MDF BLOG BREAK

airplane window view (it don’t look flat to me)

The little tracking map on my laptop says the airplane is somewhere over Wisconsin as I start writing this post. Supposedly, said airplane will land in Baltimore 2 house and 17 minutes from now. A few hours after that, I’ll start my Maryland Deathfest 2018 experience with a visit to the pre-fest show. And there will be a steady diet of metal from then through Sunday.

I’m not the only NCS slave who will be at MDF. Andy Synn and DGR will be there, too, along with assorted other miscreants (and a few saints) whom we are proud to call our friends. The likely outcome of this revelry is that the usual volume of NCS posts will dwindle to a trickle until next week… but it won’t disappear.

a view on take-off

Tomorrow and Friday we’ll have the final two installments of Teddie Taylor’s photo-documentary of performances at Roadburn 2018; Andy Synn alleges that by the time his trans-Atlantic flight reaches Baltimore today, he will have completed a six-album black metal review piece; and Comrade Aleks has delivered an interview of the resurrected Dutch death/doom band Dead End. Wisely or foolishly, I also committed to present two premieres on Friday.

And who knows? Maybe something else will land in my in-box (we’re not much on advance planning), and maybe I’ll have time to post it. Maybe I’ll even be lucid enough to do some kind of new-music round-up. But it’s highly unlikely there will be a SHADES OF BLACK on Sunday, and I don’t know if Andy will have a WAXING LYRICAL interview for this Saturday or not.

The one thing I’ve vowed not to do is write about MDF, or try to take photos to illustrate what’s happening at MDF. I’ve decided I really just want to enjoy the experience and not spend time making notes, fixing descriptive phrases in my head, or writing the usual daily recaps.

Admittedly, I’ve made this vow in advance of past MDF trips and failed to honor it. But I’m pretty serious this time.

So anyway, for the two or three of you out there who wade through all of our posts every day, we apologize in advance for the relative paucity of reading and listening material. I should add that things won’t exactly be returning to normal next week, since Northwest Terror Fest begins just a couple days after I get back to Seattle. We may just have to pin a post to the top of the page for the next two weeks that says nothing but: HAVING A GREAT TIME WISH YOU WERE HERE.

~islander