Welcome to Rockville Becomes a Three-Day Festival

Welcome to Rockville Becomes a Three-Day Festival – Part 2

Metro Park, Jacksonville, FL,USA

By Barry Nadl

April 28, 2018 https://welcometorockvillefestival.com/

Day two started by seeing Avatar. I had played their music in my car for my daughter, so she knew what to expect. My friends, in Meka Nism, had previously toured with this band, so I was familiar with them. But, I was really surprised at the energy and how much I enjoyed their set. They played all their hits, which was really enjoyable for me. My daughter was somewhere in the crowd and hanging out with a friend of mine. She tends to be social with people, and she later told me that most of the people in the crowd were very friendly…when they were not drunk.

Our hit list for the day was certainly more aggressive. It included Avatar, The Butcher Babies, Pop Evil, Black Veil Brides, Sevendust, Breaking Benjamin, and Avenged Sevenfold. Stone Sour, Stone Temple Pilots, and Hollywood Undead also performed between some of these, but I used that time to rest and eat. My daughter ended up separating from me and connected with her new friends she met during Ozzy. Needless to say, I did not see her again after the second band of the day.

I was really excited to shoot Black Veil Brides. One of the exciting things about a festival is being able to sample new bands. For me, I was not familiar with this

 

band. As I was doing research for the show, I sampled their music and fell in love with their sound and style. At this band’s heart, is the big power bands of the 80’s (which I love). To me, this was a highlight of the show.

The other surprise of the day for me was the Butcher Babies. I had heard they were pretty rowdy live. But, I was totally caught off guard. Security warned us to use only the front half of the pit because the band had warned them of the crowd surfing that would happen. They never said when. As a result, it was a tightly packed photo pit. Heidi Shepherd and Carla Harvey are extremely active on stage. They get up on the speakers and lean out into the crowd. At various points, they jumped off the stage, into the photo pit and climbed up on the barricades to give high-fives and shake hands with the fans. After the three songs, and security removed the photographers, it happened. From the stage, one of them says “Alright security! This is what we talked about! We want to see every mother fucker out here crowd surf! We want to see how many high-fives we can get!” And it was on! It was just this massive sea of crowd surfers that went on for about 4-5 minutes. I can safely say I had never seen anything of that magnitude. I later came to find out that my daughter was in that crowd and she crowd surfed as part of it. Oh, the joy of youth… When we later talked about it, she mentioned the high energy of their show. But, she also said she preferred them live, rather than recorded – due to the energy difference.

In the middle of the day, I was starting to get hungry. I had been hearing about Island Noodles and saw many people eating their noodles out of what looked like a Chinese takeout box. I searched and searched for this vendor. To no avail…I ended up eating chicken on a stick and yellow rice. This was a decent meal, so no complaints.

Another high point for me was getting to see Avenged Sevenfold. I did not see the Metallica stadium tour that comes through (which Avenged Sevenfold was a part of), so I had never seen them.

Unfortunately, M Shadows claimed to be sick, but he was going to power through it. He asked for audience help to sing along at various times. Honestly, though, I

couldn’t tell that he was struggling. I was just enjoying the show – with tons of pyro, I might add.

It was during this set that the primary tragedy of the festival occurred. Several songs into the set, the band stopped the show and stated that there had been an injury in the crowd. Someone had gotten hurt during the show and an ambulance needed to get into the middle of the crowd to reach them. It wasn’t until later that various fans announced that someone had been crowd surfing and got tossed into a mosh pit. Therefore, there was nobody there to catch him as he landed on the concrete. My understanding is that this person had a spinal injury of some sort because they landed head-first on the ground. On the positive side, the fans (called Rockvillians) came to his rescue and raised about $5,000 towards his medical bills.

The show continued, but obviously, Avenged Sevenfold was unable to play their full set due to sound ordinances that required them to shut their showdown at 11:00 pm sharp and they lost about 15-20 minutes due to the accident. Nobody was too upset over the band’s decision to pause the show.

My daughter’s assessment of the bands for the day – her favorites were Breaking Benjamin, Black Veil Brides, and Sevendust.

Photo Gallery

Avatar

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Black Veil Brides

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Sevendust

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Pop Evil

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