HOLIDAY HELL FEST: CATTLE DECAPITATION, UNEARTH and More at FREMONT COUNTRY CLUB

Fremont Country Club and Backstage Bar & Billiards hosted this first yearCATTLE DECAPITATION and UNEARTH combining their tour lineups for this Vegas two-fer, along with a complete nine band line up including ATHEIST, DARKEST HOUR, PRIMITIVE MAN AUTHOR & PUNISHER, VITRIOL, GODS OF HATE and PARIAH WAS ONE. Holiday Hell Fest, and featured nine bands between two clubs stages. The two downtown Vegas clubs, whose stage and clubs areas are separated by a double door, allows fans to move between the venues without ever going outside. These venues have been recently hosting dual shows for one price, that are almost like mini-festivals with numerous bands paling between the two stages. The Holiday Hellfest was the most recent, with

Kicking off the long evening was PARIAH WAS ONE on the Backstage Bar and Billiards stage, one of the best local metal bands currently playing around Vegas with unlimited potential and is filled with talented musicians. To hear what Pariah is all about give a listen to their CD titled A Home We’ve Never Seen and I am sure you will quickly become a fan.

The first band up on the Fremont Country Club Stage was VITRIOL, a brutal death metal band from Portland, OR touring in support of their new Cd To Bathe From The Throat Of Cowardice, that came out September 2019. This band's songs are about violence and pain, and they played in total darkness. I was back over to the Triple B’s stage to catch locals GODS of HATE. I LOVE this deathcore band, led by vocalist Preston Graff, who tossed free t-shirts to fans if they joined him in the mosh pit.

One of the night’s highlights was the set by solo artist AUTHOR & PUNISHER, who by the way has been tapped to open for TOOL on part of their upcoming 2020 tour. Author & Punisher is Tristan Shone, a mechanical engineer who creates all his own “drone machines” and has a sound that is hardcore doom / industrial. He is a one man wrecking machine who creates sound unlike anything you have ever heard on his machines.

Back at the Triple B’s stage up next it was DARKEST HOUR. This was the first band to get the crowd raging and the floor erupted into a wall to wall mosh pit almost as soon as the band started playing, and were one of the top bands of the show by far. On the FCC stage PRIMITIVE MAN played the most brutal sounding sets of the night. This band is harder to listen to with their noise music / funeral doom sound. There were so many genres on this night, and at the FCC stage ATHEIST brought us what is known as technical death metal.

A band everyone was waiting for, UNEARTH brought their metalcore sound all the way from Boston to Vegas and closed out the Triple B’s stage. The room by this time was so full it was hard to move and the biggest pit of the night opened up and stayed going through the bands entire set.

Closing out the night back on the FCC stage it was grindcore CATTLE DECAPITATION DEATH ATLAS Metal Blade Records.out on, ironically enough, Black Friday in November 2019 on from San Diego, who had a new album The band treated the fans to a mix of songs from the new release in their brutal mix of grinding death metal set. The crowd wove back and forth and the mosh pit grew fanatical as CD brought an onslaught of metal to finish out the Hellfest show. Check out their new cd HERE.