Turn on the Power: Traditional Heavy Metal Ruled at Frost and Fire Festival

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Turn on the Power: Traditional Heavy Metal Ruled at Frost and Fire Festival

We journeyed out to Ventura, CA to find out why people are still so obsessed with old-school heavy metal thunder

Over the weekend of October 7-9, the baby boomers made the long exodus out into the California desert to watch the sun set on the last survivors of the Summer of Love. More a fitting bookend to Woodstock than any of the subsequent festivals bearing that name, Desert Trip may as well have been a wake, a blowout celebration (at $1500 a head) of undeniably brilliant artists from a time and a genre that is, for all intents and purposes, as dead as half the original members of the bands on the bill.

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That same weekend, 130 miles west of the Empire Polo Club, diehard "traditional metal" fans gathered to pay tribute to their own heroes in the beachside town of Ventura. Whereas everyone in the world knows the six acts on Desert Trip, I would be legitimately surprised if even one of the 75,000 attendees at "Oldchella" had heard of any of the bands at the second year of the Frost and Fire festival. And yet, the obscure legacy acts headlining the three-night metal event meant just as much to the thousand attendees who crammed into the Bombay Club and the (self-described) majestic Ventura Theater – attendees ranging from kids going to their first concert ever to someone who went to highschool with headliners Cirith Ungol, and hailing from locales as diverse as Kansas City and the UK.

The difference between the two events? Frost and Fire II featured a surprising variety of current, vital acts playing the same style of music alongside their heroes. Metal fans tend to be an atavistic bunch (one of night one's headliners, Slough Feg, even have an album called Atavism), and many of the performers on the bill sounded like they could've recorded their debut albums in 1983 right alongside old school originals on the bill like Omen, Thrust, or Grim Reaper.

Still, it's not just about the young bands copying their influences. It's about building off what's already there. As Visigoth singer Jake Rogers (whose battle vest contains almost no real estate not covered by patches) puts it, "It's timeless. There's something about a certain vocal line resolving over a certain chord progression, and it gives you a feeling in your chest, like you can conquer the fucking world. It doesn't matter whether a band is doing it now or was doing it then.  If it's done the right way, with pure intentions, and it's not fashion metal, if it's the real deal – and fans of the genre are pretty good at detecting that – with the elements of music that it was founded on and are still being employed, it'll never stop giving fans of the genre that certain feeling. That's why it can be as exciting now as it was then. That's also why I don't like the term retro. Retro implies a fashion sensibility. Traditional implies just a band that is looking at its roots and using it to move forward."

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The second, central day of the fest, held at the Ventura Theater, showcased exactly what could be done using those same basic building blocks. Spellcaster started things off with a more mystical brand of New Wave of British Heavy Metal, but despite his totally sweet wizard's cloak (and some great songs), their singer missed his charisma roll. Axxion, on the other hand, certainly made an impression by donning what their guitarist, "Sir Shred," dubbed "Power Suits," which were basically a cross between David Lee Roth's spandex outfits and Borat's banana hammock. Their high energy made up for their lack of Playgirl-ready physiques.

Heavier than the preceding bands, fest veterans Visigoth found a fanbase ready and waiting for them. Having witnessed them play to a sparse gathering last year at The Complex in Glendale, I wasn't expecting the entire crowd to sing along to their epic metal anthems like "The Dungeon Master." And yet, the audience treated them like they were Iron Maiden.

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High Spirits (lyrical themes: rocking, being in high spirits, love), masterminded by Dawnbringer's Chris Black, brought a hard-rocking, catchy positivity to the proceedings, providing a nice contrast to Visigoth's darker sound. Talking to High Spirits touring bassist Bobby Scott later, I discovered a possible reason for the crowd's enthusiastic response: it's a small scene, and its adherents can be incredibly passionate about it. "[Traditional metal fans] live for it. They plan their whole year around what fest they're going to go to, anywhere in the world. I mean, I've seen so many people that I've seen in New York, in Germany, in Montréal – really, I'd love to know just how big the diehard metal scene is, because I see the same hundred plus people all over at every fest we play at." Still, that works out pretty well for him. According to Scott, "I played in punk bands and rockabilly bands for years, and metal fans don't want to burn a CD, they want the artwork, they want to support the bands. They don't care how many T-shirts they have. Some people buy two shirts of the same thing. Metal fans love to collect their merch – which is great, because it's really hard to tour these days."

