illusion of safety

Yes that’s right, that’s fuckin Tom Araya right there. The vocalist of Slayer.

And yes so I went, against ALL odds: the complete business of the week, passport problem, design critic session on friday (the day of the concert), my headache, the lack of time. Against all that plus some more. And as real as it could fuckin get, I went through. HELL YESSSSSSSSSSSSS!!! Man seriously… I was probably born to be against the world and its oddities. Sometime having it easy is nice, but the satisfaction and rewards for getting it after so much trial and error and complete struggle is worth thousands of those easy ones.

That aside, here’s the summary of what the hell happened in a chronological order.

So as soon as I got the damn passport back with my new student visa in there, I immediately left the black castle to pack and leave for Singapore. I took the 2 o’clock bus (that actually left at 2:30… screw them and their punctuality), and it took about 5 hours to finally reach singapore. There were several stops made, my mistake was for not going with the NON STOP bus. So I was nervously waiting in the bus, see if I’d make it to the concert. And the bus stopped a couple of times for freaking snack break and people getting nature’s calls!!!

So I finally arrived by Johor Baru’s immigration. Showed them the passport and all, and I couldn’t be bothered with going by the same bus again, so I took the liberty of going by Singapore’s own SBS Transport bus (otherwise I had to wait for 30 mins for everybody in my Malaysian bus to clear up their immigration issue). Once it got to the check point and went through the Singapore’s immigration (for some reason I wasn’t picked for their “random searches” this time… weird), I went straight to the taxi stand and told the driver to go slalom on cars and get to the place asap. He said it’d take 45 minutes… turned out it was like 20 mins at most. Sweet.

And I arrived there outside of the place, Max Pavilion in the Singapore Expo area (it’s in the Changi area, near the freaking airport).

Got to know some people and it was fun sharing concert experience with them, and most that I met were really nutty in the head hahahaha. In a fun way, of course. One of them, Anna, from Finland, was crazy ass black metal chick. She looked goth as hell, and she was hoping Slayer would be crazy enough to headbang to. Lol I myself wasn’t really expecting a headbang, but more like an all out mosh (but seriously, what’s with metal chicks only headbanging? Share the love, go mosh…). And there was another guy Eric from America, he was visiting his cousins here and was so glad he came when Slayer is around. And there was some other bunch too, it was awesome. I saw a dude who could be the twin of Serj Tankian (except he was chubbier). And it looked like I was the only one not wearing black hahahahah (even though I wore black short). And this is the time I fuckin realized that the camera I brought was not working properly. AAAH of all times, it has to be this one!

So the gate was opened, Slayer took the stage, and started it off with SOUTH OF HEAVENNNNN!!! SHIT! I nearly wet my pants seeing Kerry King and metalheads raise their devil gesture up in the air. Damn… it felt like…. AAAARGH finally, fuck all this assignments and people who drag me down! Ya know.. feels like there it is, you are with your bunch, now here’s your time to let it all out. And it was freaking great. And it looked like the guys were bigger in Slayer’s pits than in Slipknot’s last time. I kinda expected that.

And the pit was freaking insane, one of the best highlight of the night. The poor kids in the second and third row didn’t get much action going on, so I heard. It was the front row (the one where I was) that had the messiest, most fun moshpit. Man it was nuts. I changed my t shirt to an oblong / sleeveless t shirt. And got in the freaking program. Punches, pushes, smacks, screams of anger (happiness), frustration (gladness), and all around hate (love) was in the air. I saw guys got knocked down, and people were helping him up and apologized. That’s what was cool about it. All this “excercises” were in it for the mosh, and definitely without hard feelings. It was sooo fun crashing against everybody. I went up front right in front of Tom Araya several times, and went back to the pit again, and so forth. I was crowd surfing once, and I had an idea of jumping to the stage, sing along a little, and jumped back to the crowd. But it was harder, physically, to do that than I thought cus people were literally jammed in that space and I could barely lift my legs up to go over the fence.

To my dissappointment, Slayer didn’t play Discpile. ARGH why!?!?! That song is the song of new Slayer! The modern Slayer (by which I’m not saying it’s better than the old school one, but here’s a generation of change, and all should be appreciated). I was so waiting for screaming along to “You know why your prayers will never be answered?” … lol crazy shit.

After the show, I FINALLY met my friend Dirga (who went there a day earlier) and we hung around by the back door of the building to wait for Slayer. And as usual, I’ve always disliked big bands’ crews, they are annoying. We waited for like almost an hour for Slayer to come out, and when they did they went straight to their car. Gah! And again, my camera screwed up, I could only take that pic of Tom Arya you see up there. The dude’s seriously aging. Lol, and I’m pretty sure he’s started thinking about chilling down with his war against God (fact: he avoided playing the song Anti-Christ). He could finally be settling down too, I don’t know. But that night, he was Slayer, he was the frontman of a trash-death metal band, and he was there to sing along with us (or us with them).

So yeah, the poster was sold out so I couldn’t get any, and the t shirt was 40 Singapore bucks a piece, and the only had L when I wanted to purchase them, so I let them go. Yes I let them go…. god damnit! lol. Then Dirga and I took the train and bus to sleep over at his friend’s place for the night, and we went back the next morning at 12:00 from Singapore. We reached KL by 6, went for iftar (that’s buka for you in Arabic) and took the train at 9:30. Arrived in Cyberjaya at 10:15 with sore backs. sore neck, sore waist, sore arms, a little sore throat, and a big fuckin grin on my face.

So based on the story so far, you may think I was having a good time. Well indeed I was, but I really thought it could’ve been better. It was like a lesson, a hard one, that I should’ve made sure that I’ve finished all my assignments before I ever went nuts like that. Now I have 2 assignments piling (one of which is already half way done) for Monday. If I’m diligent enough today, I should get them done soonish. Aaaah time management, time management
Next stop: Yngwie J Malmsteen in November. FUCK YESSSSS!!!!!!

I have also heard rumors that Satyricon might be brought in to Singapore too… If that’s the case… Damn… DAAAAAMN! It’s like a metal year here hahaha.

So well there ya go, the summary of Friday and Saturday. It was fun. And I can finally say I’ve seen Slayer (and confirmed that Kerry King pretty much plays the same solos over and over on every songs lol ).

Hope everyone’s having an awesome weekend!

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 14th, 2006 at 8:48 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.