Return to the pit.

Anyone that listens to metal knows, listening to the album is nothing like the feeling you get on your first trip to the metal show. Let me explain…

Sure, listening to an album will get your head bouncing, pulse flowing, air guitar skills reach their peak, and you’re near salivating to throwdown in a pit, this is all expected of a decent album. You wouldn’t be listening to it if it didn’t, right?

After you’ve memorized every riff and squeal and just before you are ready to declare that this is by-far your favorite band, you start looking up tour dates. You find out that they are playing in a town near you, in the near future and you start asking around to see if anyone else wants to go. You find a few people, or maybe you’re a solo kind of person, and now you are on the path to an experience that will forever change your life and for some, become your new favorite addiction.

Standing out front of the venue, you hear music coming from inside and you feel like a thousand little demons are running around under your skin, puking adrenaline all over the nerves that are telling you “maybe this isn’t a good idea” until they drown.

You get your hands X’ed and finally get through the doors.

The welcoming scent of stale beer, sweat, and a hint of piss, hit you with what feels like someone blowing a hot breath of ass all over your face and body. You probably stood off in the back or out of sheer ignorance, charged to the front. You start sizing up the guys standing around you and assess how much damage they could do in a pit. Your older brother or cousin told you about how pits can open up anywhere, so you’re constantly looking over your shoulder while you listen to the guy on stage repeatedly say “check, check” and there are about two or three other guys behind him holding a handful of drumsticks or strumming a guitar
Then the lights dim.

Three or four shadowy figures walk onto the stage, one mounts the double bass drums, lets out a quick blast beat and then bangs on the ride a little. The other two or three arm themselves with metal axes of doom, you might of heard some chugging, maybe a quick sweep, and my favorite, a long dragged out squeal. They’re ready, and you think you are too. Then comes the frontman. For effect, they’ll come out yelling until they get to the center of the stage, they stop and if you were lucky, introduce themselves and the song before they start thrashing and shredding, but probably not and then all that stuff that your brother/cousin told you is slammed back to the front of your head, The first pit almost always starts behind you.

Now, to the point of this post, did you return to the pit? or run to the hills? (Maiden rules!)

Personally, my first pit…

After the first pit of the night opened up behind me I could feel my chest compress from the crowd crush, it was about twenty minutes after I got through the door and I was sweating, honestly I don’t think it was all my sweat, it was a small venue, so I started to lean back a little so I could have room to turn around and then I seen it, A large open space with only about four people in it. This wasn’t what I pictured a pit to be like, but none-the-less, I wanted in. I found out quickly that people have no problem letting you into a pit, it’s getting out thats rough. I stumbled out into the edge of this open circle area and immediately someone pushed me into the middle of it and the rest was history, I started shoving around people and I got shoved, I honestly didn’t know how to mosh very well, but these other guys seemed merciful. When I was in the pit, the air seemed a little cooler, it wasn’t as loud, all I could really hear was my mind screaming from the inside, while I had a smile on my face.

I’m pretty sure my mind fell in love with that pit, because all it ever talks about is her.