MILWAUKEE METALFEST 2023

The last time I attended Milwaukee Metalfest, it was 2004, almost 20 years ago, and the once great festival was a pale shadow of itself. That year it was held at the  crumbling Modjeska Theater, which was such a rattletrap that we had to evacuate during MORTAL DECAY’s set due to a fire scare. Promoter Jack Koshick had just about killed the goose that laid the golden egg with crummy pay to play bands and announcing headliners who had no intention of showing up. In the late 80’s and 90’s, Milwaukee Metalfest was a great event...the Maryland Deathfest of its day….but in 2004, it was on its deathbed. I heard that the attempt at a show in 2005 was even more embarrassing but I had the good sense to avoid that one.

So the event went away and was replaced by a multitude of other metal gatherings of various stripe. I always kind of hoped that somehow it would come back, but only if it could achieve the level it had during its heyday. That brings us to the world of 2023, a science fiction dystopia of climate change, technological tyranny and post-pandemic insanity. Enter Mr. Jamey Jasta of HATEBREED fame, who bought the “Milwuakee Metalfest” name and concept in its entirety from Mr. Koshick, who I’m sure drained the very last cent out of the deal. Jamey was determined to revive the Fest and the whole metal world including The Good Doctor was curious to see what he would come up with.

I had always heard legendary tales about how great the earliest versions of MMF were. I started going in the mid-90’s, when the event was held downtown at The Rave/Eagles Club so I missed those early shows, I can say my first experience at MMF was a life-changer. It opened my eyes to a whole new world of underground metal fandom. It was the first time I saw OBITUARY, NAPALM DEATH, HYPOCRISY, MACABRE. I threw myself into the pit like a madman when VENOM...with the ORIGINAL 3 members!...headlined the final night. It took a week to get over it. It was glorious.

The first word of the revived festival started around January 2023, with the announcement of the dates. And then the band names started to trickle in. Frankly, I was rather disappointed that more European bands were not announced. The lineup was overwhelmingly American, although the likes of RAVEN, THE HALO EFFECT and ANGELUS APATRIADA made appearances. And it also swung more to the mainstream than past editions, with LAMB OF GOD, BIOHAZARD and MACHINE HEAD getting headline slots. That only troubled me a little bit, because Jasta realized he needed name bands to draw in more casual fans. And there were plenty of oldschool underground bands on the fest...tough to argue with DARK ANGEL, JUNGLE ROT, MORTA SKULD, MACABRE being on the bill. As well as newer bands that hewed to more traditional death metal, such as FROZEN SOUL and BLOOD INCANTATION.

The lineup was on the whole pretty good, but the real gut punch was the cost of attending. $122 bucks a day? $35 a day for parking? Plus the usual assault of $10 watered down beers and god knows how much for mixed drinks and even $4 for a can of pop? The spirit of OZZFEST lives on! No stone was unturned to squeeze money out of patrons already suffering from high inflation. Now it takes a ton of money to put something like this together, so it’s expected, but you also want to draw the maximum amount of people you can. And with these prices, that didn’t happen. The fest was well attended, but not the complete madhouse I remember from the 90’s. A lot of friends didn’t make it because they were just priced out. Not a lot of youngsters there, because what high school kid can fork over hundreds of dollars for a gig? And metal in America needs kids in the most desperate way.

I could forgive much of the money grubbing but one egregious example sticks in my craw and that’s when they offered the chance to introduce a band...for $200! If they really had the spirit of metal fellowship, they should have just done a random draw of names and had someone do it for free. They made money in tons of other ways without this shameful grab.

You might be forgiven for thinking I’m ripping on the Fest, but I’m not. I just brought to light some of the obvious issues with it. Actually, it was a positive experience for me and for the most part, it was a well run fest with some great performances. But I’m not in the habit of tossing only softballs. There’s some things they need to work on...and that’s expected, with Jasta and Company doing this for the first time. Taking that into consideration, the actual logistics of it worked out pretty well.

I also need to be upfront and let you know I just attended the Friday and Saturday editions of the fest. For a number of reasons...finances being just one...I opted to pass on Sunday, the final day. I considered that day to have the weakest lineup (although there were definitely bands I wanted to see that day). So I can just pass judgement on the two days I attended, although the pics and word I got through the grapevine said Sunday worked out to be a successful day.

