of meeting our DWP rep at 6:50 for our Till Lindemann Soundboard Experience (In Memory of/In Conjunction with Susan). We stood aimlessly for a couple of minutes until eventually, there appeared a couple of people in DWP gear. I approached them and asked if they were our Soundboard Experience liaisons, and it turned out they were not at all; they were just a couple of schmoes who did not work for DWP, but were sporting DWP gear for whatever reason. A wrong place, wrong time kinda situation.
A minute or so later, another couple started hanging around near us, and I asked if they were there for the Soundboard Experience. They were, and we stood, couple-to-couple, not talking amongst ourselves, for another couple of minutes, until our for-real designated DWP rep showed up, almost 10 minutes late.
I’m just gonna add this: I’ve never worked in the entertainment business in any real capacity, but I’ve been in the service industry for over 30 years now, and no matter how mad I might wanna be about their tardiness, I can only imagine the kind of delays and hold-ups they must’ve experienced trying make time across those wet-ass festival grounds to meet us. She was a pro.
Our liaison led us around the front of the GA area on the Top Shelf side, along the same route that crowd surfers are ushered back out, and eventually we broke off in a different direction, toward the middle of the GA crowd, between Main Stage 1 and Main Stage 2, until we came to a stop directly in front of the sound mixing tent at precisely the same time that Till Lindemann himself took the stage. It was pretty wild.
Once again, this is not my footage. It was recorded pretty close to where we were standing, though.
It got wilder. The videos on the screen in back of the stage ranged from super close-up footage of vaginal lips flapping in a breeze to super close-up footage of pills shooting out of buttholes to footage of Till himself getting his mouth sewn shut, and it was so fuckin weird and perfect and German, and so many people didn’t even almost start to appreciate it, and all I could think about – other than the fact that Susan was both stoked and horrified for us – was how fuckin pumped I was that Falling In Reverse cancelled.
Suddenly, I remembered Body Count, and at pretty much the same time, Sheila had to pee. It was a total coincidence that this happened during the song “Golden Showers”. We were ushered back to the Top Shelf tent, and Sheila visited the terlit, and then we hauled ass over to the Revolver Stage to find Body Count halfway into “There Goes the Neighborhood”, and things only got better from there. Their set was a bit shorter than in 2022, on account of they weren’t headlining the second stage, but it was still goddamn amazing.
Also not my footage. We were way back and to the left of this.
We stayed in the vicinity for the beginning of Mastodon‘s set on the Decibel Stage. They kicked off with “Blood and Thunder”, the first song from their 2004 slobberknocker of an album, Leviathan, which they were performing in its entirety.
It’s a concept album about Moby Dick, which explains the Moby Dick footage at the beginning. Also, this is not my footage. We were standing in pretty much the same spot we were for Body Count.
They sounded great, but the rain was once again being a bit of a dick, plus we needed to sing Mötley Crüe songs in each other’s faces, so we started the long journey back toward the main stage area while Disturbed played on Main Stage 2. They’re good at what they do, but they’re not for us.
Mötley Crüe performed as expected. Vince was out of breath before “Primal Scream” was over, and then they played “Too Fast for Love”, and things only got worse for Vince from there, but then they played “Wild Side” and “Shout at the Devil”, and we had a great time singing in each other’s faces, and then I did a high kick during “Live Wire”, and suddenly the only thing I could think about was going back to the hotel. In an effort to maintain decorum, I won’t say why the hotel suddenly became so crucial to me, but I will say that I am a 47-year-old man who’d been drinking whiskey and eating cheese and fried food in the rain all day, and my high kick made getting to a toilet quite an urgent matter indeed, and by this point in the day even the fancy-pants Top Shelf VIP bathrooms were so lousy with mud (and worse) that I simply could not bear the thought of letting my shorts touch my body again after dropping them on that floor.
What I’m saying to you is that I didn’t get to sing “Home Sweet Home” or “Same Ol’ Situation (S.O.S)” or “Kickstart My Heart” in Sheila’s face because I almost pooped my pants that night.
Vince really does sound so bad.Also, this is not my footage. Also, I suppose I could’ve saved some time by issuing a blanket “none of the footage included herein was recorded by me” type statement, but here we are.
We missed most of the Crüe’s best songs, but that’s alright, that’s okay, let’s turn the page. We were gonna live to rock another day, and what a day it would prove to be.
I hope you’ll check back soon to read more about it, because it was a real humdinger.
Note: this is Part Three of a multi-part series about Louder Than Life 2024. I’m not sure how many parts there’ll be, but it seems like it’ll be five at least. Here are the firsttwo. There are supplementalpartsalso.
