IMMORTAL FESTIVAL, PART 1: Concert Review

IMMORTAL FESTIVAL, PART 1, 2024

BMI Event Center, Versailles, OH 7/26-28/24

by Chris Gatto

Photography by Chad Fenner of Concert Fotos

Destination: BMI Event Center in Versailles, Ohio. Owner Steve Barhorst has turned this one time dirt bike racetrack into a world class venue. And out of his heart and vision was birthed Immortal. Immortal festival is a gathering of the faithful, those lovers of God whose chosen language is rock and heavy metal. There is of course music, but also community, outreach, spiritual growth, and prayer. We do not take these things for granted. Treat each trip like it could be the only one. Again this year, the festival was split into two parts. The first over the last weekend in July, and the second happening over Labor Day. Here is my overview of part 1.

DAY 1:

Day one of the festival opened with Dayton, OH’s WEAPONS OF GOD for their first Immortal performance. Weapons is: Steve McGowan on guitars and vocals, Leon Black on guitars and vocals, Ed Girard on bass, and Jason Harmon on drums. The opening tunes were “Glory and Power” and “Heaven Can’t Wait,” from the band’s Roxx Records debut, the former with Steve singing being somewhat Kiss inspired and the latter with Leon singing being more edgy and Pantera vibed. “Give Em Jesus” kicked off a batch of four songs from the second Weapons album The War Within Us and a little message by Steve during “Children of the Light.” “Feign Dimension” is more thrash oriented, and then came “Knights of No Tomorrow,” before the band closed with their theme song about the armor of God: “Weapons of God” from their debut. The band is part classic metal (Kiss, Van Halen) and part groove metal (Pantera, Seventh Angel, Eternal Decision), but all guitar attack.

Also performing for their first time at Immortal was Peoria, IL’s INNERSIEGE. The band plays a brand of power metal/ traditional metal since 2008 and is made up of: Jeremy Ray on vocals, Kevin Grose and J.L.Prater on guitars, Ravn Furfjord (Antestor, Froshardr) on bass, and Wade “Sushi King” Helm on drums.The band opened with the fantasy-oriented “Dragon Rider” from their 2012 Roxx Records debut Kingdom of Shadows. The bulk of their setlist all comes from their 2020 Qumran/No Dust Records album Fury of Ages. “Echoes into Eternity,” then Jeremy’s reminder to be salt and light in a “World of Darkness,” then “FireWind,” the blazing instrumental “Iron Lotus,” “Reborn,” Jeremy speaking about the need to humble ourselves as a nation and pray before “Hero,” and the anthemic “Power.Metal.Glory.” Encores were “Children of Winter” and “Excuses” from the debut.

OK’s CHAOTIC RESEMBLANCE may look like glam rockers, but they quickly make it clear that they are all about Jesus. The band, made up of Travis McConell, Logan “LA” Lewis, and James Stolhammer, played almost exclusively songs from their 2022 album Nazirites. The band opened with “Surrender,” followed by “Passover Prophecy,” and the western “Quick and the Dead,” where they implored of the audience- Are you baptized in red?, next played ”Driven,” cried out to hide us from the “Wrath of the Lamb,” declared No compromise for “The Nazirite,” played “Altar,” worshipped “Fairest Jesus” and ended in “Jesus is King” before Travis prayed and preached the gospel. As always with this band- hard hitting music and hard-hitting message.

IN’s THE PROTEST is made up of Josh Bramlet on vocals, Jarob Bramlet on drums, and T.J. Colwell, and Adam Sadler on guitars. The hard rock/metal band started with a B.O.C. Godzilla intro, and opened with “Paper Tiger” and “Straight from the Barrel,” before Josh stopped to speak. They played “What Else You Got” and “Showdown,” announced a crowdfunding campaign for a new album before “Dying Breath,” harassed T.J. about his upcoming nuptials, promoted an anti-sex trafficking ministry, encouraged those suffering from depression, proclaimed I don’t do it for the money with “Greater,” screamed their “Legacy,” bid the fans “Welcome to the Freakshow,” closed with a new song “Take It Back,” and then played “Noise Revolution” for an encore.

SPOKEN should have been the headliner for night one, but they were a cancellation due to a family emergency. Our prayers go out for the band and family members.