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Local LA DJ and Born for Burning​ promoter Kim Galdamez agrees with that assessment. "The thing about this community is, there's really no incentive to be involved in something like this. It's not going to make you rich, it's not going to make you famous. You are genuinely here because you love this. And that's what it is with metal. You spend all your money and you fucking love this and it makes you happy and there's this sense of family at the end of the day. Look at my friend Jordan here, she's from Canada and we're staying together, and so many people this weekend – it's like international friends coming together, that's what festivals do, and that's what this festival does for so many people."

Festival organizer Jarvis Leatherby is also the singer/bassist for Night Demon, who played next. The power trio recalled Motorhead in formation and sound, although rooted in the NWOBHM instead of 50s rock 'n' roll. They also recalled Motorhead in their ability to put on one hell of a rock show.

Leatherby sees the role of the festival as a unifying one. "I love heavy metal, and the fans of heavy metal are the most dedicated of any music genre. There's always going to be the need and the want for people to want to see classic bands, old-school bands together on a bill, but my main motivation behind the festival is to carry the torch of heavy metal into the future. At my festivals, you'll see a lot of younger, newer bands. Lemmy's dead, unfortunately – bands are getting older, people pass away. The fans need something to move them into the future."

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Of course, there's still a place for those classic bands. After White Wizzard –  whose wacky Halloween costumes couldn't hide sloppy playing – came the surprise performance of the evening, from a group that barely got any attention the first time around. Mindless Sinner (lyrical themes "Occult, Women, Love, Metal"), Swedish also-rans from the early 80s, proved from their electrifying first US performance that they sincerely merited a second look. Their Master of Evil EP and Turn on the Power full-length made zero impact back in the day, but as with Visigoth, the audience knew every word to every song.

Will Palmer, current bassist for NWOBHM legends Angel Witch and proprietor of seriously awesome traditional metal label Bad Omen, has a pretty good theory as to why there's been such a renaissance for those bands. "I'm 43, so this is what I know, what I grew up on. It's natural for me. I think there are so many older styles that are seeing rebirth purely because you can find whatever you want on the Internet, and you can learn the history very quickly and get a good record collection, you can get the right clothes. And you can immerse yourself in it without having to spend 20 years collecting. So I think there's a lot of young kids that hear Iron Maiden, and next thing you know, they're obsessed with Witchfynde or Jaguar. And they live it. And when they form a band, that's what it sounds like, and the whole thing explodes from there. It's a ripple effect."

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Christer Carlson, Mindless Sinner's bassist, is grateful just for the opportunity. "We got to pinch our arms just to believe that we are here. It's a dream come true. We are doing the gigs we should've done in the 80s that we never got the opportunity to do… A lot of these fans weren't born when the albums were done. It's weird and it's beautiful."

Midnight (lyrical themes: "blasphemy, Hell, metal, Satan, sex") brought some welcome filth to the bill next, their style more indebted to gnarly first wave black metal acts like Venom and Hellhammer. After their set ended with frontman Athenar climbing a speaker bank and then smashing his guitar and throwing it into the audience, it was time for the absolutely legendary Cirith Ungol's first performance in 25 years (ironically enough, on the same stage as their final performance in 1991).

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It's hard to explain why Cirith Ungol attained such revered status. It's objectively ugly music, between the raw production values of their recorded work and Tim Baker's polarizing screech. Still, there's no other band quite like them, the darkness and doom balanced out by neoclassical melodies and strangely funky basslines (the latter handled by Leatherby for the reunion show). People flew in from all over the world to see the band. They weren't disappointed.

Over the course of 90 minutes, the Ventura-based act crunched through songs from their entire catalog, including the recently-reissued Paradise Lost and the bulk of capital-c Classic King of the Dead. Baker's shrieks somehow held up after all those years, and the rest of the lineup brought their very best (even drummer Robert Garven, who Leatherby informs me hadn't even touched a pair of drumsticks since the band's initial dissolution). The reaction was rapturous, a vindication for a perennially misunderstood group (as is the fact that the city of Ventura named October 10 Cirith Ungol Day in honor of their contributions to music).

As the triumphant final gong notes rang out across the theater, the attendees straggled back to their cars and hotels. Some would return the following day for a Cirith Ungol signing session, metal flea market, DJ sets, and a few more bands. Whichever day you attended, though, you would find a crowd of welcoming metalheads, passionate about the music and excited to share it with kindred spirits. And if the genre itself could speak, Frost and Fire II made it clear that its words would be the chorus of one of Cirith Ungol's classic tunes: "I'm alive!" Photos by Adam L. Murray Jeff Treppel is keeping the faith on Twitter.