Friday the 13th Fest at Tempos - WHAT A NIGHT!!

Last night turned out to be more than I bargained for, which seems to always be the case when I get to see some of SA’s finest bands. I had been looking forward all week to seeing Aion Truth again, along with Chromium and iNeRsHa, my current three favourite SA bands (who incidentally all played at my birthday party earlier this year). Another favourite, Knave was also there and a fairly new band, Munkinpure.

My brother, Ferdi and I arrived early, and were met by Dylan from Aion Truth in his clown outfit. Since it was Friday the 13th, everyone was encouraged to dress up as their favourite character from a horror movie. I cowered behind Ferdi in fear, as clowns really do scare me. He actually reminded me a lot of the Slipknot clown so eventually I warmed up to him and even posed for a photo. I think the alcohol had a lot to do with it though. In the end, I didn’t really dress up since finding a decent scary female character was too much work for me. I kind of did a half job of dressing up as Amanda from Saw, and borrowed some of Dylan’s paints to paint Ferdi’s face and sort of make him look like Uncle Fester from the Addams Family.

The turn-out was great and I stood in front to greet the bands as they arrived. Blonde moment of the night went to my dearest sidekick, Berny, when she asked Cavan, the bassist from iNeRsHa if he was their new guitarist. I wanted to kick her, but I was laughing so much I couldn’t do much else. She said he looked different – didn’t look different to me, he just had a bit of make-up on. We were then introduced to the real new guitarist, Colin. When I was just recovering from Berny’s little whoops moment, another girl came over to Cavan and asked him if he was the new guitarist. Cavan, of course, was dumbstruck. I was almost on the floor. Shame, poor guy.

Munkinpure kicked off. Their audience was rather tiny as they are pretty much an unknown band, but not too bad I thought. Berny and I watched their whole set and moved to the beat of their catchy songs. They are not the usual hardcore bands that I prefer, but I really enjoyed watching this band. I hope to see more of them.

What can I say about Aion Truth that I haven’t already? This band just gets better and better with each performance and I can tell by the way the crowd goes wild. I just cannot wait till they release their first CD. I have a few demos of their songs, “Awakened” being my ultimate favourite, which Dylan dedicated to the Aion Truth Army once more. They ended with another favourite of mine, a new song called “Deliver Us”. My throat still hurts from all my crazy screaming.

Next was Knave but I had to take a break from the music as tequila was calling my name. But from what I could hear from the bar, the crowd was loving every minute of it. Rock on, guys! While I was downing tequilas I met up with Ms Sensual Sloth and EVOL drummer Charles from Torment. They have convinced me to come to next Saturday’s gig at Tempos, labelled “When Worlds Collide”. The band line-up looks really good, including the likes of iNeRsHa, Torment, Falling Short, Jo Day and LA Cobra, among others. I really must make it to this one.

After posing for several photos, and mucking about, I moved to my usual spot in front of the stage to watch Chromium. I have to admit, that this must be SA’s most kickass band of the moment. They always kick off with my personal favourite “Forgive Me” and go on with major mosh-pit producing songs like “Control”, “New Born Eyes” and “Set Me Free” their first single of their album, “Intro Spectre”. This time, for “Set Me Free” they were joined on stage by Louis from Knave who screamed out their chorus. Flippen amazing, I have never seen a crowd go as crazy as they did that night.

After they were done, I was practically finished, suffering from the odd blackout and realised that I had no more memory in my camera left to take pictures of the final band, iNeRsHa. So my phone camera had to do, though the quality was not as good, of course. This was the first time I had seen these boys since February, when they had Sean’s farewell gig and the first time that I had seen their new guitarist, Colin. I was quite impressed by his guitar skills, and it didn’t seem to make a difference to their sound at all. But then again, I am not a music instrument expert, so others might disagree with me. Fred, as usual, got the crowd going with his amazing vocals and stage presence. I hope to see them next Saturday again.

At the end of the evening, I was tipsy, I was happy, I wanted to steal little Dylan’s (drummer from Aion Truth) Viking head gear. I haven’t had this much fun in ages, and hope there will be more gigs like this one!