So let’s get into the meat of Milwaukee Metalfest itself...the bands! I’m going to kind of cover things in a rapid fire stream of consciousness style because that’s the way I approached the festival. No human being could have seen every band, it just wasn’t possible. So I ran willy nilly through the Rave complex trying to see as much as I could. Rarely did I see an entire set from a band, as I bounced like an obese human pinball between stages. A lot of time was spent on the Ground Floor, where the medium sized Indiemerch and smaller Martyrstore stages were. The major bands played upstairs in the huge Eagles Ballroom, a trek I made sparingly over the weekend. I was quite happy with the bands on the two smaller stages and I also spent some time in the basement, where the vendors were, and the outside, where a collection of foodtrucks and tents were.

One thing I have to say and that was the weather was absolutely perfect on the days I went. Clear, dry and comfortably warm during the day, nice and cool at night. Hell, I would even say Friday night was downright cold when I left. But that was a relief to somebody that spent 10 hours gallivanting between stages all day.

FRIDAY MAY 26

I got into the complex about 2:00 PM on Friday and had about 45 minutes to check out where everything was before the bands started playing...that was a smart move on the part of the promoters. Things kicked off on the small Martyrstore stage in the Rave Bar with AGE OF THE FALLEN. This was a stage typical of your local music venue. Just caught a couple of songs from this young band, who seemed to play a strange combo of Viking metal and deathcore, before I headed to the Indiemerch stage to check out Wisconsin’s own SQUIDHAMMER. This is a good spot to say that Milwaukee Metalfest had a ton of local Wisconsin bands playing all weekend long, which is something they should be praised for. All of the locals I saw did great and SQUIDHAMMER was no exception. I saw them play at one of Randy Kastner’s “Blades of Steel” fests and knew they were the real deal. Lead singer Erica has a ferocious roar and was one of several women warriors playing throughout the weekend. The crowd was already surprisingly large and loud and they really dug the SQUID’s mixture of slamming death metal and chewy PANTERA-ish groove.

Another promising Wisconsin band was next up for me, Sheboygan’s very excellent TOXIC RUIN. This is a band to keep an eye on for sure. They have the look of a professional band and they play a mix of technical death metal and raging thrash that set the crowd in the Rave Bar on fire. Their lead vocalist Stephen in particular has charisma to spare and he actually sat in on SQUIDHAMMER’s set just a few minutes before. Should be something new from these guys soon...

Next up on the same stage was Chicago’s grizzled veterans DISINTER. These dudes have been around forever and played the fest more than once back in the day. They played the kind of rough, bare-knuckled death metal that seems peculiar to Chicago, the same as they’ve been playing for more than 20 years. I enjoyed their set, but I can also see why they haven’t busted through to wider acceptance, as they deliver no more than expected. I slipped over to the bigger stage next door to check out East Coast doom squad KHEMMIS for the first time. These guys stood out at the fest as they pretty much seemed to be the only doom-oriented band on the bill. Although it has to be said, they can kick things into a higher death metal gear when the moment calls for it. They mix CANDLEMASS/SOLITUDE AETURNUS style grooves with occasional bursts of gnarlier metal and they got a good response from the crowd.

I made my first trek of the weekend upstairs to the much huger Eagles Ballroom to see WARBRINGER lay down the thrash. I remember seeing these guys in the first year of their existence and being blown away by their crazed youthful energy, especially from vocalist John Kevill. Now years later they are seasoned veterans of the metal wars. They don’t quite have the insanity of their youth, but who does? They got the first real pits of the weekend going with thrash bombs like “Living Weapon” and “Hunter Seeker”. It’s not an insult to say it, but I think WARBRINGER is the kind of band that you need to get things started at a show like this, but they are never going to be on the level of headliners.

I saw just a touch of Chicago’s MISFIRE when I returned downstairs...enough to see they brought their own kind of grooving thrash mayhem to the fest. Didn’t see enough to give a real detailed analysis, but they look to me like they would be great on a bill with WARBRINGER.

Next up at the Martyrstore stage was one of my favorite sets of the weekend, Minnesota’s monster punk metal mutants IMPALER! I’ve always got a soft spot in my black and rotten heart for bands playing tribute to classic horror and these guys have been doing it for 40 years or maybe more! I’ve seen them several times, but this crowd was packed and wild, almost like for a scaled down GWAR show. Full of dimestore gore and ghoulish goings on, IMPALER plays a very catchy style of metal that owes a lot to punk and classic rock and is easy to get into. Frontman Bill Lindsay has been spilling blood for a long time and I managed to get my forehead doused in crimson and an IMPALER guitar pick stuck to my head! Good times! It also didn’t hurt that a chick up front was giving the Doctor a serious hug. Wish I would have had a hotel room, I would have taken her there. Maybe just as well...for her, heheheh. A great fun set from IMPALER!

