NOTE: Yeah, I know I didn’t write part one yet. I’m starting with Pt. 2. If you don’t like it, get your own damn website and number posts however you see fit. Now then…

It was under an appropriately darkening and threatening dusk that I — having slept until 1:30pm and spent most of the day wandering around semi-conscious and reeling from the night before — drearily made my way into Manhattan to catch the North America is Doomed Tour with SerpentCult, The Gates of Slumber and Atlanta mavens Zoroaster headlining. I left the house at about 8pm hit little to no traffic and pulled into a parking spot directly across the street from Webster Hall at 9:05. From outside, I could hear The Gates of Slumber riffing the start of their set. No one stopped me when I went and pulled on the wrong door of the venue.

The show was downstairs in a space they called The Studio. I’d never been in it before, but it was basically a smaller club apart from the larger ballroom. I love rooms like that. Like the Tap Bar at the old Knitting Factory. Every time I go to one I immediately start booking a multi-stage festival in my head. Upstairs I’d get High on Fire and Pentagram to headline while in The Studio I’d bring over Dozer and put them on with someone more local like Unearthly Trance or maybe Solace. Awesome. Just don’t ask me how I’d pay for it.

By the time I was inside, The Gates of Slumber were nearly done with what I hope was the first song they played. I checked the merch area for copies of their older albums, 2004’s The Awakening and 2006’s Suffer No Guilt, to no avail. Though 2008’s Conqueror didn’t do much for me in terms of repeat listens, my understanding was such that the two that came before were the way to go. Has yet to be seen (or heard, I suppose). In either case, the trio surprised the hell out of me by kicking all sorts of unholy trad doom ass on material both new and old, highlighting Conqueror cuts like “Trapped in the Web” while simultaneously promoting their forthcoming Rise Above debut, Hyms of Blood and Thunder (split your lungs therein). Skulleted guitarist/vocalist Karl Simon pulled emotive solo notes to new song “Descent into Madness” shortly after saying how glad he was people had come down to the show because he didn’t think anyone would show up, and if I wasn’t a fan before, I certainly was one by the time they were done with “The Ice Worm’s Lair.”

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Tack an hour onto the Parkway ride to Atlantic City because it was July 3 and you get me arriving at the Showboat Casino literally two minutes before my scheduled interview with Clutch guitarist Tim Sult (coming soon), rushing up the escalator to find the main room of the House of Blues and promptly sitting for 25 minutes while the band finished their sound check. When The Patient Mrs., who had dropped me off and gone to park the car, came into the building, told her via phone from the backstage kitchen to just cross the rope and walk in like she knew what she was doing. She did and when my interview was done, we met up and went to grab a slice of crappy boardwalk pizza before the show started.

Monster Magnet was supposed to play, which would have at least been convenient since I elected to stay home the rainy Saturday night in May when they hit Starland Ballroom in Sayreville, but for reasons unknown, it was not to be. Speculation, rumor and innuendo was all the explanation I was able to get out of anyone at the show. Massachusetts‘ Shadows Fall somehow became the fill-in for the middle slot, and their fit betwixt Clutch and opening trio Wino (featuring their namesake guitarist/vocalist and Clutch’s J.P. Gaster on drums) was awkward to say the least, but they made a go of it and did their thing nonetheless. I was one of many late 20-somethings in the crowd who gave a perceptible “Oh yeah, this song,” when they played “Crushing Belial.” It had been a while since I heard that.

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