That's one experience I miss, I never got out of town enough for the festivals. I know Europe is the king of metal fests and that is the way it's been forever, but in the US I knew like some local "fests" held inside bars and like Maryland Deathfest, and maybe saw fliers for stuff going down in Texas and Cali and Canada north of us. And now festivals, theres one worth going to every damn week it seems if you have the money to travel. I think its become like "spring break" for alot of goers, my own experience as well, lol I went to a few larger local ones, and then to Maryland Deathfest when it was still the biggest thing the US had year round, it honestly reminded me of college. I got so wasted, I wandered away from venue, found other lost metalheads in streets of Baltimore, went on drunk adventures of all sorts while Carcass, Pig Destroyer, and bands of the like echoed through city. Travelled there alone, but shared a room with one of my best friends a girl from Chicago, and a cool dude from New York I've stayed friends with since. I wasnt super thrilled with the lineup that year, but there were some gems. If you like bands BM bands like Dissection, Sacramentum, Unanimated, then I highly recommend Vinterland. They played that year and it was awesome. I also discovered Evoken that year, was never much into Doom Metal before that, but that got me into a lot of stuff I never gave a chance to. So hope you have a blast, Faith No More should be great, wish I could catch them at some point, I'd even like to see Korn once at one of these things if I ever went again. I'm almost 35, I got into the spirit the one big fest I travelled to, but I dont think I can party that hard anymore, with my yearly workload it's hard to break away like that and come back to reality. I haven't had a vacation in yeeeaaaars now, if I finally could afford the downtime I'd prolly want to travel to gain perspective and learn more about the world I've barely explored rather than delete braincells at a 3 day drunken moshpit doing shit like barfing on the street and not being able to hear bands because they had horrible sound quality or were denied access to country at last minute
Celtic Frost is awesome. Great album mention. Their drummer on that record was a big influence for me. 1st wave BM is incredible, no offense to 2nd wave, I clearly love some of that more extreme stuff, but I'll take Mercyful Fate/King Diamond over Emperor or Marduk any day.
Glam/hair metal is hit or miss, lots gems hidden between lots of shit. A lot of bands, whether full on hair metal, power metal, or heavy metal, dipped their toes into those waters, and some really amazing material and covers have me thinking I'm a vocalist, drinking beers, smoking weed, and fucking around on my piano at the end of a long week. My ritual, heading out to the garage to be alone with some tunes, my neighbors must think I'm insane, hammering out blast beats most days, howling like an injured dog on Friday nights lol. Anyway, back to gems, have you ever checked LION out? They did the cover of the Transformers theme for the animated feature, an incredible cover and infectious track in it's own right, but LION had amazing original work of their own, blew my mind. Another band who dipped was Crimson Glory. Their glam kinda sucked, but a few songs stuck out. CG better known for their debut and sophomore efforts, power metal albums and let me tell you, Midnight... their vocalist (rip) he was the real fucking thing. Most vocalists are all post production, Midnight was like Geoff Tate, probably even better. I've seen grainy VHS level footage of him live, what he was doing was so incredibly accurate to what was on records, I was astounded.
And you know, compromising, I tried a band where everyone compromised, and every idea was let in. We tore each other apart by the end, and I felt like nobody wanted to get better at anything, so I left. I remember feeling like Axl Rose, and trying to rewrite and control everything, but it was like everyone was so stoned and trying to think outside of the box, but for a drummer, it has to make sense and be more or less functional, and I couldn't let things go the way they would have let them if I didnt pipe up, but it made me the bad guy all the time, so I wound up focused more on myself and self improvement as a drummer for years rather than play with others. For me, compromise is not the way, I'd rather play exactly what a composer needs, and it is why I have waited on my friend to unretire and get back into playing shape, no one else around I really respect as much or who gets it as much. I actually have a link in my sig that has a song from a demo from that other band I left, I kept it there even though I'm more embarrassed of the work than anything so they might get a few extra "hits" on their YouTube, I have no idea if they ever went forward or if that's the last anyone will ever hear of that project, but aside from our horrible DIY production, you can hear how all 4 songs sound totally different, and how all have way too many ideas going on, the worst of which, a vocalist who was a genuine badass, and had some of the coolest vocal ideas ever suddenly during recording decided to do stupid modern James Hetfield dad-metal shit. I recorded the drums, and then kinda let them wrap up the rest, and I hear the demo upon completion... weeks later, even he was like, "sorry guys, I dropped the ball". Compromise is a double edge sword, and having a band built on it was a mistake in my experience lol