The big story going into Day Two was the weather. Hurricane Helene was rampaging up through the southeast, causing untold devastation throughout North Carolina and elsewhere, and Louisville was expected to get some incredibly heavy sustained winds, with gusts up to 80 mph. Like every other outdoor music event I’m aware of, Louder Than Life is a “rain or shine” event, and we knew for certain that rain was going to impact us on Friday and Saturday (at the time, I was seeing chances as high as 80% on Sunday, as well). The wild card in this situation was the wind. I won’t pretend to understand anything about the logistics of putting on a multi-day music festival with an estimated 4-day attendance of almost 200,000 people, but I do have a basic understanding of how insanely powerful and damaging wind can be, and I know that there are some big, heavy things set up at an outdoor music festival – things like speakers, tents, screens, and stages, to name the obvious.
Here’s a picture I stole from wikipedia of Breaking Benjamin performing on the main stage in 2019. I certainly wouldn’t want any of that shit blowing onto my head.
The day started off with some sad but expected news: the opening of the gates was going to be delayed. The DWP team was monitoring the situation, and they would keep us all updated with new start times whenever the information became available. I was bummed, but also kinda relieved. This was the second morning in a row that I woke up feeling gloopy from overindulgence, and I took advantage of the delay by staying in bed a little longer, and by having a nice long soak in the tub, both of which made me feel like a new man.
The day continued on with no news (which, in this case, ended up not being good news), and we had lunch at the hotel and relaxed, hoping beyond hope that we’d get to rock ASAP. The day wasn’t quite as stacked for me as the others, at least in terms of quantity of bands, but the quality of the Friday lineup was really first-rate. It was, in fact, the one day about which Sheila was most excited. Here’s the Friday Clockwise Circle Pit-Approved Lineup, in order of start times:
Powerman 5000
Gel
High Vis
Sevendust
Clutch
Ho99o9
Anthrax
Fugitive
Till Lindemann
Juliette Lewis and the Licks
Lorna Shore
Tom Morello
Fuckin Slayer
Not a clunker in the bunch, and we even had to shave a couple off the final list due to overlap.
At approximately 3:45 PM, DWP announced that they were shooting for 6-7 PM start time, and that the city of Louisville had agreed to extend the noise curfew so that more bands could play. Shortly after this news broke, a schedule started to show up on the LTL fan group socials which was (allegedly) the schedule given to the load-in crew.
It was very exciting to have some potential information, even if it may not have been true. The headliner set times were a bit intimidating, and if they were accurate, Slayer, Tom Morello, Lorna Shore, Ho99o9, and Juliette Lewis & the Licks were all gonna be overlapping with each other, and Sevendust was just missing entirely.
Sometime after 6:00 PM, we boarded the shuttle along with maybe 5-10 other people, and off we went, to pick up the second wave of riders over at the Marriot. Several more people boarded the bus, then we sat and waited for the next shuttle to pull up behind us before departing, as is procedure. Shortly after that, we all heard over the driver’s radio that a Shelter In Place order had been enacted (I honestly don’t know whether it was by the city or by DWP, but either way, it was a good idea). We all sat on the bus and watched as tree branches fell onto the sidewalk and into the street. We saw several people eat shit on the slippery-ass sidewalk. We saw at least two umbrellas get turned inside out.
This is as close as we got to rockin out on Friday.
Fifteen minutes later, we heard over the radio that DWP was calling it: Day Two was officially cancelled. After watching the chaos outside (and seeing the potential schedule posted above), I can honestly say I wasn’t terribly disappointed. On the ride back to the hotel we decided to walk over to the casino and see if our middling luck might carry over into the slot machines. I was looking forward to trying my hand at Invaders from the Planet Moolah, which is my go-to machine when Lucky Larry Lobstermania is unavailable. Some jabronis (jabronies?) were parked at the Moolah machines, so I wandered around until something else caught my fancy. To make an unnecessarily long story shorter, I ended up winning 50 bucks playing Texas Tea, and Sheila brought in another 20-30.
We walked back to the hotel and went up to Al J’s Lounge, the bar in the conservatory/skywalk between the two towers, to spend our “hard-earned” money. As always, the bar hosted an interesting mix of patrons (there was a dental convention in the Galt House along with the usual dirtbags who were attending LTL). We struck up conversation with some pretty cool people, and then the requisite metal blowhard showed up and held court about what was great and what “fuckin suck(ed)”.
A few choice nuggets of wisdom from Mr. Blowhard (emphasis on the word “nugget”)(as in “turd”):
Metallica has fuckin sucked since 1983.
