Artist Entry: Animosity vocalist Leo Miller gets down with friends of the wicked clowns

Cleveland Ohio -- the shit is fucked up.

Our show got moved to some small town right outside of the city because the original venue closed its doors about a week earlier -- probably something to do with underage drinking. Coincidentally, the corner opposite the club that we are playing was hosting a show that was also moved last minute and our buddies Psyopus were playing along with Dance Club Massacre.
Two shows with the same audience on the same block in the same small town. Needless to say, the crowd was spread pretty thin at both shows. The sick joke of it all is that people from the Psyopus show kept coming over to our show to buy merch from First Blood but weren't even there for the set.

The promoter of our show realized his mistake and offered everyone from our tour free entrance to his other show across town to make up for the scheduling blunder. This other show happened to be a performance by Ill Bill, Paul Wall and Tech N9ne. I was excited because I have always had some curious interest in the Juggalo world and I knew that Tech N9ne was down with the clown. Furthermore, it had to be more fun that the shot gig we just played.

I got "searched" at the door before entering and the security dude failed to find the huge knife clipped in my pocket. This was somewhat discomforting because I have heard stories about how crazy these wicked clown events can get. I walked in to find pretty much exactly what I expected, which turned out to be even less exciting in the end.

The place was completely packed. The majority of the crowd was fat sweaty white guys with Lebron James jerseys many of whom were fully face painted and sporting some sort of Juggalo, hatchet-man tattoo or necklace. There were lots of guys with braids, weird contact lenses and a ton of super scandalous fat chicks. By the time I arrived, most of the crowd was really sweaty and the face paint had smeared into some wet gray mess. Straight up, Paul Wall and Ill Bill sucked -- just simply garbage -- but Ill Bill was wearing a Cannibal Corpse "Tomb Of The Mutilated" shirt, which was killer.

I was surprised to see Tech N9ne play after Paul Wall because that dude has all kinds of huge MTV hits and Tech N9ne has almost no media support, but I guess it was the power of the hatchet.

Feeling out of place, I left the show pretty quickly, but I realized something. Our show sucked, meanwhile these guys wearing clown paint are riding around in a shiny nightliner, filling every club they play with people who are all wearing their shirts and hockey jersey's that can cost up to $200.

What the fuck is going on? What talent do these fucking clowns have? That being said, what I realized is that I need to start wearing some God damn clown paint and start living "crazy."

With the way these past few shows have been, you might be seeing Animosity make that change sooner than later. Until then, I guess we'll keep it brutal.

Artist Entry: Animosity vocalist Leo Miller reflects on Metalfest

He got game.

Leo Miller here, writing from the Canadian border at Niagra Falls.

We just finished up the very deep cleaning of our van before we cross the border -- those immigration people will find anything and we don't want the next blog entry to look like what happened to Brain Drill, if you know what I mean.

If you don't know what I mean, just Google search "I had to life my nutsack..."

Having just finished up our second/third (we played twice last year) New England Metal and Hardcore Festival performance, I thought I would give you all a look into what the festival is all about from our point of view.

This is pretty much the only established heavy music festival we have in these United States, so it definitely makes for an eventful weekend.

To be honest, I can't really say the whole shindig is about the music. Most of the bands are given literally 15 minutes of fame with no sound check whatsoever. Honestly, you gotta just get on stage and rip it as hard as you can and if you aren't having fun, then this is the time to pretend -- if anyone caught our set, that was some grade A pretending.

All musical performances aside, the fest seems to be more of a big publicity stunt and a fun one at that than a concert. Like I said, there is not much done in the way of making the bands sound good or different from each other but rather just to showcase which bands are kicking in 2008.

It's the one time of the year where nearly every touring band in our community is together and in a lot of ways functions as a big family reunion. There is a lot of photo shoots, interviews, handshaking and dude kissing, but by the end of the night, everyone removes their Bluetooth earpieces and things turn into a pretty awesome party with a bunch of friends that you never get
to see.

I actually missed about every band that I wanted to see this year, but I was able to go to the most punk rock show of my life at a near by warehouse to see Disfear and Toxic Holocaust, which was a blast.

For many people involved, Metalfest can mean a lot of stress and a big hangover, but when all is said and done, this event is a 10 year staple in our community that everyone looks forward to each year.

Props to Scott and everyone involved for keeping this thing going.