‘Elite’ Atlanta festival draws 1,100 fans in three days

This past weekend was the seventh annual Prog Power festival, held in Atlanta, Ga. Prog Power is a three-day gathering of progressive metal acts from around the world to play for 1,100 heavy metal fans and party hard.

This year saw 10 bands. All but one came from halfway around the world, representing the large metal-exporting nations of Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland as well as Holland and Italy. The only American band on the main bill was Zero-Hour, a heavy prog band from California.

The Prog Power festivals are quoted as being “An Elite festival for elite people.” This sounds extremely cheesy, but in a way it is very true. With so many high profile metal bands playing in one weekend, and only about 1,000 tickets available priced at a scary $100, only truly dedicated fans tend to make the trip.

The trip is made by people from all over the U.S. I met plenty of people from California, New York, Texas and even Canada and Brazil.

The main hotels in downtown Atlanta are booked five months in advance, and two of them are completely filled to capacity with heavy metal fanatics and the bands of the festival. You can walk down the hallways of the hotel at night after each show and find at least two or three rooms overflowing with loud music and loud people having a good time with their metal compadres and members of their favorite bands. The Best Western was relaxed enough to let people in every corner of the hotel, inside and out, be as loud and wild as they wanted until everyone passed out when the sun came up. A lot of people just stayed awake for the continental breakfast in the early morning and went to sleep afterward.

The Center Stage Theatre is the perfect venue for this kind of event, with a large general admission floor area and perfect stadium seating if anyone didn’t feel like standing up. With great sound and lighting, it was a very professional gig all around.

The music is always big. Each night saw five bands perform from 5 p.m. until 2 a.m. As always, there is a big surprise at the end of the final band’s respective sets.

Danish-American epic metallers, Pyramaze, played one of their very first shows on American soil on Friday night and recorded their first live DVD in the process. Another Danish act, Mercenary, absolutely crushed in their 75-minute set and totally surprised us with the best cover of “Cowboys from Hell” that I have ever heard.

In my opinion, Swedish prog-rock band Freak Kitchen stole the show. With Mattias “IA” Eklundh’s quirky guitar-playing humor and the innate ability to flat out entertain, Freak Kitchen undoubtedly received the biggest response from the crowd. By the end of their hour-long set, they were able to get the entire crowd, even the lazy seat hogs, on their feet and singing along to “Razor Flower.”

Evergrey finished Friday night’s show with a three-piece choir and a string quartet performing a handful of their songs, which sounded absolutely fantastic, especially when the entire crowd could be heard singing along to the huge chorus sections.

Norway’s Jorn finished their set by bringing onstage members of every performing band for a rendition of the classic Heard ‘n’ Aid song, “(We’re) Stars,” which was originally written by Ronnie James Dio in the ’80s to help fight world hunger. Definitely a great surprise and fitting finale to the festival.

Prog Power Seven was a total blast. With three days of awesome metal and rock, good friends, killer parties and debauchery until 7 a.m. every night, I couldn’t recommend this enough. It is truly one of the coolest weekends you will experience. Any fan of heavy metal should make the trip down to Atlanta next year.

See you at Prog Power Eight!