Ozzy (Osbourne) has fuckin sucked since the early 90s.
Judas Priest without KK (Downing) ain’t even Judas Priest no more.
He never even heard of fuckin Gojira until the fuckin Olympics.
Vince (Neil) is a fuckin fat fuck and needs to fuckin hang it up.
This last one is especially fun. I don’t body-shame, just as a general rule, but this guy kind of invited it on himself, so I will testify in court that if Vince Neil is a “fat fuck”, then Mr. Blowhard is an even fatter fuck.
Look at these fat fucks.
While we were chillin at the casino and, later, the hotel bar, a few pop-up shows happened with bands and artists who were slated to perform that night. Silly Goose apparently played in the parking lot for the people who had already arrived on the grounds, then played another free show later at Mag Bar, and Tom Morello and Grandson played a free show at Whirling Tiger. By the time we found out about the Tom Morello show, it was already packed beyond capacity. I guess we weren’t so ready to rock after all.
That’s pretty much all I got about Day Two. It’s less exciting than the other days, but they can’t all be RBI doubles. Tune in next time for my write-up of Day Three, which was much more eventful than Day Two, and much, much wetter than Day One. Thanks for reading!
Note: this is Part Two of a multi-part series about Louder Than Life 2024. I’m not sure how many parts there’ll be, but it seems like it’ll be three at least. There are supplementalpartsalso.
When I opened my eyes at 7:30 AM on September 26, 2024, the first thought in my head was “ooh, Louder Than Life starts tomorrow!” If you’ve already read Part Zero (which I do recommend, if only for context)(I know it’s a bit rambly, even for me, but I can’t afford an editor)(plus I don’t want one), you’ll recall that the previous night ended just a bit fuzzily. My next thought was “wait, it’s Thursday, you dingus – Louder Than Life starts today!” And I was right. I am a dingus, and it did start today. Looks like I’m still playing fast and loose with time. Apparently that’s gonna be my new thing.
The reason I opened my eyes at 7:30 AM on September 26, 2024 was because we had an 8:30 reservation at Wild Eggs. One of our LTL traditions is breakfast at the Wild Eggs on Floyd St, and if there’s one thing to remember from Letterkenney, it’s this: you don’t fuck with tradition. Our breakfast was very good, and the service ended up being very good after a somewhat rough start. I recommend Wild Eggs. The one in New Albany is also very good.
Here’s a picture from our walk to Wild Eggs.
“In walks Barbarella, set to stun!” – Clutch
The reason we had an 8:30 reservation at Wild Eggs is because we wanted to get to the festival grounds ASAP after the gates opened so we could see Soul Glo. We ended up running late getting to the shuttle, so we arrived at the entry gates as Soul Glo started playing “Gold Chain Punk (whogonbeatmyass?)”, which I’m pretty sure was their opener, and boy howdy, what a way to kick off a show!
Don’t take my word for it.
I’m bummed that I missed most of it, but the rest of the set was excellent. The energy on stage was high, and the crowd grew steadily while they played.
This is Soul Glo. They are a very good band.
We went over to the Top Shelf VIP section to get some drinks and snacks, and to go up onto the viewing platform to see what it was like before most of the tables were taken up. They added a Skybox this year – basically a second story with another bar – and the view from up there was pretty cool, but I don’t have any pictures from up there until Day Three. Here’s a panoramic photo I took from the main level on Day One.
I’m not sure how visible they are, but the Revolver and Decibel stages are way in the background almost dead center. The Loudmouth Stage is near the left.
Just to give you a bit of scale. The main stages are to the right, obvi.
I’m sorry I said “obvi”.
Anyway, we hung out up there while Finger Eleven played on Main Stage 2, which is the one on the right in those pictures. The main stages used to have proper names as well, but they didn’t do that this year for some reason. The band sounded fine. They were kinda boring to me, but they played both of the hits I remembered from whenever they were hits. Here’s one of them.
I was surprised to learn that this song is from 2003 (definitely assumed 2001), and also that this band is Canadian.
Next stop was the Decibel Stage way back there in that middle circle to post up for Touché Amore, who were my number one Absolutely Cannot Miss Once I’m Inside the Gates band of Day One. We’d actually planned on spending a lot of our time at the Decibel, Revolver, and Loudmouth stages over the course of the weekend, which is not uncommon for us; there’s always a ton of cool shit on the side stages. There are plenty of main stage bands we wanna check out, but the main stage is also where things like Staind happen, and man, what a disappointment that band is.
Anyway, we arrived right before Slothrust took the stage, and they were very good, though I don’t really remember much about them, on account of the fact that Touché Amoré were setting up just to the left of this picture, which is one of the two pictures I took during their set.
