The two day long Louder Than Life music festival rocked heavy metal and rock fans from all over this past weekend with a jam-packed lineup of nearly 40 acts from around the world for the third annual celebration of bourbon, music, and gourmet man food.

Music fans made the journey to Louisville’s Champions Park in massive numbers despite the rain and chilly temperatures early on the first day.  Once inside the venue, they were treated to a series of unforgettable shows from their favorite artists – along with all the staples of a good music festival: food, booze, dancing, and band merch.

The three-dozen-plus bands shredded, pounded, screamed, and, yes, even bagpipe-ed for the electric crowds in front of the festival’s three stages.  Although the two main Monster Energy stages were side-by-side at one end, the third was located at the far opposite corner of the venue – good for not having bands drown each other out, bad for trekking back and forth.

As the performers thrilled festival goers, thousands of fans packed as far forward toward the stages in a closer-than-usually-socially-acceptable mass of humanity that smelled of unwashed campers, smoked turkey legs, smoked pork, and other, possibly illicit, smoked items.  Dancing, hugging, fist bumping, fist pumping, moshing, and getting knocked down only to be helped back up was the routine throughout the crowd.

Despite the signs warning the faint of heart against the potential dangers, crowd surfing fans could be seen during nearly every performance.  This activity started off slow until, on day one of the festival, Michigan metalcore rockers I Prevail instructed everyone to make with the crowd surfing.  After this, the waves of surfers grew throughout the weekend until Sunday’s headline acts Korn, Disturbed, and Slipknot were greeted by an absolute sea of bodies skimming the surface of the crowd toward the stage where they were helped down and escorted back into the audience by the alert security staff.  The smaller venue at the Zorn stage – where bands like Clutch, Zakk Sabbath, Kyng, Being As An Ocean, and Bishop Gunn played – had minimal crowd surfing and only a small handful of mini-mosh pits.

Likely thanks to the easy going nature of rock fans, despite some of the crazy outfits, and the large presence of event security and LMPD officers, Louder Than Life attendees were on their best behavior.  I did see one possibly dehydrated, likely inebriated reveler being carted off by medical staff to be checked out.  The condition was apparently not serious enough that I didn’t spot him back out in the crowd later with a bandage on his arm – perhaps from an IV to help recover from the dehydration brought on by all-day dancing in the heat.   Continue reading →