March 28, 2024
66 Guests and 1 Member Online

Twiztid’s FRIGHTFEST tour – Knoxville, 10/25/14

Twiztid, Blaze Ya Dead Homie, Kung Fu Vampire, Neurotic November, Damn Dirty Apes

Concourse at the International in Knoxville, Tennessee

Our Rating
User Rating
1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading...

After an entire year of almost no underground shows in Nashville, I was very excited to see that not only did we have a Twiztid show coming up in Knoxville, but it was a Frightfest show! AND it was on my day off! Finally, a chance to take a break from life for a few hours and party with my fam!! A bunch of people from Nashville planned to go, but when the day came, it was just me, Krissi and Marlie who actually made the trip. After a dinner stop at Mr. Gatti’s (since we don’t have any in Nashville…BOOO), we arrived about an hour before the doors opened. We pre-gamed it a bit in the truck, then joined the massive crowd waiting to get in. Somehow we ended up close to the front, and were let in just after the VIPs all made their way inside.

We checked out the merch and damn…every bit of it was awesome. People were leaving with arms full of merch, and if I’d had some spare cash, I could have easily dropped $300 there. As the crowd started to build, I figured that I’d better stake out my spot at the front, so the three of us headed up to the barricade and camped out right in the center. The folks around us were all super friendly…I’d definitely head back to Knoxville for another show.

The first group to perform was a local duo called Dopplegangster. The set started out well enough, and they seemed pretty entertaining. After a couple of songs, the one guy says that they’re gonna sing a song called Shark Week, about when a girl gets her period. Um…really? The song was actually, literally, really, really, no kidding about menstruation. Then at the end of the song, the guy says “Fuckin’ gross! Periods, man!” Wow haha The next song didn’t get much better, since it was a song about how his how his step dad gets mad when you wake him up since he sleeps during the day. They kept yelling “YOU JUST WOKE UP MY DAD!” over and over haha Maybe this kind of stuff would be passable if we were all junior highschoolers, but it just didn’t fly with me as an opener for Twiztid.

The next opener was Damn Dirty Apes, which were two guys who travel with and open for Kung Fu Vampire. They were really good…a refreshing change from the Dopplegangsters :-) They kept moving the entire time, and one guy even shed his shirt, which elicited some excitement out of the females up front haha Sometimes openers who travel with a bigger name are just kind of there and aren’t too impressive, but these guys were a great addition to the bill, bringing their own flavor which was different from the others on the tour. Thumbs up!

Neurotic November was the next act on the bill, who despite having been on the entire tour with Twiztid, I’d heard nothing about online. They’re a hardcore metal band from Miami, which was a little surprising at first, but once the show got going, they were awesome!

There are five members in the band, and each member was very interesting to watch in their own way. The lead singer had long dreads that he would swing around as he sang, the guitarists commanded the stage really well, and the drummer killed it the entire time. But the female bass player named Bear totally stole the show. She had whited out eyes and long dreads, and was incredibly expressive and energetic. One moment she’d look happy and friendly, and the very next moment she was staring manically through your soul! I spent most of the set watching her perform since she was just so entertaining, and my friends said the same. I got some fantastic photos of everyone in the band, but particularly of her since she’s so unique looking. Y’know, at the end of the day, what I really want out of a live performance is to be entertained, and Neurotic November was definitely entertaining!

Next up was another favorite of mine, Kung Fu Vampire. I’ve seen him a bunch of times in large venues and small, and I still think he’s a great, fun performer. He used a lot of fog during his set, which was a bummer for me since most of my pics came out washed out, but whatever. Near the end of the set, he managed to get everyone to the crowd to do a half hearted death wall, but the mosh pit really didn’t last for very long, and everyone up front refused to move for fear of losing our spots!

Once he was done, the Twiztid crew came out and began to set up for their set. Just as they’d gotten a large background secured on the left side of the stage, the black cover over it fell off, revealing a huge Majik Ninja Entertainment logo! They left the cover off of it for a long time, but ultimately secured it just before the guys took the stage.


