Showing Up: Community, Memory, and Riffs at the 15th Annual Hayward Metalfest

That flyer's dedication is worth pausing on. I didn't know Steve personally, but between a few conversations with folks around the scene, including the guys from Cultural Warfare, the picture came together fast. Friends and the scene knew him as "Steve McGeezy," a cornerstone of Hayward and East Bay hardcore for years, the voice behind bands like Star Destroyer, It's Clobberin' Time, Hornet, Numbfaced, and AngerHead, and someone who put in as much work off stage as on it, co-hosting the HaywardHC Underground podcast and helping put out The Hive zine. He passed away in June 2023, and Metalfest carrying his name every year since isn't a formality. It's the community doing for him what he spent years doing for everyone else: showing up.

There's an old line, usually credited to Woody Allen, that eighty percent of success is just showing up. After the day I'd had, I was inclined to believe it.

There is a specific kind of electricity in the air when you walk up to a local metal gathering. You can feel the sub-bass vibrating through the pavement before you even round the corner. But stepping into the 15th Annual Metalfest at Hayward's Memorial Park Amphitheater hit different, mostly because I had just spent all day working the neighborhoods around Fremont and Union City, walking door-to-door to talk solar installations and help folks lower their electric bills. Still, after pounding the pavement all day, stepping into a park full of longhairs playing aggressive thrash metal hits about as well as a cool drink of water.

Walking up under that blazing sky, my body running on what amounted to flavored water and spite after a 24-hour fast because apparently I hate myself, I heard it right away: the unmistakable crunch of Exodus's "Lesson in Violence." My ears still worked, and they knew that riff before my brain did. Cutting through the afternoon air, it turned out to be local thrash outfit Frolic on stage, later unleashing a heavier, Bay Area-meets-Kreator version of Judas Priest's "Painkiller" that compelled some serious action in the pit while I was sitting down chatting with Billy from Cultural Warfare.

It was an instant reminder of why we do this.

In the Crowd vs. On the Stage

Now, let's clear the air. I haven't been completely MIA from the scene over the years, as I've still been going out to shows regularly. As of this writing, today marks the one-year anniversary of a major milestone: it's been exactly one year since Ace, Curran, and myself stepped back onto a live stage for a brief 30-minute set after a long hiatus. Each of us played in different bands over a decade ago, but the music eventually called us back, and the chemistry between us just clicked right into place.

Coming back to events like this past Saturday's Metalfest, which doubles as a massive canned food drive benefiting the Salvation Army, reminds you why this community matters. It is not just about ego or playing. It is about showing up for the culture and for people who need a hand. Plus, if you don't donate canned goods, the metal gods give you bad tone for a week. Science.

Because of my day job, I got to the park a bit later, which meant missing the entire sets from Successor, Creepo, and Short Fuse. My sincere apologies to all three, you deserved a proper watch and I owe you one next time around. I also missed Cultural Warfare's set, but walking straight to their booth to hang out with guitarist Billy Garoutte was a high point of the day regardless. Billy is a class act who works on guitars for a living. If your guitar needs work, the name of his company is Silly Strings guitar repair. I also found out that he's the guitar tech for Forbidden, the impossibly tight, aggressively underrated Bay Area thrash veterans. Yes, that Forbidden, the band your favorite band's guitarist practices to alone in his room and then never mentions in interviews. And the timing couldn't be better: they just dropped a new single this past week, "Burning the Lungs of Earth," a song about environmental collapse and the greed driving it, and it's worth your ears whether you know the band or not. Check out the video for Burning the Lungs of Earth on YouTube. We've built up a genuine mutual appreciation over the years. He recently bought his dream house out in Willits, which means a three-hour drive one way to Oakland for rehearsal, and he's still playing with three of the same guys from a decade ago. In the local metal scene, keeping a lineup together for ten years is rarer than finding clean socks at a festival campground. I might have missed their performance, but you best believe I walked away with a new Cultural Warfare t-shirt to add to the rotation.

Characters and Connections of the Bay

Part of what makes this community so enduring is not just the music. It is the characters who keep the culture alive. Take Dave Barrett, whom I ran into out in the crowd. Sporting an incredible, one-of-a-kind battle vest covered in a grid of freaky mannequin faces inspired by creative forces like the late, great Dave Brockie (of GWAR), Dave is out there documenting the culture himself through his channels (Entertainment Getaway, TV Mannequin, Planet 2025), talking movies, music, and the arts. He even mentioned that Brockie's wild theatrical spirit is a massive inspiration for his own band. The guy's creative output is relentless. When you meet people dressed to kill who take the independent creative grind as seriously as you do, you stop and talk.

That boundary-pushing visual energy flows right into how the rest of the day is built. It is a trip seeing how the modern era intersects with the underground right alongside it, like watching the sound guy, Robert Nunes from RN Sound, walking around out on the green grassy knoll several stage lengths away, mixing the entire festival in real time right off an iPad to make sure the low end hits just right out in the open air. Old-school thrash, theatrical monster-art, and modern remote wizardry all colliding in the same park. Turns out Robert has his own thread in that theatrical lineage too. He mentioned he used to own Rooster's Roadhouse in Alameda, a venue that hosted the Dave Brockie Experience before it closed in 2014. Small scene, smaller world.

The web keeps expanding from there. Dan Schyr is a fellow vocalist I met at Phil Demmel's Back Lounge, and between running into him at shows around the scene, we've become friends. He's a genuinely very good vocalist, runs his own Schyr's Hot Sauce on the side, and he'll be up singing a couple songs at Phil's jam night this Wednesday.

Closing the Gates with Blind Illusion

You couldn't ask for a heavier finish to the day than Blind Illusion taking over the amphitheater stage. Harald Oimoen, the man who literally wrote the book on the scene (Murder in the Front Row), gave a passionate introduction, suggesting the band were pioneers of the Bay Area thrash metal scene. Well into the set, he came back out wearing a doctor's jacket, hair standing straight up like he'd stepped out of Doc Brown's lab in Back to the Future. Harald's love for this band was obvious all day. Later on, he could be found working every foot of the grassy knoll, camera in hand, recording the crowd. If you were anywhere on those grounds, there's a good chance you're on tape somewhere. By the time the band launched into their closer, "Vengeance Is Mine," the crowd was completely locked in. Twisting time signature changes, heavy grooves, and lightning-fast speed metal attacks left everything right there on the stage.

More Than Just a Megaphone

It is easy these days to fall into the trap of digital narcissism, using every platform as a megaphone strictly for self-promotion, chasing clout, and shouting into the void. But heavy metal was never built on clout-chasing. It was built on community, mutual support, and lifting up peers whether they are standing tall in the scene or just starting to make waves. Days like this are proof of that: not content, not a highlight reel, just people showing up for each other, for the music, and for a guy who spent years showing up for everyone else.

We have got stories to tell, riffs to play, and a scene that deserves every bit of backing we can give it. See you at the next one.