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Alright fellow hessians, that time of year has come and passed. Scion AV’s massive metal ritual, Scion Rock Fest, has been rolling the past three years with a new location each time. This year, we in the Swamp were blessed by having it come to Tampa across 4 different venues: The Orpheum, Ritz Ybor, Crowbar and Czar Bar. The lineup for this year’s edition was eye-popping, with several must-see acts and ones that I personally have wanted to see for years. Many thanks to Scion for continuing to support great music by bringing a free festival of this magnitude to metalheads nationwide year after year. Let’s get right into the sets, shall we?

The Atlas Moth

I spent the majority of the day at the Ritz, which would become a doom-cult shrine for all of Saturday. The Atlas Moth started off the black mass with their own brand of post-everything blackened doom. They ended up being a perfect opener, releasing their psychedelic haze over the still-arriving crowd at the Ritz. A big venue suits them very well, allowing their sound to expand and absorb all the empty space. The tracks from An Ache For The Distance were all incredible, with Stavros’ piercing ice wraith scream balancing itself against the more melodic moments of songs like “Perpetual Generations” and the title track. It’s easy to say that they’re the closest thing to arena rock that American doom currently has, only because of their massive sound and aptitude for writing metal anthems. The Atlas Moth deserved a spot at Scion, and their name will surely be on everyone’s tongues for quite some time to come.

Church Of Misery

Ah, yes. Church of Misery. After I cleaned myself up following the initial shock that I was actually seeing this band, I was overwhelmed by the sheer heaviness they threw down on all us poor children.  Hideki Fukasawa is one of the most engaging and reckless frontmen I’ve seen live, seemingly imbued with the same wide-eyed wildness Iggy Pop had back in the Stooges/Lust For Life days. Basically saying “fuck stage barriers,” he was in and out of the pit with the crowd, lying on the floor (still screaming his head off) and basically confusing the hell out of the hapless security staff. CoM have an amazing energy overall, goading the crowd the entire time, throwing up horns at the end of songs, and going as nuts as we were on the floor. I wish I could say I recalled all the songs they played, but when you have enough fun, you tend to overlook details like that. All I can tell you is that they are superior live to anything you’ll ever hear on record, and I would gladly follow Hideki to the depths of hell like a misguided metalhead Dante following a tie-dyed Virgil.

Psychic TV

Directly after the CoM set at the Ritz, I booked it across the street to the Czar Bar. I’d never been inside this particular venue before, and I’ve got to say…I love it. Not too large, excellent sound, and makes an excellent place for a crowd with strange tastes. Psychic TV was at the top of my “can’t miss” list for this festival. I wanted to know exactly how powerful Genesis P. Orridge’s brand of black magic was live, and to see if they would dip into their dirty history and play something like “Unclean.”

I missed the first portion of the set and came in during “White Nights,” a drifting, sleepy song that is completely at odds with the noisier moments of Psychic TV I’m used to. Still, it was absolutely beautiful, and lead into a much more Krautrock-influenced portion of the set. It’s amazing just how much fury this lineup can put out, matching the intensity I’d expect from ancient groups like Ash Ra Tempel and newer krautheads Sunburned Hand of the Man. Eddie O’Dowd is a fantastic drummer, and I don’t mind confessing that Alice Genese pretty much tore my heart out of my chest with her bass skills.

There were plenty of people straight up getting down to PTV, a testament both to the intensity of the songs and the way Genesis is able to command the chaos around everything and drag the audience along with her chants and sing-a-long polemics. Utterly mindblowing, with more sonic space explored within this set than I’ve seen from countless bands over the years. I’m jealous of those who had certain “enhancements” when experiencing PTV live. Also, gotta love the Can cover (“Mother Sky,” which PTV’s version is a less of a cover and more of a reimagining) and the Hawkwind cover they closed with.  Guaranteed, this was the only time at Scion anyone said “Can you turn the flute up? It’s intended to be very loud.”  Hail Genesis!

Sleep

Alright, everyone knows this was the one set that every single mofo at Orlandooom came to Scion Rock Fest for. We could’ve had rocks thrown at us entering the venue and we still would’ve went through it just to see these druids. Sleep is one of those bands that, back in high (and I do mean high) school, I figured I would never get to see. Well, shit’s changed in 2012 and the mad monks Al Cisneros and Matt Pike have joined together with Jason Roeder on drums to bring the stoner caravan and its holy scriptures back to the fucking temple mount. The Ritz was packed wall to blackened wall with hessian bodies, everyone already frothing at the mouth before Al even plugged his bass in. Yes people, this was all-out stoner worship.

I don’t think I need to spend many words to tell everyone what they already know; Sleep fucking killed. They opened with a portion of “Dopesmoker,” as thick and relentlessly sludgy as I could’ve ever imagined it. It was quite a treat to bellow along with Al throughout the song, as nearly everyone in the crowd knew every smoke-draped word by heart. Shoutouts to the kid in the red shirt and glasses who brought new meaning to “cookie monster growl” when singing along. You are awesome.

“Dragonaut” nearly caused everyone to kill eachother. It was another fine example of certain bands and certain songs that simply drive people wild. Sleep has that sort of stage presence in spades, between Al holding his fretboard up to the heavens and looking skyward, like some sort of unholy light would come down and pluck the strings, or Matt Pike’s effortless swagger. I swear the guy never took his cigarette out of his mouth (probably not true, but I have head trauma from this set, so forgive me.) Worth every moment and every blow anyone took in the pit. Sleep is metal religion.

Merzbow

So my companions and I were feeling pretty post-coital after having our souls grudgefucked by Sleep, and we each parted ways to catch various headlining acts. I was very interested in seeing Merzbow, given his work with stoner gods Boris and the legend surrounding him. I was kicking myself for missing the latter portion of Oxbow, only catching one song (incredible, nonetheless). Merzbow took quite some time to set up, with his own altar of treated instruments and power electronics wheeled onto the stage of the Czar. A drummer whose name I don’t know accompanied him on the stage. I anticipated something like this, because I figured the organizers would rightfully understand that Merzbow alone cannot carry a live set in front of a metal audience. Unfortunately, the massiveness of this drummer’s sound couldn’t buoy the performance.

Don’t get me wrong, a lot of Merzbow’s work (a catalog far larger than is feasible to listen to) is actually quite good if you want to slip into a meditative state, but live it really loses a lot of its punch. Maybe it’s the fraud frontman in me, but Merzbow lacks any shred of stage presence whatsoever. We were treated to him with his head down the majority of the set, fiddling with unseen settings on his synth and going nuts on a prepared banjo(?) with an e-bow. I ended up leaving before the set concluded, another mistake on my part as I was told Oxbow ended up performing an encore alongside the Merz. D’oh!

Whew! Overall, this was a hell of a weekend and one I’ll remember for the rest of my life. Very solid performances across the board, and a couple of truly life-changing ones.  Here’s to next year being even bigger and better!

Be sure to cop any and all relevant releases for the above artists. Follow @ScionAV on Twitter, and visit their youtube page for more live videos!

(In case anyone is wondering, I most regret not seeing Suffocation, Repulsion and Oxbow at this festival.)