On Sunday two friends and I went down to Summerfest. In case you’re not familiar with the event, it’s an eleven day music fest held at Henry Maier Festival Park along the lakefront of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The fest proclaims itself to be the, ‘The World’s Largest Music Festival,’ and I suppose it probably is true due to the simple fact that there is eleven different stages (ranging from huge amphitheatre stages to small tent stages) with apparently over 700 bands performing over the eleven day stretch. As for the actual music, well, I’m quite sure there is just about every genre of music available at this thing, unfortunately very little metal music, and the bigger named bands that close out each evening you have to pay a lot to see. Fortunately it’s just $15 to get into the thing otherwise and see the smaller named bands during the day, so therefore that’s why we decided to go and check out hometown thrash heroes, LaZarus A.D.
Although I had expected the band to play on one of the smaller stages they actually ended up playing on a fairly large stage called the, ‘TheCoolTV Stage.’ The band actually drew in a fairly large crowd too, but it could have been that some were just there to see the stage’s closing band, Nonpoint. Nevertheless they were there and they were about to get their goddamn heads smoked off by a truly impressive metal band.
What I really like about these guys is that they truly are a talented band and I’m absolutely positive once everyone saw lead guitarist Dan Gapen ripping through some of the bands complex solos everyone was thinking the same. Anyway, the band opened with, ‘Last Breath,’ which truly woke up everyone in the crowd and got them interested in what was happening onstage. Although I’m sure the band was nervous playing on such a large stage (with it being filmed of course too) and playing to most likely one of their biggest crowds to date they still managed to handle themselves well. Bassist/vocalist Jeff seemed somewhat reluctant to talk much to the crowd, but it was fun that he made a few comments about some insanely popular teen kid named Justin Bieber who was playing one of the stages later in the evening.
Unfortunately after just two songs Dan’s amp gave out and they had to take a good five minute break to repair the thing. Fortunately once it was back up the band was once again roaring through their songs with renewed ferocity.
As far as I can remember the band played every song from their debut album, ‘The Onslaught’ as well as a cover song, which I believe they said was called, ‘Onstage,’ but I really don’t know. It was a cool cover with another really superb solo too. They also played a new untitled song from the forthcoming album, which Jeff stated would be out in November. Collectively I guess the band must have played for a solid hour and I’m sure they won many new fans with this gig too.
All in all it was great to see at least one genuinely awesome band at Summerfest this year and I hope they play here again next year and perhaps a few other cool metal bands will be joining them too.
After LaZarus A.D. my buddies and I hung out around the Festival for a few more hours while trying to figure out if there was really anything else worth seeing tonight, but decided that there really wasn’t much. So, we hoped the shuttle back home, went to a bar, plugged the jukebox full of metal songs and continued to have a great evening.
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