Yesterday started out by the full band congregating at our rehearsal studio in Oakland 12pm. We all got there and ran through our set, composed of Foretold Revelation, Drill Down, Politicold, Fight Philosophy and Fallout and ready to introduce two new songs, End Of Days and a cover of The Trooper by Iron Maiden. When we do shows we typically like to meet at the studio and run through the set without vocals (so I have plenty of oomph for the show, vocal wise), and iron out any last minute bits. We ran through the set and it sounded absolutely rocking, so we started packing up ready to head out.

We packed up the not insignificant amount of shit we need for a live Severed Fifth show; drums, five guitars, amps, cabs, racks, merch and more, loaded up Jim’s car and he headed off to pick up his wife and a friend. We then loaded up my car and Ron’s truck, and tarped down Ron’s epic Mesa/Boogie bass cab as we were expecting rain. All set, we got on the road and headed to Modesto.

Aside from a quick stop at In-N-Out Burger, we made pretty good progress, despite the rain, and got to the Fat Cat at about 5pm. We loaded in, met Mike Vanek, the promoter who was putting on the show, and met some of the guys in Crow who were headlining. Jim arrived a little later and we started setting up Ben’s drums ready for load-on when we were up.

There were five bands on the bill; Crow, Better Left Unsaid, Severed Fifth, This Times Brutal, One Less Enemy and Through The Threshold. All bands put on a stunning show, and despite some PA troubles affecting our friends in One Less Enemy they rocked it with the time they had available. In fact as part of their set, Shawn Bozarth (from One Less Enemy) and Jim Adams (from Severed Fifth) got up and played a Defiance song called The Fault. It sounded awesome. Earthquake! Earthquake!…

This was our third Severed Fifth show and we were third up in the line-up of bands; our first show not as an opener. By the time we got on stage the attendance had fattened up, and it was a great opportunity because the majority of people there had not heard us play – fresh ears! We kicked off the set with our atmospheric opener to Foretold Revelation and played through the song. The response was fantastic from the get go. Next up was Drill Down which felt great to play, and more people congregated in front of the stage.

At the Fat Cat it is a pretty unusual venue in that there is a stage with the monitors on it, and then an extra chunk of stage in front of that. Unfortunately the sound guys could not move the monitors to the extra bit of stage, so I was grounded in front of the monitors where the mic stand is, but when there were instrumental sections I would clamber over the monitors onto the front stage part and headbang with the crowd. Our third song was Politicold and there is quite a long instrumental section, so Jim and I stood on the front stage and headbanged together in unison. Even from our short gigging career so far, Politicold seems to be one of the most popular songs – we love playing it. I just love rocking out with my brothers to that tune.

Next up was Fight Philosophy and we saw more heads banging, and we were all set to roll in our debut of End Of Days next, but had to cut our set short a little due to all the PA problems earlier. As such, we decided to play Fallout and included some crowd participation to get the audience singing along with us. The audience were awesome and it was awesome to hear roars of “Fallout!” as the song continued.

After the show we packed up our gear as it torrentially rained on us, and then we hit the road back to Oakland to drop our gear off back at the rehearsal studio.

All in all we had a killer time in Modesto and we want to thank Mike Vanek for the show, all the other bands for being so cool, and everyone who showed up to support the local metal scene. We also want to say a huge thanks to everyone who got into our show and had a good time – we hope to see all you awesome people again soon.

Jono \m/

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