Let me begin by saying that my buddies at Live Evil Promotions put together this weekend of Heavy Metal madness in Kansas City and I was glad to be there. About a week before the show I got a call from them, asking if I could help out shuttling bands from the airport etc and of corpse I said yes. Friday consisted of picking up TWELFTH GATE at 11:30 take them to the hotel and then go on a Kansas City BBQ quest before having to go get LEATHERWOLF from the airport.

The unique thing about Friday night was that the venue has an outdoor stage and there were local bands playing out there alternating with the first few bands that were playing inside. While I didn't find them very entertaining since they were all Black or Death rooted, it was a cool idea to get some extra people in the door. The first band that played inside was THE ARRET ZONE, one of the bands I really wanted to see, alas we were late arriving and missed them.

MEATSHANK were also playing and like the last time I saw them I just cant get into them for some reason. SEVENTH CALLING from Minnesota brought the god damn Prog Metal domination to the stage immediately there after. They were fucking great a sound that in my opinion was very much like SYMPHONY X with some PAGAN'S MIND thrown in for good measure. They also pretty good control over the crowd getting them semi-involved even though what they play isn't really Kansas City's bread and butter.

Next up were those motherfuckers from California LEATHERWOLF who were pretty nice to chat with, but I preferred to let their performance do the talking however. While some in audience thought they were too Glam for them, I thought they fucking owned. The triple guitar attack was pretty sweet when they decided to unleash that, which wasn't every song like I was anticipating. I was actually anticipating an additional guitar player rather then Michael playing guitar and singing. The synchronized guitar swings were sweet and trading of solos just a little behind that. I am not overly familiar with their material, but I did recognize Dr. Wicked which was fricking awesome. My only big gripe with them was their merch table. Their most recent album New World Asylum is a rerecording of World Asylum which featured now ex-singer Wade Black, anyway my gripe was that World Asylum was missing. I don't think that is right, lots of bands change singers and still support the other ones. Though I guess you won't find Virtual XI on sale at an IRON MAIDEN concert, but I think that might be a different circumstance altogether.

Due to total exhaustion from getting up at 8 am to be at the airport on time, running around with TWELFTH GATE in the afternoon, and then the drinking and loud music just wore me out so me and the GATE-ians went back to the hotel and missed AVENGER OF BLOOD. I wanted to stay particularly since their drummer was incredibly nice and chatted with me before their set and it ended up we knew some of the same people from Minnesota even though they are from Las Vegas.