FINGER LAKES METAL FEST was once again a great success! With each passing year this thing just gets better. This year’s event was no exception. We tried a few new things and we learned a lot. Next year will be even better and the ideas are already flyin’.

I want to thank everyone involved.

Those of you who came out and rocked your asses off to these fantastic bands, your kick ass! I saw a lot of throw down, moshing and head-banging. I also saw a lot of people staying out of the way of the throw down kids, lol. I also saw a lot of people buying shirts and CDs from the bands and its great to see so much support for the artists at this event each year.

A tremendous thanks goes to the bands that came out and donated their time and talent to this cause! Every band did an awesome job and really kept the people moving! You guys all deserve a standing ovation! Every band gave a great performance.
TONIGHT WE FEED
MERCIA
FLOOR OF EYES
HORSEFACE
LOWKEY
A THOUSAND SHADES OF COLD
NORTH WIND
HEROD
CAGED
BREAK THE SILENCE
DESCENDING ANGEL
AWAKEN (formerly known as LAZEROUS)
GOD SIZE HATE
WARBLADE
CURSED FROM BIRTH
And last but not least, my guys in SPATER
You guys all RULE!

With very few minor exceptions, everyone had a great time. The traffic in and out of the venue was pretty steady. Some of the faces changed as Saturday night rolled on and the attendance was estimated at around 350 for that day. That’s a success in my book!

We were off to great start Sunday. This was a much better start than last year, but I guess we should have done the guitar raffle a little later because it seemed as though a lot of folks left right after the drawings.

Congratulations to Darrin Greening of Varrick, NY for winning the ARIA PE-STUDIO and Chuck Knarr of Fayette, NY for winning the ARIA XX-2. May you rock long and hard with your new guitars!

A special thanks must go out to all the sponsors for this event. It would be a lot harder to pull this off without their help.
Number one, Dale Titus and ARIA USA for going above and beyond any expectations with not only sponsoring monetarily but also by putting up a guitar towards the raffle. It made a difference and we will do another ARIA guitar raffle next year! We’re gonna put ARIA guitars on top in these parts!
The Great House Of Guitars
Rossi Music
Pritchard Amps
Area records and Music
Speno Music
Dave Pirro Ford
Reaper Customs
The Living Collection (mobile petting zoo)
Drag’N Den
A Fast Nickel Beats A Slow Dime (novelties)

I also want to thank Joe Angelo for all the help on such short notice! You were a life saver!

We have put some photos in our “FLMF 2010” folder on our myspace page (myspace.com/fingerlakesmetalfest)(http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.c ... Id=1650622. We would love to see your photos too. Please let us know about them if you have uploaded them to any of your sites, tag us or better yet, email them to us at flmetalfest@spaterrock.com!

We will be putting up some videos soon as well so stay tuned, maybe you’ll see yourself in action!
Keep it METAL!

Dave Henninger
SPATER
&
FINGER LAKES METAL FEST!

Now that the dust has settled and I have had a little time....
Okay, FINGER LAKES METAL FEST 2010 was indeed a success. With an estimated 350 people showing up on Saturday (May 29), the place ROCKED! Turnout was earlier than previous years, but the audience was a little mellower than one would expect from this size crowd, but many said it was just too hot to really let it rip.
Throughout the day there were people of all ages rockin’ to their hearts content. With bands like TONIGHT WE FEED and MERCIA playing the hardcore/2 step/screamo metal kicking things off, the moshers were ready early and the throw down (as its called) was in full swing right off the bat.
As the day eased in, bands like FLOOR OF EYES and LOWKEY had the slightly older fans attention as they belted out their brands of heavy metal and hard-core music.
While bands like HORSEFACE and A THOUSAND SHADES OF COLD seemed to appeal to virtually all metal head types with their middle-of-the-road, not-to-soft and not-too-extreme melodic metal.
By the time SPATER hit the stage, the place seemed ready to burst as members of the audience shouted and clamored to the stage. From my perspective from the stage, it was great to see a literal wall of people standing in front of me banging their heads in unison. That’s what its all about for me, it was a real blast and we can’t tell you how much we appreciated everyone’s enthusiasm when it was our turn to play.
Arguably the most interesting band of the evening was the band NORTH WIND. Their “Viking” metal was really cool with operatic style singing mixed in with hard-core screaming (all coming from one woman) it was cool, even though it did seem to tone things down a bit.
HEROD came on after that and won the crowd over with relative ease as they put on a great old-school almost thrash show. They were very energetic and really seemed to make the most out of being a part of this event.
By the end of the night, things were pretty crazy and ending the evening with the cage dancers of CAGED it only stood to reason. CAGED is your basic cover band, playing all the current radio friendly metal hits, they had the cage dancers to really change the mood of the place. Honestly, I don’t think we could have ended the night with a better show. In previous years the last band always seemed to get the shaft by the crowd, but with what this band had to offer, the crowd changed to a more mature audience and there was no problem keeping everyone’s attention.