DAY 2:

Saturday brought the highly anticipated STOP THE BLEEDING tribute to Tourniquet. Fans criss-crossed the country to be in attendance. Two fans from Costa Rica who played on the Central American Tribute to Tourniquet flew in to be there as well. After a classical intro with snippets of sound effects from a couple tunes, the band tore into “Test for Leprosy” and “Ark of Suffering” from Stop the Bleeding, before introducing the band – which is made up of singer Guy Ritter (1990-93), guitarist Gary Lenaire (1990-96), singer Luke Easter (1993-2015), guitarist Neal Swanson, bassist Anna Sentina (Flood), and drums ably handled by Devin Chaulk (Haste the Day). Next was “Phantom Limb,” from album #3 and then a medley of songs from the first 3 albums, culminating with the incredible instrumental “Viento Borascasso.” Gary gave a little sermon, then introduced Luke Easter, who launched into “Vanishing Lessons,” “Acid Head,” and “Pecking Order” from Vanishing Lessons. Both Guy and Luke returned to stage for the encore: “Broken Chromosomes,” from Psycho Surgery and then “Pathogenic Ocular Dissonance,” which ends in hilarity when their sound gets cut mid song due to going overtime. Chance of a lifetime to see these musical greats on stage together for the first time ever.

REIGN OF GLORY is built around guitarist Nick Layton (Firewolfe) and bassist extraordinaire Roger Dale Martin (Vengeance, Die Happy, Emerald, Holy Right.) They were joined on their debut album a couple years ago by master drummer Jim Chaffin (The Crucified, The Blamed, Deliverance, etc.) and the return of the soaring vocals of Robyn Kyle Basuri (Joshua, Die Happy, Red Sea.) When Reign of Glory was booked for Immortal last year, Robyn Kyle declined to play live, and Luke Easter (Tourniquet, solo) put in an excellent guest vocal appearance. With Luke playing in Stop the Bleeding and Jim with Deliverance, the band was filled out by Jeff McCormack (Les Carlsen) on drums and guest vocals by Steve Braun (Siloam, Halcyon Way.) There was no indication whether this arrangement was temporary or permanent. The band delivered, though. All songs were from the band’s Roxx Records debut. “Forever and Ever” came roaring out of the gate like an 80’s pop metal anthem, then we got the in-your-face modern “How’d we get in this mess?” lyrics of “Welcome to Reality,” “Last Daze,”and we see the guitar hero side of Nick Layton in “Rise of Aslan.” In “Love Came to Die,” we get a ballad, albeit about Christ’s sacrifice for us, and a few words about depression and suicide awareness before “Edge of Night,” Nick laying down a metallized guitar hymn instrumental leading into the excellent “Samson’s Kryptonite,” followed by “Writing on the Wall,” “Calling Down the Thunder,”and “1000 Years.”

HUMAN CODE proves that cats have 9 lives. A musician can only hope to have a “life” playing in a famous band. These “cats” have done that in several noteworthy bands each and continue to create new, relevant music together. George Ochoa (Recon, Deliverance) formed Worldview with Rey Parra (Sacred Warrior, Deny the Fallen). Worldview released one album The Chosen Few in 2015 (George confided that there is more Worldview music in the works and the band is slated for Immortal, Part 2 this year). A later version of Worldview had Michael (Lee) Drive (Barren Cross, Galeforce) as vocalist. This lineup seems to have morphed into Human Code with its own signature musical sound. Human Code is Michael (Lee) Drive on vocals, George Ochoa on guitars, Todd Libby (Worldview) on bass, and Terry “The Animal” Russell (Holy Soldier, Neon Cross, D.O.G.) on drums. The band is celebrating the recent release of their debut Break the Silence on Girder Records and announced that they would be performing the album track by track as it appears on the album. Title track “Break the Silence” opened the show with some energy. “Say What You Mean” continued with a tune exploring how hard a thing it is to tame the tongue. For the ballad “Rain,” Toddy Libby slid over to keyboards and Mike’s Barren Cross bandmate Jim LaVerde guested on bass guitar. “Genetic Dysfunction” is a harder edged song with some poignant lyrics. Next was “Don’t Kill the Messenger,” with a bouncy rhythm and a video to match. The middle Eastern-centric “Evermore“ is arguably the showpiece of the album. The piano led “40 Seconds” is strangely about an astronaut that goes to outer space, never to return. The harder edged “Socially Incorrect” is a scathing retort to the political correctness creeping into every aspect of our world. Mike introduces the band before the classy ballad “Blame Me” (or Rain, part II as Michael called it) and closing with “Lying Whispers.”