Here’s the other one. It’s Touché Amoré soundchecking. I forgot to mention earlier that I saw Jeremy, the vocalist (the guy in the hat and the white t-shirt), watching Soul Glo’s set from the side of the stage earlier, and I thought that was cool. They’re about to wrap up their current tour together. I’m bummed I couldn’t make it to any of the shows.
Rapture was soon to ensue, even if they didn’t play “Rapture”.
Touché Amoré was amazing. The crowd was disappointingly small, but we were into it, and they were playing at exactly the same time as The Warning, and that certainly pulled people away from from the Decibel Stage.
Talk about a motherfucking rollercoaster of emotions! By the end of their all-too-short 30-minute set, I was a hideous blubbering mess. Sheila gave me a tissue, and a security dude ran up and asked me if I was okay, and I nodded and snotted at him, and then Sheila said “he’s okay, he’s just emotionally overwhelmed right now”, and the security guy said “do you want a bottle of water?”, and I nodded and snotted at him, and he handed me a bottle of water, then Sheila said “thank you”, and I snotted at him and said something resembling “thank you”, then we headed back to Top Shelf to relieve our bladders and re-up our snacks and beverages.
It was time this whole time.
A quick aside here: every single interaction I’ve experienced with stage security at Louder Than Life has been positive. They do good and important work, and they do it well.
The next band on our agenda was Brutus, and I don’t remember anything about them, but I must’ve liked them, because in my journal I wrote “Brutus was cool”. Sheila just indicated that Brutus was amazing, and I believe her.
Actually, I just remembered why I don’t remember anything about Brutus: I was way over on the far end of the Reverb Stage so I could be on the rail for Militarie Gun.
Ian dedicated this song to “anyone who’s on drugs or trying to get off drugs”. I wish there’d been that many people watching them at Louder Than Life.
I’m glad I made that decision – Militarie Gun was SO MUCH FUN. They played an exceptionally tight 30-minute set, and the energy was high, and I’m all up in there dancin and singin along, and then they’re done, and I have to high-tail it across the back 40 to the Loudmouth Stage so I can get on the rail for KNEECAP (spoiler alert: I’m also glad I made that decision).
Here’s Militarie Gun soundchecking.
Dig that sweet Melvins shirt!
KNEECAP is a hip-hop trio from West Belfast, Northern Ireland, and they are fucking incredible. They’re one of the bands we learned about through The System, and I’m still bummed I had to miss Bob Vylan to see them, but if their set time hadn’t been changed that morning, I would’ve likely missed at least one song from Militarie Gun (and not gotten my spot on the rail).
While I was booking across the grounds, I spied a dude walking in my direction carrying a “FREE HUGS” sign. At about 10 paces I pointed at him, and he nodded, and we walked up to each other and had a fucking awesome hug. It was the perfect way to bridge the gap between bouncy non-political punk rock songs about the human condition and bouncy political hip-hop songs about the human condition.
KNEECAP blew my goddamn mind. Just a phenomenal performance, and I’m so glad I got to see them. If you like hip-hop at all, I recommend looking into them. Even if you don’t like hip-hop, their story is pretty fascinating, and they also give extremely entertaining interviews. Below is the only footage I could find of them from LTL2K24.
I was on the other end of the stage when this happened.
Here’s the song they were playing in the clip above, if you’re interested.
The clip below is called “Stupid questions Irish people are always asked, answered by KNEECAP”. It’s apparently age-restricted, but I cannot encourage you enough to click the “Watch on YouTube” link, which is also linked in this sentence. It’s a hoot.
Here’s a picture of one of the speakers just to the right of the stage. The cover vibrated off within seconds of KNEECAP’s set beginning. One of the security dudes tried to put back, but it just fell right off again.
“Bass! How low can you go?” – Public Enemy
This picture isn’t very exciting, but you can get a decent look at all three members, and it gives you a good idea how close I was.
l-r: Mo Chara, Móglaí Bap, DJ Próvaí, unknown security dude
For what it’s worth, Sheila says that Bob Vylan’s set was also amazing, and I believe her. Here’s a picture I took when DJ Próvaí came out into the crowd with a microphone at the beginning of “H.O.O.D.”. This picture happens to be the lead-in to the short clip above. I like the way the clouds look.
We didn’t get to see much of PUP, but what we saw was very enjoyable, and I’d like to see them again , but in a smaller venue. Also, side note: there were several bands in attendance this year who stylize their names in all caps (PUP, KNEECAP, HEALTH, etc.). Just something I noticed.
