Out East - Part III, Baltimore Day I

Preface.
I have written a considerable amount about my trip to Baltimore that includes interesting stuff(I hope) for people from all walks of life, whether your a traveller, foodie, beer snob, or metal head. So I have decided to split the trips blog post into four posts on the four days we were there. I still have not got my camera back up and running so all the images are Instagram photos from my feed.

I am not going to flood my blog with videos of the bands from the festival, but I will include links at the bottom to the some YouTube videos. Check them out if you please.


Enjoy!

Day One.
On the 23rd of May my friend Andrew, my brother, and I drove down to Baltimore Maryland for the biggest heavy metal party of the year, Maryland Death Fest XI(MDFXI)


We got our tickets for the four day festival half a year in advance and booked a hotel at the Marriott Inner Harbor near Camden Yards through a deals site. The hotel was extremely nice for what we paid and it was in not a terrible location.

The drive down from Ottawa took about 10 hours with stops, a little bit of construction, and driving through Baltimore during rush hour trying to find the hotel. The drive itself was quite scenic with the highway through most of New York and Pennsylvania being high up in the mountains looking down into valleys. The drive through southern Pennsylvania and Maryland was really nice with old farms and British colonial architecture and forests thick with oak and vine. 
 

Only trouble with the drive was that I was very hungover, and as soon as I saw the water of the St. Lawrence below us on the Ambassador Bridge I could not keep the contents of my stomach down, but it we all laughed, I felt better and it gave us a great story to take home. 

 

Thursday night was the first night of the festival and we saw Pallbearer and Bolt Thrower play. the festival took place at the Former Sonar Compound which essentially is a massive night club that they shut down two adjacent streets for three outdoor stages.

Its a very unique atmosphere as most festivals I have been too are in large expansive fields, but this was on the streets, downtown, amongst old industrial warehouses full of character. The entrance was perhaps the most unique, a parking lot, under an overpass with plenty of tailgating and homeless people selling dollar beers.
 

This was second time I have seen Bolt Thrower and it was quite amazing again. They had some sound problems and had to cut the set short. But it was still really rad.

Overall it was relatively tame night and we headed back to our hotel.

Bolt Thrower - Killchain Live