When it was finally time for Twiztid, they took the stage like no one else can! Now, I’ve been to lots of Twiztid shows in lots of different places, but dare I say that this may have been the best one I’ve seen. I’ve never seen Twiztid have an off show, but this one seemed particularly amazing. They were very animated with everything they did, and Madrox seemed so consumed with the music through the whole set. He would get low against the audience and sing right into our faces, and did a great job of covering the entire area of the stage. Monoxide seemed very intense during this set, in more of an excited/angry way than the ominous/creepy way I’ve seen so many times. It was such an awesome mix, which made songs like Murder Murder Murder and Bella Morte all the better.

About halfway through the set, Madrox and Monoxide disappeared backstage, and announced that Blaze was in the house! I’d heard rumblings about Blaze being on the Frightfest dates, so it was great to see a surprise set of his! He played a lot of his not-so-often-performed songs, and skipped the more popular ones, which was fun and indicative of a new direction in his career IMO (or maybe I was just reading too much into it haha).

After a few songs by Blaze, Madrox and Monoxide came back onstage and asked if we wanted to hear some Dark Lotus! YES PLEASE! So they each sang their verse of Headache, which is one of my favorite Dark Lotus tracks! That was such an unexpected treat! While all three were onstage, they also sang Lift Me Up and a couple of other songs where all three are on the track, though which exact songs escape me at the moment. Eventually Blaze left the stage, and gave it back over to Twiztid to finish out the set.

What I thought was going to be just another song or two turned out to be another half hour or more of performance, including Afraid of Me, Bagz and a lovely finale of LDLHA-IBCSYWA. At one point, they also did this thing where the whole room went black, and they had brief bursts of strobe lights illuminate the Majik Ninja Entertainment banner, with a recording saying “majik majik” to which everyone, of course, would reply “ninjas what!”

As the set wound to a close, they thanked the audience, then led us in rounds of applause for all the openers, including yelling “Trick or treat, muthafucka, trick or treat” after each performer’s name haha. When they left the stage for the final time, the crowd started to demand an encore, but the overhead music and lights came on instead, so the crowd started to disperse. Before heading out, we all went over to greet Kung Fu Vampire, and ended up chatting with him and his crew for quite a while. I also met Bear, and got to show her some of the awesome pics I’d gotten of her. Eventually everyone scattered, and the three of us ended up grabbing some grub before heading back to Nashville.

This was a fantastic show, and I was SO glad that we’d made the effort to make it there. There was a lot more to it than just a regular Twiztid show since it was a Frightfest show, which made it even more fun than their shows always are otherwise! The performances were excellent, and the crowd was great. The crowd was also surprisingly sober and respectful of the venue. When we were chatting with Kung Fu Vampire, the staff was sweeping up, and they just had one tiny pile of trash from the floor, and there were NO wet spots anywhere from spilled drinks. KFV commented that it was the cleanest venue he’d seen on the whole tour, which certainly says something for the civility of the Knoxville Juggalos!

I know there aren’t many stops left on this tour, but if you’re on the fence about going, I definitely think you should go! First off, you get Twiztid, so you know it’s gonna be a good show. You get Kung Fu Vampire, which is even more reason to know it’s gonna be a good show. You get to check out Neurotic November if you’ve never seen them. Plus you’ll get Damn Dirty Apes as some extra added flavor. Just get your tickets already. What are you waiting for??

Location:

  • Concourse at the International
  • Tennessee
  • United States

Guests:

  • Twiztid, Blaze Ya Dead Homie, Kung Fu Vampire, Neurotic November, Damn Dirty Apes

Tour:

  • Frightfest 2014

Record Label:

  • Majik Ninja Entertainment

Reviewer:

  • VeryTwiztidRaven

Review Date:

  • 10/25/2014

Share

Enjoy the article so far? Recommend it to your friends and peers.

Subscribe

Be the first to our articles and get the latest updates.

No comments yet

You must be logged in to post a comment.