The Attic Celebrates Its Final Night

Saturday January 26th over 700 kids jammed the Attic’s positive space to be part of the venues final loud shout out of all day music marathon. 15 bands played the Hot Head Burrito and main stage in door festival starting at 2:30 with States Away and finishing 8 hours later with Beneath the Sky. Bands sandwiched in between included Ignite the Empires, Strangers to Wolves, Witness, The Holy Guile and Hail to the King amongst others.

Event vendors No Where To Go Clothing also donated half the evenings proceeds to The Attic. A raffle was held for a signed Miss May I framed poster by Rockstar Energy, a Woe Is Me signed poster, CD and drumsticks and a Texas in July CD.

The day started with the high energy of States Away playing human bumper car on stage as they cranked out their pop punk set including I Tried so hard and Mean What You Say. Corey Davis’ Gerard Way influenced vocals carried the band’s sound. Formed in early 2012 they released their self-titled EP in June and plan on recording, playing shows and depending on the kindness of strangers for sleeping quarters on the road.

In Current Standing opened up the first set of heavy agonized screams, growls and a little calm singing mixed in, including some atmospheric laptop tech effects. Guitarist Trevor Strahans skull guitar breathed out some death heavy tunes including Virtues that prompted the day’s first ‘dance’ moves.

Ignite the Empires crash the stage banging heads with some Cheap Wine. The Attic Alumni return from previous shows including opening for A Plea For Purging to play and Piss Off the crowd with their own brand of loud, aggressive in your face noise. They played the guitar intricacies of Miles of Expectations like a thief in the night then told the tale of Xanie Annie before finishing off in a cartoonish manner playing a select tune for all the Family Guy fans.

We take a short acoustic break with the pierced soothing songs sung by rebellious Kevin Brewer including the Foo Fighters’ Hero.

Strangers to Wolves brought their snarling pop metal predatory music next. Silver bullets and fang prosthetics aside their sound echo’s the cold dark woods where the howls come from after midnight. They play an 80’s tribute to their namesake historical rival Lost Boys while sporting some hairy wolfish mullets. The night was guitarist Marcus Springer’s second show with the pack. A new EP will be coming out in March with the single Second Star on the Right.

It could be said that Permission to Live are just a bunch of good hearted, fun loving hard edged, hard wood surfer punks riding the wave to future success. A few new tunes in, they pay homage to Taylor Swift, say Final Goodbyes half way through and get a little Smashmouth bringing some VIP’s on stage to celebrate.

Can we get a Witness please? What we get are a bunch of loud, scream/singing loud blokes blending a computer enhanced sound with a warped mixture of pop sound and legit heavy metal cannon fire. Their opener off the Of Great Importance EP spreads F.E.A.R. throughout the building as they played crowd control during The Ledger, a cheery song dealing with the grief and sadness of loss; check out the video on YouTube.

Lammes Lane performed half their set under the man-made flashing light nightshade and stage mist resembling pillaging and plundering shadowed Viking warriors. They play their music like primal animals no matter Who’s at the Zoo. Their hard thrashing sound accompanied by Obituary meets Death vocals brought the crowd up and over the stage for Showtime. Though their music is Yet to be Scene, their debut CD will be available this spring.

 

We Are Forever from Indianapolis brought out the special lighting for their 2nd visit. All the girls screamed as they played tunes from their first record Seasons featuring Lights including Make It Through. Their sound is pretty upbeat pop with a high energy presentation.

Grim State play their music down in the heavy drudges and cold earthen woods where they bring us Creeps, Sheep and Deadbeats. Only songs like Solitude and Valor are slow and trudgy enough to come from the darkest forgotten holler. Also songs like Madness, Illness and Torn show just how Volatile and Unstable these Dayton boys are.

Remember When is a five-some power pop band riding high on the momentum of their Save Your Wishes EP, touring with bands such as Miss May I and their new EP He Said, She Said played with high pop precession.

The next act starts with a pretty Cool Story about a band from around these here parts somewhere. They spread their Holy Guile all over the damn place with wicked spewing venom vocals on full rotation, blasting drums, a unique unsuspected cathedral, turntable effects conglomerate with inserted black metal and techno elements to trans-mutate into a chaotic gelatinous mass of metal love and torture. Imagine a holy conversion by Dani Filth backed by Crowbar cranked to hyperdrive. The next songs called Hey Zeus, Yeah, Zeus! As in, father of Apollo? Mt. Olympus? Don’t mess with them or they’ll shove a lightning bolt somewhere special, Zeus! And you better not have a problem with that. All’s good but noisy tonight in Idahoe.

When imagining Hail to the King, think of Fear Factory with an even more pissed off sounding Burton C. Bell in the form of Kody Hale meets Meshuggah, intensity like a thousand screaming armies and aggressive insanity like the screaming mind of a raging psychotic. Hell explodes raining hails of inner earth onto the ground, through the acrid smoke and debris Hail to the King emerge. They clamp on an iron clad Contagion Clasp and Go for the Throat with a malevolent decimation of sound and some nice melancholy guitar notes. They bring everyone together, pit by pit. They play the lovely sounding Starletta then Saud Ahmed of The Holy Guile came out to help harmonize on one of their louder tunes. They thank the crowd with a final pummeling Gutshot shaking the ribs and rumbling organs.

Cincy’s bloody birds pecking at the body of Christ celebrate their second record A Feast for Crows on Victory records with a pretty Portrait of American Greed. There’s Blood in the Water as the ship goes down and those self-made glorious pompous pulpit Monuments crumble to oblivion. A Glorious new song is heralded before we finish with bitterness and hope of Marilyn courtesy of Corpus Christi.

A reunion show for the Cincinnati metal growlers as they celebrate everything Beneath the Sky with a packed house of tired but hungry for more metal heads is The Reason they’ll are still here. It’d be a Grave Mistake to leave now being it’s the first time the original lineup played since 2007 and not celebrate to the end. The uncomfortably themed and videoed Terror Starts at Home is followed by a Gunsmoke Kiss for the Goodfellas. We spend ten minutes at the users ball before we find an evening partner before Last Call. They talk about Miss Misery and a tale of near death from the Northside. They mourn a friend at 7861 Blackthorne Drive and finish taking us on Our Last Road as sadly The Attic finishes its decade plus road of the area’s best talent.

Though there’s no set timeframe Pastor Kilby has promised that the Attic concept, theme and everything that made it a great hang out for kids will return in the form of another building or venue depending on when some new positive space becomes available.

Special thanks for on the spot event info, go-to guy the prosperous ‘Mr. Tree’.