METALLICA
ORION MUSIC FESTIVAL & MORE 2012
Metallica's Orion Music + More festival in Atlantic City, Day 2
Updated: JUNE 25, 2012 — 1:03 PM EDT
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by Dan Deluca, Music Critic ddeluca@phillynews.com
After 10 hours at Bader Field in Atlantic City on Saturday for the first day of Metallica's inaugural Orion Music + More festival, I headed back for more on Sunday, for a lineup that, for my money, was stronger and more varied, and turned out to be thoroughly satisfying.
But by any measure, Orion - despite the presence of the likes of indie fuzz-pop beach band Best Coast, Nashville hitmaker Eric Church (who got to New Jersey in time to celebrate his song "Springsteen"'s conquest of the country chart) and New Orleans brass band Soul Rebels - was pretty much hard as hell.
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Sure, it's true that Orion - a festival named after a Metallica song named after a constellation that sound especially impressively when James Hetfield, pictured to the left, shouted out its three syllables with fists raised: OH-RYE-ONNNN!!! - is much more than merely a metal gathering.
The impressive two day lineup - which was put together by members of Metallica in conjunction with bookers at Austin, Texas concert company C3 Presents, who also do Lollapalooza in Chicago and South America, among other mega-fests, who estimated that the fest drew 32,000 per day (more on that later) - moved around genre-wise, doing its best to nudge mostly black clad, mostly male Metallica fans out of their comfort zones.
But even its non-metallic offerings tended to be toughened up - with Best Coast, whose Bethany Cosentino sadly had a hard time attracting attention on the enormous Orion stage on Sunday afternoon, being one notable exception.
Landmine Marathon.
The first band I saw on Sunday was Landmine Marathon, the only other female fronted act on the fest, unless I'm missing somebody. Landmine's light, sweet enough looking singer, Grace Perry, might not appear to be a likely candidate to front a death metal band if you saw her walking down the street, or even if you herd her normal speaking voice. But once the Arizona band threw themselves into songs from their latest album, Gallows, you got the picture. Thi woman has a voice like a succubus from h-e-double-hockey-sticks to make Ozzy Osbourne, or for that matter, James Hetfield, sound like a ninny.
Gary Clark Jr.
From there, on the Gary Clark Jr., the brooding Austin, Texas blues guitar slinger who brought two sign language interpreters along with him to the World's Playground. There are plenty of words to Clark's songs - like "Bright Lights," which emphatically promises "You gonna know my name!" and is a stone cold classic. But the signers spent most of their time playing air guitar, as Clark let loose one searing Hendrix-Steve Ray Vaughn-esque solo after another.
On Saturday, too much time typing in the media tent meant I missed some of the bands I most wanted to see - Gaslight Anthem and Lucero, but more than that, the punk rock army that goes by the name of "F--- Up." Sunday I was more free to roam between the four stages on the huge 142 acre site, which is certainly large enough to accommodate many more people than were in attendance at Orion.
Checking out Avenged Sevenfold.
The fest never felt uncomfortably crowded, or as packed as the decommissioned airport was last year for Dave Matthews' Caravan fest. It seemed to me there were far more people there on Sunday as Metallica prepared to play 'the Black album,' but crowd estimate wildly varied. At the gate on Sunday, an official said there had been 21,500 people there on Saturday; police positioned on the Albany Avenue bridge into Atlantic City proper various said that there had been 35,000 and 50,000 fans there on the first day.
In any case, if the 32,000 figure is accurate, C3 and Metallica ought to be more than happy with it, as C3's Charlie Walker said last month that they were aiming for 25- to 30,000 a day. All weekend long, Hetfield referred to Orion as "the first annual," with the only unanswered Less
