Date: Tuesday, May 18th, 2004
Location: Pound in San Francisco, California
Opening Bands:

Finally a show where the bands did not suck, but the sound controller did!  It wasn't until Vital Remains came on the stage that it was the best it had been all night, and even then it was not perfect.

Watch Me Burn took the stage first.  What's this, the vocalist a female with bright pink hair, and the guitarist with long dreadlocks, we figured this band wasn't going to be good.  Well we were correct and wrong.  The vocalist (Sawa) was awesome but the rest of the band was bad.  Sawa screamed into the microphone with such intensity that it got our attention, but then we heard the guitarist, bassist and drummer and it ruined the band.  What she needs to do now is find a band that plays Black Metal as that is what her vocals can do.  If it wasn't for her we would not have watched their entire set, but we did.  We think that others in the crowd also recognized the talent of the singer.

Cattle Decapitation next was on next.  This is the second time we have seen them (last time was November 8th, 2003) and again they did not disappoint us and everyone else in the crowd.  They got the crowd into a frenzy playing songs from their previous releases and from their upcoming release 'Humanure' out July 13th, 2004.  Travis Ryan was again singing his head off and the rest of the band did what they do best.  Too bad the sound guy had it all wrong.

Black Dahlia Murder took the stage.  We had listened to a couple of their songs before and at that time we were not too keen on them.  But we listened to their set anyway and still we did not like them.  However their was a lot of fans in the crowd that did like them and so they took advantage of this live presentation of the band.  Personally I would have put this band onstage before Cattle Decapitation, but oh well.

Vital Remains took the stage at 10:45 and they had a surprise in store for us, although Patrick was given a hint earlier in the day, and the surprise was that Glen Benton (Deicide) was the vocalist.  Glen came on stage and did the first song with a mask on but if you know what Glen sounds like and looks like (minus the face) then you could figure it out anyway even if you did not know it was him previously.  Wow, what a surprise and did they disappoint us, no they did not!  Glen was his normal self (minus the Jack Daniels bottle on stage) and the rest of the band took upon themselves to have us worship the band, and we did.  Although they did not play a long set they did destroy us with the onslaught of their instruments and vocals.  We cannot remember the exact songs they played but of course all the songs that Vital Remains have are good.  The last song of the night was interesting, it was Deicide's 'Lunatic Of God's Creation'.  Since we saw Deicide last year (twice) and others in the crowd were also Deicide fans, this was an absolutely fantastic show.  It was as if we were watching and listening to Deicide and Vital remains at the same time.  It was again a short set and that disappointed us, but what we did get was fantastic.  We spent most of our time up front getting kicked and hit by the pit behind us and stage divers going on to the stage and returning.  The sound guy had finally gotten his act together but he could have done better.

After leaving this show we look back and both agree that we were not disappointed with the evenings event.  The first band surprised us, the second band did not, the third band did what we thought they would and the headliner did what they do and did it well.

Written by:  Steven Ansell and Patrick O'Connor