Festivals can be strange animals. Although it looks great on the poster, it can sometimes end up being anti-climatic. The weather gets contrary, the food makes you spend way too much time in the port-a-potty area, the beer is flat and the bands usually play speeded-up versions of their greatest hits. The day can go by excruciatingly slow or head-spinning fast. It is the nature of this particular beast.
PointFest arrived on the heels of much anticipation. Fans of the louder, bone-crushingly harder music were prepared to brave icy-cold winds and rain to stand together in unison for a mosh-pit feeding frenzy. All day, the front two stages alternated between bands like Adalita’s Way, Red, The Damned Things and Pop Evil, before switching over to the main stage. And here was where the electricity really began to spark.
Following Finger Eleven and before the big boys of Korn and Papa Roach, Sevendust did what a lot of bands just cannot do under these circumstances. They shot out of the cannon, kept going at breakneck speed and left the crowd begging for more. Six songs were just not enough to feed the quench they had so satisfyingly created.
Literally hitting the stage and jumping into motion with “Splinter” from their latest album, Cold Day Memory, Sevendust reiterated what metal is all about: bold-faced lyrics with a heavier than hell rhythm section, spiraled around by some piercing guitar and madman vocals.
Sevendust was formed in the mid/late nineties in Georgia and despite a few personnel changes here and there, are at a point in their career where they are in an echelon of the alternative-metal hierarchy. Still out supporting their 2010 CD, they will be joining Avenged Sevenfold, Seether, Bullet For My Valentine, and Three Days Grace, among others, for the 2011 Rockstar Energy Drink Uproar Festival Tour hitting the circuit in late August.
But on this day just outside of St Louis, Missouri, they only whetted the appetite of what they usually give out in a full set meal. Songs like “Black”, “Driven” and “Praise” were bad ass, ending with the scorcher “Face To Face”. Front man Lajon Witherspoon praised their fans throughout the short set and encouraged everyone to be active with their love of music: “Do you hear us on the radio?” he asked before lighting into “Pieces”. “Suggestion: If you don’t hear us, call the radio station and request us”.
Drummer Morgan Rose and bassist Vince Hornsby were on-the-money with their rhythm section, tearing it up for the others to follow, while guitarists Clint Lowery and John Connolly created the mighty wave that Witherspoon rode with an energetic yet almost brutal flamboyance. It was a no-nonsense “let’s rock” attitude on a day where some stayed home and where the ones who did brave the elements were treated to a powerful wind of a heavy metal hurricane.
