So, it's been almost a couple weeks since the show at the Hemlock, but for those of you who missed it, it was a great first show!  I'm trying to be objective, here, which is hard.  My own subjective experience of it would be to say that I feel we were a little out of control initially but rapidly seized the reigns and locked in after a few songs - I don't think anyone else would've noticed (except my friend Tim who suggested we were perhaps "stiffer" at the beginning).  Otherwise, I am totally proud of the set, energy, and execution, plus there was a great turnout (70 people, according to the club) and the other two bands, Black Budget and Floating Goat, were awesome, loud, tight, and heavy.  And, as evidenced from this photo, the ruling spirits of the tunes were effectively evoked and released from our musick and floated above my head for most of the set.  Thanks, guys. 

The highlights for me, personally, were that so many of my friends came out to support us and that we really had people's attention and had packed them in for our set.  Among my friends, I could tell that even though many of them wouldn't typically listen to such heavy riffage if left to their own devices, they were pleasantly surprised and into it.  I saw a lot of people out there I didn't know, many of whom appeared to be rocking quite earnestly.  Best quotes of the night: 1) at one point, after finishing a new song, a dude who had stationed himself off to my right at the front of the stage looked at me and smiled and said "Sabbath-Maiden" knowingly, which of course was totally right on; and 2) one woman bought two CDs, because we were so "satanic" that one wasn't enough to satisfy her craving of evil rock, apparently.  Not sure about the satanic thing (not really what we're going for, but many people will obviously confuse the esoteric/hermetic/occult imagery within the context of the heavy metal mythos that we're inadvertantly aligning ourselves with), but that made me smile nonetheless. 

It should also be noted that some of my friends already had "advance" copies of the CD, so have familiarized themselves with the tunes, most of which have some overdubs in there for good measure.  I was curious what people would think and if it would still translate to the live performance and satisfy what they had come to expect from the CD, and they seemed to think that nothing was lost.  My buddy Damon pulled through at the last minute with some awesome stickers, which are essentially heavy duty versions of the mighty Pegataur seal, which you can also see on Aaron's kick drum in the photo above.

Also, lots of gear geekery: Aaron and I both got a lot comments on our respective gear.  Me, because of the 3 guitar amps I use, one is totally custom and built by my good friend Cameron McLeod at Torres Engineering (the blonde amp head in the photo above), and Aaron's drum set is insanely huge.  Of course, it did used to belong to Dave Grohl, so go figure.  Unfortunately, I'm not much of a gearhead, so I can't tell you anything about my custom amp other than it's relatively low wattage and I play it cranked all the way all the time and I think it's based on some proto-Marshall design.

And, last but not least, I did have the pleasure of putting the Black Budget guys up for the night.  They needed a place to crash before heading back up to Vancouver, Washington the following morning (maybe a 14 hour drive), and they were the best guests ever.  Sweet guys, and amazing musicians.