Heavy T.O. 2012: Day 2

NOTE: This is a long ass post.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

Yesterday was so friggin' awesome.

Sunday's show put Saturday's to shame. In fact, it even put last year's entire festival to shame. I got into the grounds at around noon, coming in at the end of Rose Funeral's set. I had never listened to Rose Funeral before, but everyone I know who has tells me they're god awful. After seeing them live, I can safely say, they are god awful. Breakdowns were the name of Rose Funeral's game, with breakdowns happening at least two or three times per song. Since most of the crowd were at the West stage watching Rose Funeral, I made my way up close to the East stage, eagerly awaiting Origin.

Origin are the kings of technical death metal. Like, holy fuck do these guys play fast. Their new(est) vocalist, whose name escapes me right now had incredible stage presence, despite looking and saying that he was hungover as shit. The only song I remember by name that they played was "The Wrath of Vishnu". They had to shorten their set to about 4 or 5 songs because Rose Funeral thought it would be cool of them to play past their set time by 20 minutes. Nobody thinks you're cool, Rose Funeral.

After Origin finished ripping us new assholes, Fleshgod Apocalypse was ready to go on the West stage. I wasn't in a terribly good position to see them, but it wasn't too bad. I've been in worse spots at concerts. They played a ton of songs from their newest album, Agony, opening with "Temptation", "The Hypocrisy" and "The Egoism". They brought us back to their Mafia EP with "Thru our Scars" before swinging things to Agony again with "The Violation".

After "The Violation", there was a bit of a mix up. Since that is one of their most famous songs, everybody thought it was their closing tune, so people started to move back to the other stage for Exhumed, myself included. And when everybody got the East stage, Exhumed started playing... while Fleshgod was playing their next song. At this point I checked my phone for the time, and it was technically Exhumed's scheduled time to play, but I think timing got fucked up because of Rose Funeral. Fucking Rose Funeral. I guess the sound guy for the East stage thought it was Exhumed's turn, so instead of telling the sound guy at the West stage to cut off Fleshgod, he just thought "fuck it" and cranked Exhumed up way past what most people would call deafening. Fleshgod was still playing, but this guy didn't care. It was a glorious half hour of the loudest fucking grindcore I have ever heard. It was awesome.

After Exhumed, I stuck around the East side because The Faceless was the next band to hit that stage. Periphery played the West stage in the meantime, but I didn't really pay attention. Periphery was never really my thing. When The Faceless got on stage, everyone went nuts. I was right up at the front, which was my first time every really being so close to a performing band. They had with them their new vocalist (who is on their new album, Autotheism), and he really shined live. He was jumping around and going crazy while busting out some brutal growls and screams. I have to say I was really impressed by him. They played two songs off of their new album, "Deconsecrate" and "The Eidolon Reality".

The Faceless ft. My Thumb.

This is where the day took a turn for the worse, but now that I look back on it, it doesn't really bother me. During The Faceless' set, some dude shoved his way right in front of me and decided to start moshing like a motherfucker. Me and this other guy standing next to me (the guys next to me was huge) tried to push this asshole back into the pit and in the process, the mosh-happy bastard kicked me in the face. Fuck if I know how it happened. My glasses flew off and I reeled back a bit, but I did manage to see the giant I was standing next to lift the guy in the air and literally throw him into the pit. This dude had air time. Luckily this was right as The Faceless finished their set, so once they were done, we went looking for my glasses. We found them under a dude's foot. I took a look at them and thought "fuck man, now I wont be able to see anything", but before I could do anything, my large friend tapped me on the shoulder and shouted "dude, you're fucking bleeding everywhere!". I didn't really feel any sort of cut (just shaken up by the blow), but when I put my hand to my face, all I felt was blood. I wiped off most of it with my shirt and held pressure against it, and ventured off to the first aid tent to get patched up.

