Date: April 27, 2013
Time: 8ish
Venue: Amoranto Sports Complex
Pulp Summer Slam is an annual music festival in the Philippines which is founded and produced by Pulp Live World Productions, Inc. The festival consists of local and international rock and metal bands with the occasional line-up of hip hop, ska, reggae, pop rock, and other genres. The event is held every year during the summer in Manila and around 30,000 fans show up for the event (Wikipedia).
I’ve always wanted to go to the “Slam” since it started in 2001, however, my guy friends would always discourage me because of the dangerous crowd that would always go crazy the whole time. It’s a metal fest and they would like me to expect that this is way crazier, wilder and fiercer than any other rock shows I’ve been to. I was not actually a huge fan of Metal Rock music so it wasn’t a big deal to me. I guess, I just wanted to get the feel of it.
Last April 27th was my first time at the Pulp Summer Slam. And I would like to commend myself and my friend for braving the raging crowd and surviving the slam without any guy friend tagged along! We went to the show only to see Circa Survive and Coheed and Cambria so we got there a little bit late. Well, we missed Circa Survive but it was ok because we only knew a couple of songs. I only wanted to see Anthony Green anyway, because he’s been blowing up my Instagram feed with photos of his adorable babies lately.
My jaw dropped the moment we got in. It was real, it was wild, deafening and full of energy! We squeezed in our way little by little until we got to the closest we could get just in time for the last band to finish their last song. People around us were drunk and high, throwing plastic water bottles in the air and onto the stage getting impatient for Coheed. When Coheed started off with “Your Eyes tell the story”, people got even louder and wilder pushing and pulling me off my spot. I had to admit, I got scared because during the entire song, I tried to fight for my spot but I only got elbowed, smashed, squeezed and stomped.
After three full minutes of fighting with the moshing people, I gave up and searched for a safer spot. There, I screamed and danced while Coheed played their songs from The Second Stage Turbine Blade to The Afterman: Descension. It was a full set! My most favorite part was the encore, they played Welcome Home. Claudio finally got closer to the edge of the stage to thank the crowd (still playing) and there were fireworks and stuff and everything went colorful then slowly faded to black.
Here are some photos I took using my iPhone. Didn't bring a camera for security purposes.
