
Metal fests. They seem to be a dime a dozen these days. Maryland Deathfest, Dudefest, Chaos in Tejas, and the list goes on and on. It seems every time I turn around I read an announcement of another fest involving metal bands. Twenty-0ne year old me loves the idea. Thirty-eight year old me thinks it’s too much and the ‘market’ is being saturated with sub par fests which either don’t work out as planned, or only have a few good bands.
The Milwaukee Metalfest was always in the summer. They started having these fest in 1986 or so. It started small and was primarily death metal. It was an exciting time for metal and the fact that this was one of the only fests in the country at the time and was only 3 hours from me blew my mind. I was into metal (obviously), but the underground metal scene was completely new to me. This was my first Milwaukee Metalfest and would change my view of music forever.

My main reason for going was this would be Slayer’s first live performance in 3 years (if memory serves me correctly). Rumor was they were going to play a new song or two (to be released on Divine Intervention). I was more than ready for this show.
This fest was two days. The first day started at 5PM and ended well into the early morning. The next day started at 11AM and went all the way to about 1AM the next day. My friend and I drove up and secured a hotel room first. Then we made our way to the venue. There were booths set up everywhere, bands walking around giving away free cassettes, and it was just a cool vibe. I believe there was a free door prize too wherein you received fliers and free stuff from various labels. I think this was a year that sparked all the controversy around the promoter Jack Koschick. One of the freebies was a sampler for a white power label. I didn’t know it at the time and didn’t pay much attention. I think the label was Resistance Records but I could be mistaken. There were boards up with the bands and set times, but it rarely followed the timeline. The Eagles Ballroom has a huge ballroom upstairs and a smaller stage downstairs. The bands overlapped all day so you had to climb stairs to watch bands and then go back down and try to coordinate it with the bands you really wanted to see. A fucking nightmare to say the least.

I was blown away by the amount of cool people at the festival. It was a time before the Internet and there really wasn’t a ‘scene’ so to speak. Everyone was there for the same reason and we all got along.
Keep in mind this was about 18 years ago and my memory is a little blurry. I will post a list of bands below (taken from the program). Also, not all these bands played. Some didn’t make it (wonder if it was Josh’s tricks with saying a band would be there and they weren’t booked). Josh was known to charge bands $1,000 to play the fest (which usually amounted to 20 minutes of stage time). They were given tickets to sell in exchange to recoup the cost.

I was a HUGE Nuclear Assault fan. They didn’t play and I was bummed. However, Morbid Angel played and Biohazard were hanging out a day early. Rumor is they started shit with David Vincent (Morbid Angel who was playing next) because of some racist remark. There was a delay and then MA came out and killed it. I was not a big fan, but after that show, I was an instant fan. Trey put a fan in front of his speakers to create a unique sound, his solo was insane and it was mind-bending to say the least.
The moment that really threw me for a loop was Anal Cunt’s set earlier in the day.

I had never heard a note of Anal Cunt. I thought they had a cool name and thought I’d check them out. I heard someone mention Seth Putnam was at the keg drinking free beer the whole day (you can see their set time above). I didn’t know who he was but figured he was in Anal Cunt. They played on the smaller stage and things were somewhat quiet at the time. AC took the stage and they no bass player. What the fuck? A band with no bass? I got closer to check it out. What happened after that was about 25 minutes of noise and violence. I was floored. What the fuck was I witnessing? Unhappy with the crowd response, Seth grabbed a chair and threw it at the crowd. He then did a stage dive and tackled someone to the ground (all while yelling into the mic). They were done playing and left the stage. I know many folks don’t care for the funny titles of AC songs and the comments Seth has made over the years (he passed away in 2011), but they changed my life. My whole view of the underground hit me and I had to dig more. I went to every booth and grabbed anything free I could find (I still have most of what I grabbed that day including early issues of Pit Magazine, early Relapse stuff, etc.

I wasn’t a huge Motorhead fan and were exhausted so we headed back to the hotel. The next day I woke up and had all kinds of stuff to go through. I was like a kid in a candy store.
We headed back for the festivities of the day starting at 11AM. Fucking early. I don’t remember seeing Only Living Witness or Acid Bath (stupid me), Murphy’s Law was great as was Skrew. Internal Bleeding (slam pioneers) really got things moving on the smaller stage. Overkill were good. I think Cannibal Corpse canceled, and then there was Slayer.

The whole place was buzzing about Slayer playing. As we were waiting to go upstairs, Tom Araya walked right by me. We headed up stairs and waited for the show. If you’ve seen Slayer, you know what to expect and they did not disappoint that night. We heard two new songs and for me, this is where things got weird and it’s like a story out of horror movie.
Slayer wrote a song about Jeffrey Dahmer called “213″ named after his apartment number. Many of his killings were done in the 3 block radius from the Eagles Ballroom. In fact, one of killings was at a hotel across the street. So Tom did a little intro to the song about Dahmer. Creepy enough. The show was great and we headed home the next morning.
I was on vacation that week and when I got home, I took my girlfriend to St. Louis to hang out. Keep in mind this was a day after I saw Slayer. We get to a hotel outside St. Louis and checked in. It was a cheap place, but I had blown a lot of money the previous few days. We check in and get ready to leave the hotel room and when I shut the door, I just happened to take a long, hard look at the door. We had been given room 213. True story.