That's when I realized, I have no god damn clue where the first aid tent is. I found a member of security and asked where the tent was and he pointed down to the Western side of the park and told me "right next to the washrooms". Alright, now we're in business! Or so I thought. I wandered around the Western half of the park, no first aid in sight, until I remembered that last year the first aid tent was near the entrance (which was on the East side of the park this year). So I made the long trek back to the Eastern side and found the first aid tent. By the time I reached there, I had held my shirt up against my wound long enough that the bleeding slowed down to a sort of oozing. This is also where I found out my cut wasn't a big cut, but a deep cut. I didn't know what kind of cut it was, just that it was bleeding. When I entered the first aid tent and asked them to look at my face, they told me "yeah, we'll get you a band-aid". I thought that was a joke and they'd do something more, but they literally handed me a band-aid and told me to scram. I managed to glance at myself in a mirror in the tent and I just saw a tiny little nick where I had been cut. They hadn't seen the bleeding, just the wound, so they thought it just needed a band-aid. Whatever. Fuck 'em. It mostly finished bleeding by then anyways. I put on the band-aid and went back out to enjoy the festival. (I managed to bend my glasses mostly back into shape. Nothing was actually broken, and the lenses weren't even scratched!)

Since I took so long to find the elusive first aid tent, I had already missed most of Goatwhore's set. Since the next two bands were Job for a Cowboy and Veil of Maya (VoM played this song as a closer), neither of which I'm a huge fan of, I decided to grab some lunch and check out some more merch tents. I picked up a wicked Cannibal Corpse shirt with the  design of their first album, Eaten Back to Life on it. Classic death metal.

I checked the schedule for when Corpse was playing, and it turned out there were still a couple bands to go before them. I went for the East stage where they were going to show up, and waited through sets by Between the Buried and Me and Kataklysm. I wanted to be closer to Kataklysm, but I really wanted to have a decent spot for Cannibal Corpse, so I opted to stick around their stage. When Cannibal Corpse played their first note, the entire festival lost it. They played two songs off of their newest album, Torture. They opened with "Demented Aggression" and "Scourge of Iron", which made a nice contrast between blistering speed and brutal, slow crunching. They also blasted through some classics like "Priests of Sodom", "Disfigured", "Meat Hook Sodomy" and the tastefully titled "I Cum Blood". Corpsegrinder introduced "I Cum Blood" the way he always does. He screams, "This song is about shooting blood. This song. Is about. Shooting blood. Out. Of. Your. COOOOOOOOOOCK.". Super classy. As per usual, Corpse finished off their set with their most famous song, "Hammer Smashed Face".

I said I wanted a decent spot. Not that I got one.

After Cannibal Corpse decimated Heavy T.O., I stuck around the East stage for the rest of the evening. The only band left on the bill that I wanted to see was System of a Down, and god damnit, I would not miss System of a Down for the world. Killswitch Engage was next on the West stage, followed by Deftones on the East. I  had never heard any of Deftones music before,and although I thought it was alright, I still enjoyed it because they really got into their performance and had amazing stage presence. After Deftones, Five Finger Death Punch took the West stage. I'm not a fan of Five Finger Death Punch, and apparently most of the crowd this year wasn't either. Everyone was waiting at the East stage for System, chanting "SYS-TEM! SYS-TEM! SYS-TEM!" pretty much through the entire second half of 5FDP's set.

Deftones, complete with DJ(?)

Then, the clock struck 9. It was time for System of a Down. I have to be brutally honest. I had no idea what would happen. I saw Slayer at last year's Heavy T.O. and as soon as they started, half the festival turned into a pit. System made the entire fucking festival mosh, jump, and dance. It was pandemonium. It was chaos. I'm pretty sure if this happened anywhere other than an isolated field on the outskirts of Toronto, it would be called a full scaled riot. Honestly, most of System's set was a blur of screaming my lungs out with my hands raised in the air. They opened with "Prison Song", followed by "Soldier Side" and "B.Y.O.B.". The rest of their set was all their most famous songs (ie: all of their songs), but I totally forget the order. Choice songs include: "Aerials", "Forest", "Toxicity", "Dreaming", "Hypnotize", "Holy Mountains", "Bounce", "Chop Suey", "Lonely Day", "Needles", "Lost in Hollywood", "Psycho", and "Cigaro". SOAD finished strong with none other than their classic tune, "Sugar". The entire set was just perfect. It was played perfectly, it was sequenced perfectly, it was just, UGH. Fucking perfect.

This is literally the only picture I could capture of System. As soon as that curtain dropped, all the tens of thousands of people there started flipping their shit for two hours straight, myself included.

So that's my story of Heavy T.O. 2012. It was mega rad, and I know I'm definitely going to go for a third time in a row next year.

That's all for now, folks! Blast off, it's party time! And where the fuck are you?!