CONVERGE in NYC

I finally left Oneonta and campus for a show. I saw CONVERGE in NYC at the Hammerstein Ballroom together with High on Fire, Mastodon and Deathklok. I spent three days in the city, just hanging out in my hotel room located in Upper West Side, and did alot of work with ALL SYSTEMS GO! - budgets, planning and other fun stuff...

CONVERGE is really one of the best acts out there in my opinion, bringing new
dimensions to the hardcore and metal scene. The venue has a capacity of around 4000 people and the venues was really epic. It was interesting to see the band under a different light, as I usually have seenn them in smaller venues in Europe. The environment was different, bu only because of the size of the venue, but also because of the crowd. Most of the audience was there for the pure metal acts and I missed the usually hc/punk and DIY inspired crowd. The show was simply awesome, at least for me... The intro was epic, with just guitarist Kurt Ballou starting everything off with the song Plagues... EPIC!

Here are some of the songs I remember they played:

Plagues
Last light
Hellbound
Eagles Become Vultures
Dark Horse
Concubine
Axe To Fall
The Broken Vow
No Heroes

The other bands dont really appeal to me but it was nice to be at a big show, or
just a show. The last show was MONO and Maserati, but that was a couple of weeks ago now... Thats a really long time for me to be without good live music... Mastodon played a good set, the crowd was really enjoying it and the visual art on the big screen was pretty sweet aswell. Deathklok is to much metal for my personal taste, but it was fun to see videos from Metalocalypse during the whole show was funny...

The CONVERGE merch was expensive. I hope it was because of the context in which they where touring. I understand that they charged more because the metal audience usually pay more for their merch, but at the same time, for the same reason, I find it unacceptable... I hope this is the last time. This guy came up to me during the Mastodon show, like 5 times, wanting to shake my hand, bowing and giving me the thumbs up etc... But he never said a word to me... My only conclusion is that he had me mistaken for Nate Newton, the CONVERGE bass player... Or he was just... I don't really know to be honest...

I have been written about stuff that I have been doing lately and not about different political issues... I don't really know what you people think, but I find
that the more personal the blog gets, the less interesting it gets... I will try to
balance things out so that everybody doesn't get bored... I have been researching a little bit about the Afghanistan elections, President Obamas position and comments related to that, and also the CIA and their payments to a drug lord that happens to be the Afghan leader's brother... I will post that stuff this week end... I also went to a show tonight and I will go to another on Friday, so more on that asap aswell...

Enjoy the pics from the CONVERGE show for now.
be safe.