Sunday was off to a great start. Early on there were a lot more people than the Sunday portion of last year’s event. Still all in all, it was lacking compared to the day before.
The band BREAK THE SILENCE came out and took the audience by the throat. I was surprised at how well these kids worked the crowd. With a 14 year old drummer and his 16 year old guitarist brother, along with a couple high school friends, they put on a great show and had the kids back in the pit with their brand of hard-core/2 step metal with some surprising soloing which is all but unheard of from most bands of this genre.
DESCENDING ANGEL came on after and showed that they could put on a good show as well with some all purpose metal. They had a more classic approach to metal, but still maintained a serious “now” sound with high energy and one heck of a guitarist, throwing down some serious shredding. They were kind enough too to fill in for AUDIOBURN who were a no-call, no-show, by extending their set on a last minute notice. Thanks goes to them for being so gracious.
Once again it was SPATER’s turn. By this time there was a pretty decent crowd, still not nearly as many people who showed up the day before. We did the first ARIA guitar raffle drawing just before our set and the ARIA PE-STUDIO went to a very happy Darrin Greening. We played our set to a very friendly audience and followed it with the drawing for the ARIA XX-2. This guitar was won by Chuck Knarr.
Looking back, I think we may have done the drawing too soon as most people left shortly after that.
The next 4 bands were really great and featured some of the best guitarist of this year’s event, but unfortunately, they played to the smallest crowd of the weekend.
They were all good sports and put on fantastic shows despite the low turnout.
GOD SIZE HATE threw down a set worthy of any big show, and the lead guitarist was amazing. Their music seemed to be a mix of old-school thrash and modern metal, melted together to make a unique brand of kick ass.
LAZEROUS, who officially changed their name that day to AWAKEN played a far more progressive style metal in the vein of QUEESRYCHE and DREAM THEATRE. Once again, the lead guitarist was something to behold and the two guitarists’ often put together some very impressive harmonies.
WARBLADE paid no attention to crowd size. They got on stage, tore it up with their version of death metal and went outside to play football just minutes after they were done like it was all just a part of their play time.
Lastly, CURSED FROM BIRTH, who were invited back by popular demand from last year came on. The crowd did pick up a bit for them. This year they had an additional guitarist. They threw it down with fury, speed/death metal to the hilt.
After all was said and done, this year was definitely the best so far. We learned some things and got a few ideas of how we might do things differently next year.
Trying to figure out why Sunday is always the weaker day at FLMF, we talked to quite a few people who said they just couldn’t hold up for two whole days of this. Many said they stayed around their tents or homes just trying to recover from the night before and only began to stir late in the afternoon. Others said because it was a holiday weekend they had family events to attend to (don’t understand why they couldn’t bring their families to metal fest…..kidding).
One thing we may do differently next year is have all bands perform on the same day, with two stages, and leave Sunday as a day of rest.
We will definitely do another guitar raffle. That was fun and really made a difference.
So, now the dust has settled and we’ve got other business to tend to, but we are already working on how we are going to make next year event better.
Thanks to all who came, thanks to the bands who played and thanks to all the great sponsors!
Thanks,
Dave Henninger
FLMF
SPATER