– Interview and Photos By Lana Nimmons

A testament to Mayhem Fest’s great execution was that there wasn’t a moment of downtime between the back-to-back sets on the side-by-side stages. Exile turned into Battlecross seamlessly. Sequentially, this worked very well as Battlecross served to build on the intensity. It also helped that by this time the festival grounds were filling up. The band, who describe their sound as “Blue Collar Thrash Metal”, released their sophomore album War of Will only just the day before and played the heavy riff laden “Force Fed Lies” off of it to a great response. From Detroit, they describe themselves as Blue Collar Thrash, and their recent album War Of Will has been topping the charts for a reason. This was the first tour date of their sophomore album and tribute to that they played the heavy riff laden “Force Fed Lies” – with a reciprocated happy audience. I will never forget the moment Battlecross took the stage- they shocked the audience with awesomeness. Kyle’s vocals have thrash down to an art: you can clearly understand what he is singing, and a lot of thrash metal bands fall short in that respect. Musically they are comparable to the ‘big four’: Tony and Hiran’s technical guitar skills are undeniable, like a machine gun from note one. The rhythm section was fast, melodic and freaking epic. I saw them last year and was absolutely blown away – this year they beat my expectation. After their ground breaking performance I had the pleasure to catch up with vocalist, Kyle Gunther, one year later. READ FULL INTERVIEW IN AUGUSTS VANDALA MAGAZINE