Death Angel Tour Blog #2
- Bleeding Priest
- 5 hours ago
- 4 min read
Holy hell a lot’s happened since the last blog. The tour has kicked into high gear with more shows and less days off. Let’s see, when we last spoke Death Angel were at Welcome To Rockville in Daytona.
Since then we’ve played some rad shows and I’ve visited a ton of record shops. I’m going to cover the highlights here.
All the gigs have been pretty cool but the one in Asheville, North Carolina was especially rad. The crowd was electric and there was just a great vibe all around. We’ve played The Orange Peel a number of times before and always look forward to it. It’s in a very happening part of town with tons of shops, restaurants, bars, dispensaries and you guessed it, RECORD SHOPS! The THREE I hit up were Static Age Records, Voltage Records and Harvest Records. See videos below.
Once we hit the New Jersey area things picked up for sure. We actually had multiple days off in NJ. One night my trusty drum tech Zack, Kenny (Obituary) and our light guy James went to this Metal themed go-go dancing bar called Black Betty.
This spot boasted the dumbest bartender I’ve ever interacted with. I was buying my tech a beer and the woman said “Ok, the beers are $7 each or you can do 2 for $14”. Chew on that one for a while. Her stupidity actually had me stumped and just looked at my cohorts in bewilderment and said “did she really just say that?” Just imagine what kind of deal we would’ve got if we ordered THREE!!
On another night off in New Jersey I discovered Incantation were playing in town at the Metal bar/venue Dingbatz. There was no way I wasn’t gonna support my man John McEntee and I’ve wanted to hit this spot for a very long time. Now was a perfect reason to do so.
They were headlining an all day gore grind festival. Honestly my gore grind days are well behind me and the thought of sitting through all those bands sounds like a nightmare. Which is why I showed up strategically late, right before the support band started, Torsofuck from Finland. Whatever….
Surprisingly these guys had the bulk of the audience. When Incantation came on the crowd had thinned significantly…which is a fucking crime in my opinion. Regardless they played a lengthy and PUNISHING set. I loved every second of it. Dingbatz is a killer spot for seeing an intimate show or just having a few in a Metal environment. And across the street was another Metal(ish) bar called Dios (I think). The owner of both establishments, Freddy is his name I believe, took care of Zack and I. It was a fun night indeed.
Actually earlier in the day I went to a pretty amazing record store called Vinyl Addiction which boasted one of the largest KISS bootleg collections I’ve ever seen. In fact it had its own room in the back. The owner saw me looking at the KISS records in the “K” section and immediately came up to me and asked “are you a KISS guy?”. KISS fans are funny that way.
When leaving the store he mentioned there was a record fair happening in town. Of course I went and I gotta say it put the KUSF Rock n Swap to shame. Not only was there a ton of affordable Metal vinyl but there were comic book dealers as well. I had to leave after an hour because there was too much temptation to spend every penny I had.
Our New York show was quite possibly the best we’ve ever had in that beautiful city. Now that I don’t drink myself stupid anymore I have a lot more energy in the day to go out and see the world. This particular stop in NY was the first time I truly explored the city and took all the diversity, culture and history in. There’s truly no other place like New York in the entire world.
I covered almost 8 miles in my trek. During my voyage I hit a couple of very cool record stores. One in the village called Generation Records and one in the lower east side called Academy Records where the owner was from Alameda. We got to talking about lots of bands and mutual friends from The Bay. Very cool dude who gave me a great discount on my purchases. See video below.
Now we’re in Buffalo aaaannnddd…in the immortal worlds of Paul Baloff in regards to Sacramento, “I think I’ll just forget that one” . Naw, it was cool and I’m very appreciative of the fans that came out but after our stellar show in NYC the night before it kinda paled in comparison.
So now we’re on our way to Allentown and then MDF! Lots to report!!
–Bleeding Priest
