Scion Rock Fest recap

[Above: Photo by Austin L. Ray, published here, click to enlarge]

Saturday's Scion Rock Fest was, to say the least, a rousing success. Mother Nature, despite being a crabby jerk who only listens to folk music, managed to behave herself and allow the denizens of Masquerade Music Park to have a wonderful day. Our boy Austin was there, and he has a few observations to make:

* Baroness is a great band, but even greater live than on record. If you found the Savannah, Georgia quartet's latest, 2007's behemoth Red Album, a little too jammy and/or indie-rock oriented, give the band a shot live. They were monstrous at Scion.

* A mud-covered, crushed, plastic water bottle, when flying through the air, looks kind of like a bird through peripheral vision. However, when it hits you straight in the eye, it hurts a whole lot. Probably more than getting hit in the eye with a bird would.

* Corpsepaint is amazing. So is 1349. They're from Norway and the make a very special kind of musical theater that is as engrossing as it is kind of terrifying. Whoever decided to have them close out the Scion fest was a genius.

* Metal fans get a bad rap. Although often defined by their piercings, tattoos or various other parts of their often-gruff exteriors, the crowd at Scion was extremely polite and well behaved. There are more fights/nonsense/jerks at an average dive-bar show than there were all day on Saturday. I'll take metalheads over the typical rock crowd any day of the week.

* Mastodon should be packing stadiums with their finely honed racket. Judging by the three new songs they played at Scion, their forthcoming Crack the Skye is going to melt faces. Extra credit awesome: one of the dudes from Neurosis joined them onstage for a couple songs.

* This festival should happen again next year!

Various press reports have started trickling in over the last couple days. Pitchfork and Paste both posted pretty decent photo sets, but self-titled and Prefix both have pretty excellent round-ups. But we'd like to hear from you. Did you go? What'd you like? Let us know in the comments.

An announcement.

Update: Scion Rock Fest tickets

[Above: Mastodon photo by Mark C. Austin]

Currently, the Scion Rock Fest site says that ticket registration will be available by Jan. 28.

Here's how the registration process will work when the site is ready:

1. Go to Scion.com/Rock
2. Enter your e-mail address and zip code where prompted.
3. You'll get an e-mail with your confirmation number.
4. Bring the confirmation number to the store and get your tickets.

Make sense? If you're from out of town, we're told you'll be put on a will-call list and can claim your tickets the day of show at the venue. That's it! Follow the instructions and you're golden.

If you have any additional questions, feel free to stop by the store and we'll do our best to answer them. Thanks!

Get your Scion Rock Fest tickets at Decatur CD!

[Above: Click to enlarge the awesome!]

UPDATE (1/15): For all the out of town folks leaving comments on this post (and e-mailing us and calling us and sending us messages via carrier pigeon), hold up! We don't have tickets yet. But when we do, we'll make another blog post. At that time we'll start working out how you can pick up your tickets from the store when you get to Atlanta. Thanks!

--

Well, not quite yet, but soon. Many of you have probably heard this news floating around here or there, but we finally have details. The festival is happening on Saturday, Feb. 28th from noon to midnight at Masquerade Music Park. Tickets are absolutely free and you can get them here. We're told we'll have them sometime next week, and when we do there will be another blog post as well as an e-mail. Additionally, in a few weeks we'll have some limited edition silk-screened posters for giveaway to anyone who buys an album from one of the festival's artists. What artists are included? Glad that you asked. Look at the fantastic line-up below. It's a veritable who's who of modern-day metal:

Mastodon
Neurosis
High on Fire
Boris
1349
Cryptopsy
Torche
Nachtmystium
Wolves in the Throne Room
Baroness
Harvey Milk
Kylesa
Zoroaster
Withered
Krallice
Toxic Holocaust
Skeletonwitch
Rwake
A Storm of Light
Warbringer
Salome
Suidakra
Tyr
Alestorm
...and more!

That's right, "more." We've heard a rumor the actual line-up will include closer to 40 bands (24 are listed above), so look forward to some more announcements in the coming weeks. And in the meantime, get excited! This is going to be one crazy day of heavy music.