Standing in the Cannibal Corpse crowd was something I didn’t plan on doing 2 days before the concert. The band was formed in 1988, Buffalo, New York and later moved to Tampa, Florida. Though being around for so long, they’ve made a huge impact on the death metal genre.
On a personal note, I took it upon myself to go see this band play as I enjoy their music. While the pit can be fun, keeping ourselves safe in these crowds is an important thing to remember.
While at the show, I noticed parts that stood out and other areas that needed work. The bands were amazing and the audience around me was delightful, however – the pit was not in control, and people were influenced to keep dancing even when others were getting hurt.
I had arrived around 2 hours before the show with my friend so we were the very first people to go in, leaving us at the barricade. Being at the barricade was nice because the bands were close, which allowed us to interact with the band and crowd. The bands came out with lots of energy and played for around 45 minutes each. From those two sets I noticed that the bassist and drummer from Full of Hell were phenomenal and their vocals were amazing and engaging with the audience. Unfortunately, I couldn’t handle staying up in the front for the last set because my body was in a lot of pain and everything was too hot.
The mosh area was out of control. I found myself being slammed against the barricade which left me with several bruises all over my body; although my arms got it the worst. People were crowd surfing, falling into each other and overall a ton of people got hurt. The security at the venue really disappointed me in this factor because they noticed how the crowd was behaving with drunk adults and people bringing their kids to the show. And as we know this is not a good mix. I was being hit from every direction and I had to try to keep myself standing at the wall; I managed to keep myself standing with the crowd.
Not all fans were being inconsiderate, I made three new friends at the concert and found myself talking to a lot of people. I felt heavily connected with the crowd and the scene of people there. We all had one thing in common; we came to have a good time. So, making conversation was fairly easy. Not only that, the security at the barricades were very kind and were even nice enough to hand me some water which I needed because I was so dead.
There was one band in particular who influenced people to start making more chaos among the crowd which made the pit unenjoyable. People started to crowd surf and made a huge circle pit but the room was so full that everybody was just thrashing into each other trying to push to the front. Standing in that crowd with all those people throwing themselves around like there was no tomorrow, it was dragging me down. A few others fell under people as they got dropped from being too heavy to crowd surf or falling over from pushing so much to the front.
Overall, the experience is something I enjoyed but will be preparing myself for in the future.There are many other examples of this and other tips on keeping yourself protected while at concerts. for example, a few that caught my eye were:A Guide to Mosh Etiquette: How to Hold Your Own in the Pit and the stories posted on sevenstrings Keeping yourself safe and ready for what might happen to you in the crowd is a hard thing to do, but a few simple reminders of those dangers are helpful for everybody in this scene.
https://wknc.org/2020/01/24/band-of-the-week-cannibal-corpse/