DELIVERANCE is a band needing no introduction. Beginning in 1985 in southern California, the band essentially is singer Jimmy Brown II. In fact, if you saw Deliverance last year, you saw a different lineup this year. This time around, Deliverance is Jimmy Brown II on vocals and guitars, George Ochoa (Recon, Worldview, Human Code) on guitars, Manny Morales on bass, newcomer Dan Corona on guitars, and Jim Chaffin (The Crucified, The Blamed, etc.) on the skins. The band opened with the thrash classic “If You Will” from its debut before fixing some sound issues and continuing with the debut with “The Call.” Jimmy then introduced the band before hitting up album #2 with “This Present Darkness” and title track “Stay of Execution” from the album of the same name. Manny’s bass solo led into “Learn,” also a title track from the album of the same name. Jimmy bantered with fans yelling out song requests, gave Stop the Bleeding a little love, and then launched into “Belltown,” from River Disturbance. Jimmy coaxed the big D into the seconds-long “Cheeseburger Maker Du” from What A Joke, before playing the poignant title track “River Disturbance,”a vocal snippet of “Speckled Bird” from Deliverance’s demo Greetings of Death, and then returning to the shred fest anthems “Flesh and Blood” and “Weapons of Our Warfare” from Weapons… and the self-titled album foran extended version of“No Time,” which humorously had newbie Dan Corona singing the impossibly high parts of the chorus.Jimmy then announced that they were out of time, and had cut two songs from their setlist. So glad to hear songs from the big D’s thrash canon, as well as their progressive era, both being essentials.

Sunday’s headliner was THEOCRACY, world class prog/power metal band started by Matt Smith, who started the band as a one man enterprise for the first album in 2003. The band is currently comprised of Matt on vocals, Jonathan Hinds on guitars, Jared Oldham on bass, Ernie Topran on drums, and newcomer Taylor Washington on guitars. Opener was the lengthy “I Am,” from the band’s 3^rd album As the World Bleeds. Last year when Theocracy played Immortal, they played “Return to Dust” as a taste of their upcoming album Mosaic, this year it was just the first of many songs from the new album sprinkled throughout their set. “30 Pieces of Silver” returned to As the World Bleeds.

Next song “Mosaic” is the title track off the new album, before again returning to album #3 for “Master Storyteller.” If you’re seeing a pattern now- a song from the 3^rd album and then one from the 5th- you got it. Back to the new album for “Liar, Fool, or Messiah,” before coming back to As the World Burns for “Gift of Music,” and then back to new album for “Flicker,” where new guitarist Taylor’s contributions really shine. Now we break the formula for the title track from album #4 Ghost Ship, return to the new album for “Anonymous,” and then the long playing favorite “Laying the Demon to Rest” from album #2 Mirror of Souls became the perfect encore. One of the great things about Immortal has been hearing some of the performers put out new music, and here was a prime opportunity to hear more than half of Theocracy’s new album performed live. Matt Smith’s insightful lyrics and melodic vocals, along with the band’s ability to go from 0-60 in about 2 seconds just proves comparisons to Germany’s Blind Guardian are well founded. What a way to end the concert portion of the festival!

DAY 3:

Sunday morning a good portion of the audience returned to BMI for SANCTUARY WORSHIP. A good portion of US churches incorporate modern rock worship these days, but it was a real treat to see and experience what a metal church service might look like. The band was top notch, ably led by Jim LaVerde (Barren Cross, Trytan). They did a set of metallized worship songs, including Sacred Warrior’s version of “Holy, Holy, Holy” that involved male and female vocals, even death metal growls, headbanging, and helicoptering (swinging your long hair around in a circle). Special guest Michael Drive (Human Code) did a rendition of his band’s ballad “Rain,” and then he and Jim LaVerde (Barren Cross) played the acoustic song “Light the Flame” from their Rock for the King debut. Pastor Bob from Sanctuary gave a sermon and then gave some updates- notably that Sanctuary will be launching an Intense Worship record company and that there will be a Sanctuary 40^th anniversary metal festival at BMI next summer. And then everyone said their goodbyes and parted ways to make the long way home.

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