Okay, so we'll flash back to about 4 months earlier to start this story. After a particularly long day of work, I was at a bus stop when I got 2 texts about 2 minutes apart from friends Nikki and Andrew. Both of them told me that Kalmah was coming to Canada in March. Andrew said that he'd roadtrip it (he's done this before for a Moonsorrow show in Canada). Being 4 months away, I figured there would be plenty of time to plan a vacation around this. So I notified the usual suspects and waited.
Within that time Rotting Christ and Melechesh announced a tour together with Hate, Abagail Williams, and a few other bands. Of course, the day they come to the area is the exact dame day as the Kalmah show! After taking a vote, we decided 150+ miles to the trip could work and decided to head to the March 9th show in Springfield, VA. 2 shows, 622 miles apart. No problem!
Including Dave, who traveled all the way down from Indiana to travel with our little group, we had 9 people. Friends from Northern NJ and NYC, Cindy and Sean, were out for Rotting Christ, but decided to join us the day after.
The night before we gathered at my place for a pre-party. With Andrew in Philly for the first time since NYE 2008 (besides for shows), we just HAD to get a shot of us windmill headbanging to Keep of Kalessian's "Come Damnation" just like 2008. Early morning, we woke up to gab our GMC Yukon from the car rental place, then made our way back to pick everybody up. With the GPS in tow, we had directions straight to Jaxx in Virginia.
Moonsorrow's new album got us going towards Maryland's countryside, and then into Virginia. For some reason, the exit off I-95 leads to a place called Port Royal (Running Wild!!). Anyway, we got to Jaxx event free, except when Andrew ut the car into forward and we hit a parking median. At 5 MPH, here wasn't any damage to report.
The show was fairly empty, though the crowd picked up for Abagail Williams. Melechesh was absolutely amazing. Rotting Christ put on another ferocious show, though there were a few omissions from the set list that were a tad disappointing. Overall, though, an amazing show.
Another quick ride later, we were at a Denny's in somewhere, Virginia, freaking out the locals talking about a band called Rotting Christ and showing up with an army of 7 decked out in leather and metal shirts. Aside from that we were Hell-bent on getting to North Jersey by 7 AM, so we could be on the road to Canada early. We wound up getting there at 5, and tried to catch a nap as we were waiting for Sean to get to Cindy's house. Turns out the Lincoln Tunnel from New York isn't fun to travel through at 7 AM, delaying Sean, who was on the wrong bus. We had to wander around Lodi, NJ (home of the Misfits!) to find him at a gas station. We found him eventually, and it turns out we were on the right road anyway towards New York state as well as the New York Thruway.
To be continued...