Next, we watched Marky Ramone’s Blitzkrieg plow through 22 Ramones songs and 1 Joey Ramone solo cover in 40 minutes on the Decibel Stage, and I am not exaggerating at all when I tell you it was one of the most fun experiences of my life. The band sounded great, and the crowd was awesome, and we were all havin a regular ol cretin hop.
Meanwhile, King Dingus of Dipshit Island (that’s me) failed to notice that onstage, with Marky Ramone, were none other than the legendary Tommy Victor (Prong) on guitar, and the legendary Craig Setari (Sick of It All) on bass. To be fair, I did have my glasses safely tucked away in a case in the pocket of my cargo shorts, which made seeing anything more than 30 feet ahead of me with any real clarity something of a challenge.
We were a to the left of this angle, and the crowd we were in was much more fun this this buncha duds.
After their set, we started back toward Top Shelf so we could refuel for the walk back to the Revolver Stage for Sum 41, who were allegedly playing their last US festival date ever. We’re not necessarily fans of Sum 41 per se, but we were interested in checking them out, and the fact that they overlapped with Five Finger Death Punch, who are not for us, made it a no-brainer.
As we began the walk, I noticed Sheila was chatting with a couple of dudes who looked kinda like me without a beard (but not so horrific). I slowed my roll so they could catch up, and she went on to tell me that they were from Germany, and introductions were given all around, and they were fuckin awesome dudes. They were gonna buy drinks and head back over to watch Sum 41 also, so we told them we could bring them bourbon from Top Shelf if they wanted to walk over there with us and wait outside. We walked together and laughed together, and then we left them outside Top Shelf, and when we came back out, we couldn’t find them. It was too dark, and the crowd packing in for 5FDP made our search futile. I wish we’d been able to hang with them a little more, but such is the nature of festival attendance. If either of those dudes happen to read this: know that you are awesome.
On our walk to and from Top Shelf, The Offspring were playing on the Main Stage 1, and I was frankly surprised that they sounded so good. I like some of their songs (and Smash is absolutely a staple of my life), but they more or less lost me at “Pretty Fly (for a White Guy)”, and I never really bothered with them again after that, even though that song is pretty much just “Come Out and Play (Keep ‘Em Separated)”, Part 2.
I will begrudgingly admit that I enjoyed myself when they played “Pretty Fly (for a White Guy)”. Life is full of contradictions, and I’m not made of stone.
Sum 41 was blast, by the way. I don’t know that many of their songs, but it almost didn’t matter. I sang and danced and headbanged and air-guitared and smiled, and I’m glad I did it (that seems to be a recurring theme so far this weekend).
I know this song is goofy as shit, but I also know it’s fun as fuck. All hail your simile master.
After their set we headed back to Top Shelf to sit and rest. We heard the last two-and-a-half songs from 5FDP as we walked, and we ordered drinks and found a table and took a load off. Slipknot was the only thing left. This was the third time I’d been at an event where they played, and the first time I was gonna actually see them play. I am by no means what you would call a Slipknot fan, but I generally like the way the sound. I used to own their second album, Iowa, and I liked it well enough. I think I got rid of it in the Big Downsize of 2003, before I moved to Austin, TX, but that’s not important (like the rest of this is).
I also really like “Wait and Bleed” from their eponymous first album, plus I just always assumed that the odds are pretty good that a band consisting of somewhere between seven and fifteen members (I think there are nine) who all dress in terrifying slasher-film-inspired costumes will put on an entertaining show.
I was right. I watched most of their set on the CCTV feed from inside the Top Shelf tent, but I’m okay with that, because I’m 47 years old, and I was tired, and we still had three more days to go. Plus the beginnings of the rain that would make Saturday such a wild ride had started to fall. I did get a second wind (probably more of a sixth or seventh wind, really) when they started to play “Wait and Bleed”, and I jumped the fuck up (ha!) and ran out of the tent and into the crowd, where I danced and raged with strangers in the rain.
This video cuts off before the song is finished, but it’s the best looking and sounding clip I could find on YouTube.
We left shortly after “Wait and Bleed” finished, partially on account of the age and tiredness and the having three more days to go, but also because of the fact that the band, who were touring on the 25th anniversary of their first album, weren’t playing any songs written after 1999. This meant that I’d definitely already heard the only familiar song I was gonna hear for the rest of the night.
The shuttle ride back was apparently uneventful, which I feel like is what you want out of a shuttle ride. Day One was officially in the books, and it was also one for the books.
Thanks for reading, and look out for Day Two, coming soon to an unimportant blog near you.
Clockwise Circle Pit 