What Happened Next

(This continues from this)

When you pack a whole lot of awesomeness into one night, chronology loses it's significance. The exact order of events has been forgotten, but however it occurred, it was awesome anyway. We went to the gig, super excited to see all of The Dead Will Tell guys again, and also curious to meet the Brand New Guitarist, and the Guest Vocalist. Also, with Kill The Messenger being The Dead Will Tell's favourite band, we were convinced that they had to be good, and it just added to the excitement. With such a line up, the night could only be Epic.

This being Grahamstown, you know everyone that is there that is from Grahamstown. Therefore the band people are easy to pick out. Although, Band People always are. We recognised The Dead Will Tell guys (well the ones that we knew) straight away, but as previously arranged we decided to not act completely like the creepy-stalker-fan-girls that we are, and wait for them to come say hello to us first. So we walked right past them and pretended to just watch the band without even noticing them.


For some reason people think we are cool. For some reason, band people think we are cool (maybe the creepy-stalker-fan-girl thing actually works for us). So Lloyd (bassist for TDWT) came up to us, tapped Sharlene on the shoulder and said "Hi!" holding out his arms in a "good to see you" type of way.

"Hey!" said Sharlene, giving him a hug. They exchanged pleasantries in a "I AM TALKING VERY LOUDLY BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE BANGING INSTRUMENTS AND SCREAMING THROUGH SPEAKERS INTO MY EARS AND I CANNOT HEAR YOU" type of way. Then Sharlene asked the all-important question, "who's your new guitarist?"

"Benj, over there." He replied, pointing to a tall skinny-jean-clad guy hiding behind long hair. Sharlene turned and waved, but Benjamin, having misesd the fact that Sharlene's attention was turned on him by Lloyd's directing, and not knowing who we are, did not know how to respond to some random girl waving at him in a crowd, and an awkward moment ensued.

"So, um," turning back to Lloyd, "who's your vocalist?"

Lloyd turned, beginning to say "that guy --" but stopped because "that guy" was no longer in the vicinity. The Guest Vocalist would remain an enigma, for now.

We were a little late for the gig, so we only had one opening band to listen to before the Bands of the Evening were up. I, being newly introduced to this thing called "metal music" and also having a tendency to get tired really quickly, did not want to use up my live-music-watching quota before TDWT, and so I bailed on the first band. Kill The Messenger, however, I was not about to miss. And it's a good thing I didn't, for they played a pretty good show.

Between bands we spent most of our time around the T-Shirt Table, checking out the merch and chatting to the band members. By the end of the night we had met Jarred, who turned out to be the vocalist for Kill The Messenger; and Jeremy, who turned out to be the Guest Vocalist; and acquired two TWDT shirts, a TDWT CD and a sticker.


The TDWT show was briliance in itself. I knew that getting into metal music was a good life choice. Not missing this show was an even better life choice. To have lived my life without experiencing an epic metal gig, that would be tragedy. Tragedy. I thanked Sharlene for dragging me along despite the hecticness of my week, let the dreads loose and head-banged like tomorrow didn't matter.


When the music stopped and the encore had been called for, we turned to each other and we all knew - how could we miss out on another show? I do not remember who mentioned it first, but someone put the question out there - "so, PE right?" Whoever said it, said it loud enough for Jeremy to hear, and it was he who convinced us. We were going. It was crazy, but it was happening.