The summer concert season is a time to sip on mojitos and indulge in some sizzling shows in the sense of taking a chance and spending a few hours in the sweltering heat while singing along to your favorite songs from the likes of Def Leppard, Deep Purple, or Rob Zombie. Then there’s a lava plume of spicy smaller gigs that summon the metal enthusiasts who know their music history aside from Judas Priest and Testament. A figure-four hold of wicked loud maniac violence featuring Exciter, Midnight, Wraith, and Hellwitch was one of those blistering events – selling out the Meadows in Brooklyn during the first of some more humid nights in August.
I try to eat at a local restaurant with varied options for American, Italian, or Mexican comfort food, especially if it’s four blocks or closer to the venue. Having a little time to spare, I indulged in a pre-show dinner at the chilled atmosphere of Sweet Science in Williamsburg. The crispy salad was okay, but the Sweet Science Flat Top Burger was the meal’s star. I highly suggest a triple stack with avocado and bacon. And big props to the eatery for displaying a framed photo of Biggie Smalls. Biggie was an icon of East Coast gangsta rap. After dinner, I glided towards the Meadows, soaking in some muggy air as New York exits hell’s front porch and enters a false fall.
The very moment when Pat Ranieri slammed down a Van Helsing-style morning star on the stage and then crashed into Solipsistic Immortality was when the moshing and stage-diving began as Hellwitch encaged the early attendees to honor forty years of Floridian, torture chamber soundtracking death metal. The trio also featured the other mad axeman, J.P Brown, plus Brian Wilson, Night Demon’s drummer. Hellwitch resounded with a six-song crash course in neck-snapping that got the handful of metal maniacs all fired up while playing Pyrophoric Seizure and Nosferatu to alight the locale for the devilish and stinging thrash of Wraith.
Dominating the gradually filling and stuffy Williamsburg haunt, the grounds of the Meadows began to break as Prosthetic Record’s signees Wraith brought their blend of wrathful blackened thrash for a half-hour. The crowd participation began to amplify from the crowd-surfing and slam-dancing moshketeers. With every intent of fracturing some bones in the pit, Matt Sokol commanded the ongoing chaos with his raving snarl as Wrath shifted between black metal, punk, and thrash while speeding through Fueled by Fear, Heathen’s Touch, and a moment with bassist Mike Drysch vocally quantifying Eyes of the Sacred Ram. Wraith came out victorious and did it up big time for the fast-approaching mayhem of Midnight. If you’re into blackened thrash akin to Hellripper and Knife, check out Wraith.
There were no signs of remorse when co-headliners Midnight played their heaviest hitters for about an hour. Gritty, scrappy, and fucking insane, Midnight is the type of band that metal fans from eighteen to forty can agree on, with their Sabbat-meets-Toxic Holocaust approach and album-to-album quality. The hooded menace code-named Athenar has been pushing his creative limits since he released the Midnight demo in 2003, and the additional two henchmen, Commandor Vanik on guitar and Iron Possessor on the drums, brought the filthy-sounding blackened thrash metal you would exactly expect from this one-man-band!
Athenar took control of a sold-out crowd to conduct a disgusting amount of crowd-surfing and moshing with
his growling bass guitar and crude vocal style, directing a savage street fight of raw and rabid rebellion. The trio of masked executioners started with Penetratal Ecstasy, and that’s when the uproar began for the people who wanted to see Midnight – BADLY -. The band brought an ungodly racket while performing some great tracks such as Black Rock’n’Roll, Szex Witchery, Nuclear Savior, and Athenar executing a fan’s request for Violence on Violence. It doesn’t matter if it’s the first time or the twentieth seeing them, Midnight delivers what you expect – killer, kick-ass, smashing your face in, bashing your skull against the pavement type of black rock ‘n’ roll to get a riled-up audience ready for the final command of aggression from Exciter.
Fully turning the heat up and bringing the Meadows to a boil came the final test of endurance – EXCITER. Exciter, by Judas Priest, a classic harbinger of speed-injected metal, sounded the charge for the arrival of original members Dan Beehler Al Johnson and new guitarist Daniel Dekay to assist a lively swarm of glowing fans in braving the elements for fifty-five more minutes of raw, Canadian fury, some almost in disbelief that they were seeing them with the inclusion of the previous three hell-raisers. We embraced every moment. Exciter reminded me you can have lots of technique and still have fun. The trio performed ten gnarling songs from their first four albums – Stand Up and Fight, Heavy Metal Maniac, plus celebrating forty years of the Violence and Force album for the fan favorite Pounding Metal and the namesake track. The short, manic aria after Pounding Metal from Daniel Dekay received a loud audience reaction from the set. Daniel showed everyone he is now in the same league as Ace Frehley, Eddie Clarke, and K. K. Downing.
Exciter delivered a stellar performance with lots of energy. Nothing but unfiltered speedy classic metal at 665 MPH from these crazy canucks. At the literal center of it, was Dan Beehler pushing his diaphragm to its limits with his double-duty antics of drumming and singing to keep the walls shaking as the Meadows was fighting for some air. The only good thing about marinating in other people’s range of germs was the excuse to witness the high-range howl of Dan Beehler. Seriously. It takes dedication and skill to manage the duality of drumming and singing in unison in the wake of performing in a venue of 500 people, some getting in a final few stage dives during Exciter’s set. I gave much due respect to Dan and Al, turning up the speed dial and cranking out the metal like a boss. Dedicating the last song to Lemmy Kilmister, Exciter galvanized their set with a solid cover of Motorhead’s Iron Fist. From Exciter to Overkill to Midnight, Motorhead is a band that inspired and still influences generations of rockers, metalheads, thrashers, and punks – no matter the decade.
Exciter, Midnight, Wraith, and Hellwitch more than justified surviving the night. I would gladly go again if a similar bill featuring Exciter as the headliner sells out a venue similar to the Meadows. It was a steamy night. It was an airless night. Those who traveled from New York and other parts of the tri-state to the heart of Williamsburg didn’t give a flying fuck about the rising mercury. We didn’t give a shit about the heat. All we cared about with heavy metal pumping in our hearts was to experience the newer blood in Wraith and Midnight to the old guard in Hellwitch and Exciter shoving enough camo flat heads and Simpson strong ties down our throats that we’ll be shitting roofing nails throughout the rest of the summer.