I’ve seen MIDNIGHT enough times to where their impact has kind of worn off for me. The black hooded horrors played their usual fast and furious set full of sleazy blackened thrash with touches of rock n roll. The usual suspects were played...”All Hail Hell”, “You Can’t Stop Steel”,  “Lust Filth and Sleaze”. These cats never fail to stir the cauldron live, but I’ve seen ‘em enough.

A quick dash upstairs brought me in proximity to GOATWHORE, one of the hardest working bands around. Guitarist Sammy Duet was none too happy with his complete lack of monitors, telling the soundman “I fucking hate you” with no levity or irony involved. Cold! The band slammed into their standards with fire nonetheless, but I found the response of the crowd strangely subdued. Perhaps it was the sunlight brightly streaming into the Ballroom, which should have been cloaked in gloom and moonlight for such a sinister band. One thing I did notice over the course of the weekend was that GOATWHORE sold a ton of diabolical merch. In fact, I saw way more shirts for the furry prostitutes than I did for headliners ANTHRAX, BIOHAZARD and LAMB OF GOD. So there’s that…

Back downstairs to the Indiemerch stage, where VIO-LENCE was laying down the thrash. I must confess I have never been the hugest fan of this act and the set didn’t really change my mind.  Chrome-domed Sean Killian has a monotonous delivery vocally and his stage presence, while not really bad, is kind of odd. The speed and energy of thrash was there for VIO-LENCE but they don’t have the same quality of riffs as the likes of SLAYER, ANTHRAX, OVERKILL, etc. But gotta admit, they did have a pretty good pit going.

Got to see a bit of one-man goregrind army PUTRID PILE, Shaun LaCanne, who happened to be playing on his birthday. This guy has been pounding out pig-squealing grind since the advent of dirt and if you’ve seen him once, you’ve seen him a million times. The amount of weird noises emanating from this fellow defies description.

I passed on running back upstairs for CORROSION OF CONFORMITY...had to perform this kind of triage all weekend, as it was just plain impossible to see everything. I stayed downstairs for morose sludge-lords CROWBAR and these guys delivered one of the purely heaviest sets of the weekend, which is saying something. I always found the band a bit tedious on record, but live, their massive, slow riffs came alive. This was music you could feel rattling your ribcage and vibrating your internal organs. Tracks like “All I Had, I Gave” and “Fixation” just flattened everything in sight and when the pace picked up, the effect was devastating. Kirk Windstein’s pained vocals matched the music perfectly and I was more than satisfied with CROWBAR’s set.

Then it was back to the small Martyrstore stage in the bar for what was undoubtedly the strangest...and one of the most memorable...gigs of the weekend, death-jazz weirdoes IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT. Hard to find the words for these guys...a mix of free jazz, math rock and brutal death metal covers only the basics. Clad in robes and wearing odd Aztec-like masks, they bounced across the small stage like high priests ready to cut somebody’s heart out on the altar. The sound is ultra-weird and not heavy in the traditional death metal sense, yet incredibly powerful. The bass and drum work was crazy intense and the vocalist used a kind of pained inhaled groan that came across like the incantations of a subhuman. Stretches of weird minor key twang alternated with massive blasts of sound and it basically could be said IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT played just one long, wild jam. They were also one of the foggiest bands of the fest, which added to their aura. The packed room was fascinated by them and gave them a rousing ovation. This was the sort of quirky stuff that nicely broke up the more predictable acts of the weekend...check them out live for a unique experience.

DYING FETUS was slamming into more traditional death metal upstairs in the Eagles Ballroom and as the evening wore on, the crowds were starting to increase. For a band as aggressively non-commercial as these guys, they drew quite a crowd and inspired a violent pit with the first crowd surfers of the weekend. Guttural brutality is what you get from these dudes, nothing more and nothing less. I picked up a pretty gnarly black and white T featuring them…

The two man outfit GOST was a strange proposition for the metalfest, but much like IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT, they added a welcome touch of oddness. They consisted of a very SKINNY PUPPY looking guy wildly playing synths and samples while a long haired leather clad dude cranked out really thick and simple riffs to go with the hard electronic beats. No bass or drums here...the riffs were very heavy but almost hypnotically stupid while the electronics added their own kind of energy. It wasn’t wholly instrumental, as the keyboardist would occasionally croon or yelp, but vocals were a very insignificant part of what they did. I actually liked the sound, but as the set wore on, it started to get a little dull.

