Concert Review - Inkcarceration Fest Day 3; September 12th

 Inkcarceration Festival Day 3

    Inkcarceration Festival is an annual music and tattoo festival hosted by the Danny Wimmer Presents event production company. The festival is hosted yearly at the Mansfield Reformatory in Mansfield, Ohio. This setting may seem rather unconventional, and it is. However, it is an amazing experience to be able to thrown down in the pit and follow it up with a relaxed tour through the prison.

    This review focuses only on the 3rd day of the fest on Sunday, September 12th. This is due to my girlfriend, Carly, and I attending another show the previous night in Columbus (that review is still to come). Within this review, I'll touch on the bands we saw which include: Wage War, Attila, Motionless in White, Halestorm, and the metal icon: Rob Zombie.

    Our day started early, arriving at the parking lot behind the prison at around 10:30. This allowed for time for us to wind down from our long day and short sleep the night before. The first thing I want to commend the festival for is how they handled their COVID restrictions. To attend, you either needed to have a completed vaccination card from at least 2 weeks prior or a negative COVID test within the past 72 hours. The checking of this was streamlined and did not take any longer than it would've to check IDs for bar wristbands. 

    Prior to our first show, we took the opportunity to tour the Reformatory and I highly recommend everyone does it at least once. I'm not the biggest Shawshank fan, but it was still very interesting to be in a place so eerie. I definitely want to take a dedicated tour through one day and even would like to do their ghost hunt expeditions.

    Wage War

    Our first show of the day was Wage War at 1:15. As someone who used to see very heavy bands very early in the morning at the Vans Warped Tour, I thought I would be completely fine. I was wrong. Wage opened their show with Stitch, the only song I really knew by them. That being said, the pit opened strong and quickly. After exacerbating the little energy I had after being in the sun for three hours and consuming 4 alcoholic beverages already, I decided to do my little crowd surfing thing, and hang towards the back of the crowd for the rest of their set. Fun fact: if you watch Wage War's promotional video for the festival, there's a decently long clip of me running back with my long hair flowing. The other thing we highly underestimated was how bad the dust would be. The main standing area was 90% gravel. Because of that, whenever someone moved, a cloud of dust blew up. We were smart and ended up wearing masks whenever we were in it.

    After Wage, we took a break that ended up being a lot longer than we expected. In this time, we laid around, met some of our friends, and searched for not horribly overpriced food. I only have two qualms with this festival. The first being that food is horribly horribly expensive, and you cannot leave the grounds unless you have camping for the weekend. Things like a slice of pizza were fifteen dollars and would not fill us enough. Hell, my mixed drink with Slipknot's Iowa whiskey was cheaper. I also highly recommend their whiskey.

    The next thing we did was a small "trial" of the Reformatory's yearly haunted house, Blood Prison. We were not fans and this is my second qualm. I personally do not enjoy haunted houses just because of the nature of them. I do not like not being in control. There were certain instances that caused both Carly and me to be significantly uncomfortable going through this and we did not feel that it was handled professionally.

Motionless in White

    Motionless is the band we waited for the most. They quickly ripped into their set without a single thought. The beginning sounds of Reincarnate started, and as soon as I heard Chris's "Get UP!", I promptly threw Carly, beginning the pit. Motionless is one of the best live bands I've seen in a long time, and I would highly recommend anyone to see them if they have the chance. While I wish their set was longer, I was happy to hear things like Soft, Thoughts and Prayers, Another Life, and their new single Timebomb. 100%, one of the highlights of the day.

Attila

    Attila was the next band we saw. This was my third time seeing Attila, and it was... alright? Their brand of music is for a very specific set of people. That being said, they're still very fun to watch. Especially when they do their giant circle pit call outs.

Halestorm

    As the night reached its end slowly, we sat towards the back and watched Halestorm. Halestorm is a band I've listened to for years, but never got very into. I want to commend them though. Lzzy sounded album-accurate live, and their drummer killed it in every aspect. The best part was that their setlist contained many songs that I knew, even in my general listening to them.

Rob Zombie

    Finally, we made it to the end of the night. With Rob Zombie being the headliner, we made our way as close to the stage as possible. His set was chock-full of classics, hits, covers, and new singles. Out of his fifteen song-or-so set, I knew all but two songs and would say I'm content with that. Rob Zombie is an icon for a reason, and he knows that. His voice is a little bit out there, and a lot of his singing is kind of mumbly, but his lyrics are absolute bollocks anyways and don't make any sense to begin with. The stage show was impressive and very enjoyable to watch, and John 5 on guitar made it such a better experience. All-in-all, I was impressed and satisfied.

So, Inkcarceration is a lot of fun. However, they have some things to fix. I believe there should be some sort of reentry for daily ticket holders so we do not get scalped on every meal we need to eat through the day. It's not right that I should have to risk passing out because of how expensive food is. That being said, I enjoyed my day and plan to be back next year depending on the lineup.