Housecore Horror Film Festival Recap: Day 2; Goblin, Down and WarBeast oh my…Housecore has a blissfully loud second day.
If you are a metal-head/horror fan prone to indecision, the Housecore Horror Film Festival can prove intimidating. I’ve made my schedule over several days in a row, so after doing some vendor shopping and checking out some autograph sessions, I primarily focused on music for the second day of the festival.
(Tomorrow I’ll be focusing more on horror movies, so be sure to visit my Examiner Horror Column for movie recaps)
This lead me to Emo’s, where the festivities started with a set from the Austin School Of Rock, which featured kids with some impressive musical chops (the boy belting Sabbath’s Paranoid sounded far older than his years) and they were joined onstage by several members of other band’s on the evening’s schedule.
Up next was Austin by way of Colombia band Headcrusher, who’s mix of thrash and death metal got the crowd moving. They also had the most hilariously awkward song intro ever; as they went into their final number, the vocalist announced; This song is about diarrhea!!
Ancient Wisdom were the next band up, and offered the most divergent sound of the evening, which featured the gothic blues sound one would associate with the band Danzig. They dedicated one number to horror director Coffin Joe (who’ll be appearing this weekend at the festival) name dropping film titles like At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul.
Dallas Metal band WarBeast followed, and were a fun old school barrage of blast beats and pinch harmonics, and got the crowd whipped into a frenzy with sci-fi horror themed tunes like War of The Worlds.
Co-headlining this evening were Goblin; the most highly anticipated band on this year’s bill. Goblin are an Italian prog rock band known for their horror soundtracks, primarily Suspiria and Dawn Of The Dead.
Hearing them play these tracks live was truly disorienting; hearing such cinematic tunes in a live venue gave it a psychedelic ethereal quality, but the crowd ate it up like they were the heaviest of metal bands.
In reality, they were very mellow sixty-something men who had a great rapport with the crowd and some comical stage banter. Keyboardist Maurizio Guarini noted that this was the first time Goblin has toured the U.S. and said simply; thank you for waiting for us…we are here. And 2nd keyboardist Claudio Simonetti said he dressed for the occasion of their first Texas gig by wearing a cowboy shirt and mimicked shooting six shooters.
They left the crowd wanting more; which will come 0n Sunday as the much discussed live scoring of Suspiria, the most high profile event of the festival.
Click here for my list of the Top 20 Horror Movie Scores Of All Time
Closing out the night of music was Down, the Southern metal band fronted by Housecore Horror Fest founder (and former Pantera vocalist) Phil Anselmo.
Click here for my exclusive interview with Phil Anselmo.
He seemed truly humbled and gratified by the big turnout for Housecore; I’ve never been more proud of anything in my entire life. And he paused in-between songs to praise all the bands, filmmakers and festival organizers and volunteers.
And during Down’s barn-burning track New Orléans Is A Dying Whore, he stopped the song several times, playfully chiding the audience to get more energized.
I’ll be posting more musical updates over the weekend, and will post more film updates on my Examiner column, so be sure to check back on both my blogs over the weekend.