The biggest disappointment of the weekend for me was NAPALM DEATH...because I never got to see them! And I really wanted to. They were playing the medium sized Indiemerch stage...or so we were told. The crowd kept waiting….and waiting...and waiting as the crew fiddled endlessly with gear and amps. The precise timing of this stage was now knocked completely off course. The restlessness of the crowd was palpable and finally I threw in the towel on NAPALM DEATH. I didn’t want to miss DARK ANGEL’s set in the Eagles Ballroom as I have never seen them before. I found out through the grapevine that NAPALM eventually hit the stage, but I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who bailed on them. That was a real let-down

I hauled my weary bones up the stairs to check out DARK ANGEL, for sure one of the greatest bands of the first age of thrash. Their record “Darkness Descends” should be mentioned in the same breath as “Reign In Blood” and “Pleasure To Kill”. This show took place under a cloud, as their founding guitarist Jim Durkin had passed away only a few weeks prior. You can be sure that gave the band extra energy when they hit the stage. Most members were from the band’s glory days, including superhuman drummer Gene Hoglan and vocalist Ron Rineheart. Incidentally, Hoglan’s wife Laura was the replacement for Durkin in the lineup. 

DARK ANGEL crammed in as much as they could into their short set, hitting on classic “Darkness Descends” tunes like “The Burning of Sodom” and “Perish In Flames” as well as tunes from the massive “Leave Scars” album like “No One Answers” and the title track. They also played the title track from “Time Does Not Heal”. I was hoping they’d play my all time favorite D.A. track “Black Prophecies” but no such luck.I didn’t think the sound was as clear as it could have been, but it was clear enough. Hoglan was amazing and Rinehart hit all the right notes. I’d love to see a fuller set from this classic band, whom I can now cross off my bucket list.

I had no interest in seeing Friday’s headliners BIOHAZARD with their rap-infused tough guy hardcore so I hauled myself downstairs and out ot the parking lot for the long drive home. Tomorrow would be an even longer day. On the way out, I stopped by REVENGE playing the Indiemerch stage. These Canadian war metal maniacs were arguably the most extreme band of the entire fest, bubbling up from the deepest catacombs. They were fast beyond words, with an extremely trebly guitar sound that frankly hurt my ears. Heard three songs from these guys and true to what I expected, they all sounded like the same track. Time to get on home and try to grab some sleep…

Got to see just a bit of veteran deathsters MISERY INDEX upstairs, but soon found myself waiting for the legendary MACABRE to appear on the Indiemerch stage. Back at my very first Milwaukee Metalfest, I can remember stepping into a room where they were playing and being flabbergasted by the bodies flying around the room and the constant stream of crowd surfers. More than 20 years later, here they were again, but unfortunately their set was shortened due to technical problems on the stage. Thank God it wasn’t as bad as NAPALM DEATH’s the night before.

Mr. Corporate Death was looking more grizzled and crazed in his middle years than ever. I even think MACABRE’s set was pretty close to what I saw back in the day...”Zodiac”, “Nightstalker” and Albert Fish all put in appearances on stage and I swear Corporate Death’s speech about “Little Billy Gaffney’s butt getting served with bacon strips and gravy by Albert Fish” was almost word for word the same. One cool new song that got played was the super-catchy and happy “Wheels of the Bug” about Ted Bundy...this one’s an all time classic. The set wasn’t as crazy as it was years ago, but MACABRE is so unique...and their drummer Dennis The Menace is so phenomenal...that they can’t be missed. MRSA should open up for them so they can pool all the killers together.

Saw Madison’s VERMILLION pumping out catchy death metal back at the bar...greetings to Kurt Manthe! Didn’t see the whole set, but then I hope to see these guys at the Blades of Steel fest later this year. They were yet another Wisconsin band that made good during the fest.

BLOOD INCANTATION certainly did not disappoint with their set back on the Indiemerch stage. They were wise enough to pass on the ambient synth stuff they did on their last album and concentrate on technical, brutal death metal. They were neck and neck with PHOBOPHILIC as masters of this style, with tricky songs that changed riff and tempo in nanoseconds and plenty of intense soloing. One thing that Jasta’s MMF really brought home is that there is a whole new generation of extreme metal bands picking up the torch from the old masters...BLOOD INCANTATION was definitely one of them and up next were perhaps the most rapidly rising of them all.

