Since you already know whether or not you’ll be attending Central Illinois Metal Fest, you probably won’t be swayed by the special “Festival Rate” offered at the Comfort Suites on North Lincoln Avenue. This weekend only, the Comfort Suites offer Metal-Fest-Goers a special $85 nightly rate.
The fest’s myspace isn’t clear about how they’ll know to offer you the discount; the front desk might just infer it from your black tee shirt. However they know, you’ll still be entitled to eat a full hot breakfast, take a dip in the 24 hour swimming pool, unwind in the whirlpool, or read US Weekly while spinning in the fitness center. Spoiler alert: Ali ends up with Roberto!
It also won’t make a difference if I describe what each of the fest’s 28 bands sounds like and since myspace barely loads on my computer, I didn’t bother to listen to them. I could barely even read the flier listing the bands anyway: the fonts all look like Rorschach blots and don’t even get me started on the kerning.
Luckily the part of the fest’s myspace page that would load listed the bands in what looks like Geneva, a nice plain sans serif font that notably doesn’t look like a cross between insects and intestines. It makes the web much more accessible than Metal-Wing-Dings.
I’m more of a verbal than a visual thinker anyway, so I preferred doing free association with the names instead of the images. So just in case you weren’t planning to go to the fest but are worried that maybe your favorite band will be playing and you might miss it, here’s the list along and some capsule “reviews”:
WHORRID — I bet they are.
COATHANGER ABORTION — I like that they think of music as a means of doing consciousness-raising about reproductive rights.
EMBRACE DAMNATION — One of the greatest bands ever to include an understood you in their name.
SAPROGENIC — I had to look this up and it turns out that it’s an adjective describing something that either causes decay or results from decay. Ambiguous.
CARDIAC ARREST — They just missed their chance for a write up in HeartattaCk.
CARNAL DECAY — One of the many kinds of decay.
LIVIDITY — Visible blood inside the body.
BLOODSOAKED — Visible blood outside the body.
LECHEROUS NOCTURNE — Claude Debussy cover band.
SEPTYCAL GORGE — A gorge that encourages putrefaction. To the 7th degree.
INHERIT DISEASE — Another understood you.
MISERY INDEX — They probably took their name from that one Assuck record but perhaps their songs actually are about inflation and unemployment?
ORIGIN — They’re from Kansas.
INCANTATION — An inspired name.
INHUMAN DISSILIENCY — Something inhuman that bursts out?
VISCERAL THRONE — Now on sale at Pier One Imports.
THE HORDE — Fans of Freud, they take their name from “the original primitive grouping of humanity headed by a father-authority who forbade incestuous actings-out among younger men, who, to gain their sexual freedom, eventually overpowered and eating him and thereby discovered the powers and benefits of community.” Or from World of Warcraft.
GRAVES OF VALOR — Arlington National Cemetery.
HUMAN FILLETED — Some survivors of the Essex probably did prefer boneless meat.
ROTTENNESS — Fourth “decay” themed band. Fun fact: they’re all in an Oswald Spengler reading group.
ATROCIOUS ABNORMALITY — Emphatically not rethinking disability.
SADICHIST — Another Freud themed band, who argue that Christ’s dictum to “love thy neighbor as thyself” is, like, totally sadistic.
PUTRID PILE — A decayed or decaying pile.
INFERNAL REVULSION — Unlike the other bands, they find death and decay distasteful.
PHOBIA — The one band here I really would like to see if I hadn’t made actually attending the fest impossible by writing 600+ words playfully mocking it.
REGURGITATION — Vomit.
DECEASED — Since “Death” was already taken.
MALEVOLENT CREATION — They’re from Florida, like me, so I won’t joke about them.
Well, there it is. See you there!
Central Illinois Metal Fest is at the Canopy Club this weekend. Go!