This year’s installment of the premier American Metal festival had a rocky outset, several bands had hard hitting lineup changes before the event and at the last hour we had the fun of dealing with Hurricane Ivan which resulted in numerous delays and several cancelled flights altogether. I lucked out though seeing as how I came in a day early on Wednesday and yes, just like the last two years my place of residence this go around was in the Fairfield. I’ll forego the mundane and menial happenings that occurred late Wednesday night and early Thursday morning, I’m sure you don’t want to read about me waking up Yan from Avian at two in the morning because I couldn’t get into my room, my conversation with my roommate Steen (from Revelationz.net) where I illustrated my massive knowledge of the German language with the statement, “Ich spiele mein sheisst,” to which he replied, “No, not in here,” or my ride in the morning to the store to get a Sharpie marker because I left mine at home. After all of this, and returning to the airport to pick up Noah (you might remember him as the bassist for The Pooper) the metalness finally got under way, sort of. The last of our motley crew to arrive was Jonah but his flight kept getting delayed again and again before finally getting cancelled altogether just minutes outside of Atlanta. It goes without saying that Noah, Yan, and I were pretty, not worried, but anxious to get him here. I hadn’t seen the crazy bastard in almost a year, Noah hadn’t seen him since he moved from Virginia to Vermont, and the last time Yan saw him was when he was in Phoenix recording his keyboard parts for the Avian album. Anyways, around four PM we were all congregating in the lobby waiting for the rain to let up while watching ragged and frazzled newcomers arrive through the pouring rain, and see what people from the bands would walk through the doors when I saw history being made. For weeks now, Yan and Noah had been sending tapes and cds back and forth as Noah was trying to land the gig playing bass for Avian and within fifteen minutes of meeting each other he was asked to come aboard. With all the good cheer floating about it was time to celebrate, me and Steen headed off for the preparty to get in for the Gold Badge hour while Noah and Yan stuck around the hotel some more. Steen and I stood around and talked for about an hour and then we were finally let in the doors. This was the first time the preparty was held at the Vinyl, a small restaurant / club inside the Earthlink Live and I was at first underwhelmed with the lack of action going on. I did run into one of our regulars here, Adam Herman, and we talked for a little while and in my rounds of “Hey man, I remember you from last year…” I finally bumped into Olaso from Evening Star. If you can remember, their demo from almost a year ago was one of the best surprises to come my way in 2003. Olaso gave me a redone version of that demo with new guitars as well as other tweaks along with a brand new song. If I do say so myself listening to this remixed version once again reminded me of how great their music is and that if Evening Star does not get signed then there is truly no justice in the music industry. After Olaso the first band of the preparty was hitting the stage, Halcyon Way and I wasn’t too impressed. All I can remember is the highlight of their set was when they pulled out a cover of Rainbow in the Dark. I was beginning to despair at this point, that there would be no bands from the main event here at the preparty and was getting ready for Magistral to play and then I would take my leave when Yan and Noah pulled me aside and took me to the lobby of the Earthlink itself and here is where the metalness of the weekend finally commenced.

I guess this was where all the action was going on and as I looked around and saw Jon Oliva, Wuthering Heights and Timo Kotipelto all gathered here I realized that there was hardly thirty other people in this area. Noah headed to the bar and had a few victory drinks on his induction into Avian while I headed off for Timo. Man, I had no idea that he was this short! I’m talking about Tobias Sammet short too, but I managed to get a few words in with the man before talking a picture and getting my cds signed. He was pretty amazed at the sheer amount of Stratovarius material I had (everything from Fourth Dimension up as well as several singles and his solo material) and after that I thanked him and headed off because I noticed that there were quite a few other people trying to get in on the Kotipelto action. I walked over to the guys in Wuthering Heights and talked to Morten about his recent run through Europe with Pyramaze. I got him to call his keyboardist to convince him to make it down here (Jonah was contemplating just heading back to Vermont and scrapping the whole thing) and after that Patrik and I began to ham it up. After some time with the WH crew I went to go find Steen back at the main preparty area and I caught a few Magistral songs before I grabbed him and dragged him over to where I was. When he walked up the steps he began the circuit as well so I went off to go see Jon Oliva in one of the seating booths near the back. Jon is one funny and cool as hell guy, I told him how me and my unnamed shitty band covered Strange Wings, Power of the Night and Hall of the Mountain King and he was like, “Oh good. If something happens tonight and I can’t sing the whole set, I’ll come find you, ok?” My response was simply, “No man, you don’t want to do that otherwise you wouldn’t have a career anymore.” I thanked him and met up with Yan and Noah again and after getting some water and talking about Yan’s extended run with Nightwish I headed towards Timo again to bug him some more. This time I was able to stick around more than usual and we talked about his solo gigs, I asked him what Mikko Harkin is up to nowadays, what’s the deal with the new Stratovarius DVD is it going to happen at all now, and just some random weird bullshit topics. For being the biggest “star” at the event, Timo was easy to approach and even more fun to talk to. I’ll say this, when you get the chance to meet your idols (I’ve been listening to Stratovarius for many, many years now and despite their recent decline and hoopla, my memories of Episode, Visions, and Fourth Dimension will always be of a positive nature) just talk to them as normal people. When you run up to them and dry hump their leg while going, “Ohmygod, ohmygod, I love you so much, you inspire me, I wanna have your baby, make love to me now!” then you come across as well, super fanboy deluxe and I think they lose a bit of respect for you then. I remember reading along time ago an article about this situation and it pointed out that to you, it might seem like there is some deep relationship between you and the artist because you have been listening to them for a decade or so but they have only known you for those two seconds and its best to make the right impression. They’re people, just like the “rest of us” they just happen to make great music.

Rant aside, at this point things begin to get a little hazy. People began to flood the area and everything becomes confusing now. I do remember talking to Claus from Intromental Management (they were here because Wuthering Heights and Prototype were here playing, the latter at the preparty) and thanking him for hooking me up with the Michael Kammeyer interview before jetting. Me and the crew stuck around for a bit more and talked to Kevin from Adagio for about twenty minutes before heading off to the hotel at about one in the morning. We hung out in the lobby for a couple of hours and Yan filled me in even more about Avian. For those of you that don’t know, this is his project that he started after witnessing Gamma Ray at Prog Power III. Lance King lays down the vocals, his band mate Jonah did the keyboards, and Dave Ellefson did session bass tracks. From the four songs that I heard throughout the course of the weekend I can say that this will make quite an impact when it is finally released. The songs are all in very different styles that range from traditional metal, to electronic fused Power Metal, melodic hard rock, and almost Broadwayish in the chorus on the albums title track. I hear the doors to the hotel chime and I see Adagio walk in but I am so tired right now I can barely see. Noah’s already passed out asleep which was a shame cos he really wanted to meet Stephan and there he was literally one foot away from him. Steen comes in at this time and we just say what the hell, lets get some sleep. After some more metal discussions (hey, I’m starved for these here at home so when I’m around other real metalheads, I am always talking. Why do nothing when you can be doing something?) I finally hit the bed at three thirty in the morning with the days events spinning through my sleep deprived mind all the while hoping that Jonah makes it in the next day.