FROZEN SOUL, along with SANGUISUGABOGG, seems to be making the most noise in the death metal world and their tank-like BOLT THROWER worship is finding a ton of fans. I much prefer them to SANGUISUGABOGG and UNDEATH and the fact that they drew a packed and pit-crazy crowd to the Indiemerch stage is a sign of their popularity. I think they next time they play this place, they’ll be upstairs in the ballroom. Their catchy, super heavy chug with occasional bursts of speed was tailor made to wreck the place and they had the craziest moshpits so far when bruisers like “Arsenal of War” and “Morbid Effigy” burst from the speakers. They are far from the most original band around and Chad Green’s constant overuse of the word “motherfucker” was tiring, but there is something about FROZEN SOUL live that just connects with the audience. A band to lead the next generation of death metal…

We went from the fury of FROZEN SOUL to the hopeless trash of SWOLLEN TEETH back at the Martyrstore stage. This was the first band of the fest that really sucked and the only one that chased people out of the room instead of drawing them in. A bunch of kids in “scary” masks and prison jumpsuits….like we need another one of those. This was an awful mix of SLIPKNOT style noise, screeching noisy dubstep and super-dumb breakdowns, with a lead vocalist that sounded like about 13 years old. The crowds were pretty forgiving this weekend, but I saw a lot of people shaking their heads and heading outside when exposed to this...including me. Well, you can’t win ‘em all…

As much as I wanted to see as many bands as possible, I also had to eat if I wanted to stay vertical. One welcome addition to the fest was a big outside area with a lot of food trucks and a ton of chairs under a tent. Although the Rave Bar charged outrageous prices for any sort of liquid, the food trucks were actually not any more expensive than they would be otherwise. I had some darn good tacos at one truck and a hot dog and chips at another. It was also pretty pleasant outside all weekend and the fresh air was welcome after hours in the club.

Fortified with sustenance, I headed back in for the final push and got absolutely plowed under by Wisconsin’s legendary death metal overlords JUNGLE ROT. I didn’t see a better set all weekend than the one these rugged veterans put forth. This was absolute mayhem on a level even above FROZEN SOUL, with perfect tunes that combined thrash and chug in equal measure. The crowd was packed and off the hook, with a virtual conveyor belt of crowd surfers keeping the security busy. I know these dudes will probably never get to a level much past where they are now but I sure wish they could get the respect that the likes of OBITUARY and CANNIBAL CORPSE do. They deserve it!

Over at the bar, another Wisconsin band, MICAWBER, was unleashing their own form of tech-death insanity. Just caught a couple of songs from this long-running band, strangely named after a character from Dickens’ “David Copperfield”, but they were putting everything they had into their busy tunes. It was gratifying to see two local bands playing at mostly the same time and both drawing well.

I was going to stay downstairs until SUICIDAL TENDENCIES and ANTHRAX closed the night up in the Ballroom. Next up at Indiemerch was another grizzled bunch of grisly gut-munchers, IMMOLATION. I saw them just a few months earlier open for CANNIBAL CORPSE at the Apollo in Belvidere...the timing was starting to get a little bit off at this stage again and I think they might have cut a song or two from their set. This band can always be relied on for dark, sophisticated death metal with a bit more class than much of their brethren. As always, singer Ross Dolan is one of the absolute best growlers out there and I was especially impressed with the drumming of Steve Shalaty.  The crowd was not as intense as they were for JUNGLE ROT...I think the moshers were getting exhausted by the endless procession of bands.

Next up for me was a definite bucket list band...RAVEN! One of the few European bands to make the fest, these guys were there at the very birth of underground metal and were one of the first bands to make speed a priority. Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead...the Gallagher brothers ran around like madmen the whole set and put many of the younger bands to shame with their crazed antics. They had six songs to get their message across and played a laundry list of RAVEN classics like “Hell Patrol”, “Faster Than the Speed of Light” and “Rock Till You Drop”.  John Gallagher, wearing a wireless mike, cut loose with a piercing scream that would have given Ripper Owens a run for his money. The band’s new drummer, Mike Heller, looked like he could have been the grandson of the other guys and did a great job keeping up with the brothers. This was a fun set of NWOBHM gone berserk that put a smile on the face of everybody in the room.

Speaking of RIPPER, he was up next at the Martyrstore stage. Wow, I can’t believe they put him in the bar! That room was packed to the point of discomfort to see one of metal’s great vocalists. Like RAVEN, he offered something a little different from the thrash, hardcore and death metal of many of the weekend’s other bands. Anybody there to hear one of Tim’s glass-breaking screams had to be satisfied. He played tunes from his various solo projects and managed to slip a couple of JUDAS PRIEST tunes in there...”Burn In Hell” and “One on One”, which both had anthemic power. I would have loved to hear “Bullet Train” and “Cathedral Spires”, but with a six song setlist, the band had to be brutal in picking what to play. For the fan of more traditional and melodic metal, this was probably the highlight of the day.

OBITUARY was back at the Indiemerch stage and you literally could not get one more person in this space. Why these guys weren’t booked to play the Knotfest stage is a mystery...that’s where they belonged. I’ve seen enough of these dudes to know exactly what they would start with...”Redneck Stomp” and “Sentence Day”. Well, that’s one of the best one-two punches in the metal biz and there’s no reason to quit now. The crowd was a writhing mass of humanity and the security earned their pay again with the flood of crowd surfers. I will be honest, I love the band, but I bailed out early on this one. I wanted to get upstairs for the final push of the weekend...SUICIDAL TENDENCIES and ANTHRAX.

Seeing SUICIDAL was a big deal for me. This would be the first time I’ve ever seen them live. I can’t say I’m the hugest fan of the band, but when they are good, they are very good. And when they are not...you can fill in the blanks. After what seemed an interminable build up, they kick started their set with “You Can’t Bring Me Down”. By now, the ballroom was just about full. They came out full blast, with a lot of jumping around with stage, duckwalking, headbanging and the whole nine yards. Mike Muir, who is certainly no spring chicken, had a ton of energy on stage, running around amidst the other members with vigor. He was a highly entertaining frontman with the exception of one big issue...the sucker just talks too much.

A lot of S.T.’s set was taken up with Muir’s long monologues about “fighting the power” and “being who you are”. Those sentiments are great, but they got pounded into the ground like a tent peg and the band was burning daylight when they could have crammed more classic songs into an already compressed set. Muir’s rambling reminded me a lot of some of Phil Anselmo’s babbling during PANTERA and DOWN shows. I wish the band could have played “Join the Army” and “How Can I Laugh Tomorrow?” but Mike just went on too much.

There was still a lot to like about SUICIDAL’s set. I was really glad they played the anti-evangelist anthem “Send Me Your Money’’...one of the best songs in their repertoire. And there was a real cool moment when Mike asked a dad and his two young kids to join them on the stage for “War Inside My Head”...those two ragamuffins ran around the stage like lunatics and even Dad got into it. That was a fun and touching moment.  SUICIDAL wrapped up their set with the anthemic “Pledge Your Allegiance”. Thank God they didn’t play “Institutionalized” because I’ve always hated that song.

By now I was as limp with exhaustion as a jellyfish but I had to hang in there for ANTHRAX. They have never disappointed me in a live situation and tonight’s set, short as it was in comparison with a “normal” gig, held true to that dictum, Now the attendance was at its peak and surprisingly, the band started with “The Number of the Beast” instead of a more familiar classic tune. They managed to squeeze in the all-time classics like “Among The Living” and “Caught In A Mosh” but I was glad to see old chestnuts like “Metal Thrashing Mad” and “Madhouse” tossed in there, too. Shockingly, there was no “Indians” or “I Am The Law”.  Joey’s voice sounded good and Ian stomped around like a gassed-up gnome. The pit was what you would expect for the masters of mosh.

And that wrapped up my experience at Milwaukee Metalfest 2023.  In younger days, I would have checked out Day 3 as well, but frankly, the lineup was not as solid as the first two days even though there were bands like the awesome HIGH COMMAND and Chicago’s death metal upstarts MOLDER that I would have loved to see. The headliners LAMB OF GOD and MACHINE HEAD were not real essential for me to see. I heard through the grapevine that everything went well and the ballroom was packed once more by the end. 

After such a long layoff, I think the comeback went pretty well. In my honest opinion, it didn’t have the insanity of the classic 90’s MMF gigs and the attendance took a while to build up for the nights I went. Again, I put that on the extremely expensive ticket costs. It winnowed out a lot of folks that might have otherwise been there. Especially the young kids, which the metal scene desperately needs. But it was great to walk those halls once more and mingle with the metal-minded. That’s what has always been the best about these things...the camaraderie, the shared love for the music. That’s why I hope that Mr. Jasta can keep this going...and maybe improve on what happened this year.