Maryland Deathfest 2026 - Day 2 (Thursday, 5/21)

All Videos Credited to Original Creators

When I woke up Thursday and took a peek at the city from my hotel room window, I noticed something funny – there was no sun.  The sky was fortified by a wall of dense, grey clouds that weren’t willing to let any signs of daylight slip through the cracks.

Hmm, that’s different.

As mentioned earlier - in all of my previous trips to MDF, the only thing more brutal than the sounds coming out of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor was the reliably scorched earth temperatures that smothered the holiday weekend.  Apparently, Mother Earth had different plans this year and decided to drop the thermostat to a cool 60-something degrees as well.  This put me in a bit of a pickle, as I’d only packed an assortment of shorts and T-shirts for the week.  To be fair – nothing about 2026 has been normal so far, so why should the weather be?

After a chilly walk around the harbor and making friends with some rogue ducks that clearly did not have a festival wristband, I made my way down to the Power Plant complex for Day 2 (official festival Day 1).  Thursday’s lineup was very doom heavy, so my schedule was officially packed, but we kicked things off with New York’s Cerebral Hemorrhage.  Cranking a traditional flavor of old school death metal, the tunes weren’t anything groundbreaking, but the band was so genuinely giddy to be opening things up for the day, it made the whole crowd root for them.

Hometown heroes Black Lung surprisingly had one of my favorite sets of the week.  With an unassuming presence and a stunning musical aptitude, their ability to wrap Floydian-inspired psychedelic doom in a polished hard rock veneer had me eager for a deeper dive into their catalog.

I’d hoped to get in to see Emasculator, but the buzz around these gals had clearly made the rounds, and the line to get into Soundstage was literally around the block (I’d never seen that before at Deathfest).  Good for them, they’re a great band and deserve the attention.

I knew the name Lair of the Minotaur but had never made the acquaintance of their music.  Turns out I wasn’t missing much.  Sounding like a less technical High on Fire, I only lasted a few songs, but there was a full house of rabid fans that clearly felt otherwise.  To each their own, right?

Bongripper, however, were hypnotic.  The instrumental drone quartet cast a spell that reverberated in the chests of everyone packed in at the Power Plant stage, props to whomever was running the soundboard for these guys.  I was skeptical that these kinds of tunes would translate as well as they did in a live setting, but I was content to be proven wrong.

Chicago’s Avernus were another pleasant surprise.  Still celebrating the release of 2024’s ‘Grievances’, their first new material in 20 years, the band treated fans to a concise set that balanced the really really old stuff and the really really new stuff.  Honestly, the last time I probably really listened to Avernus was back in the mid-90s when they were still young and scrappy.  But 30 years after the fact, I dare say they sound better today.  With a sound that’s very comparable to Serenades-era Anathema, I was a happy dude.

Fellow Chicagoans Novembers Doom were next up on the schedule.  There was a period where I saw them something like 3 times in an 18-month period due to festival overlap, but this was easily the best performance I’ve seen from them yet.  Musically, they were as tight and professional as you’d expect them to be, but this was the first time they looked like they were actually having fun together on stage.

I made an executive decision to skip Rawke and post up for a good viewing position to see Solitude Aeturnus.  Headlining one of the main stages for the evening, this was destined to be a more intimate performance compared to their Hell’s Heroes return a couple of years prior, so I was more than ready.  But then a funny thing happened.  While the band and crew were setting up, a guy who looked remarkably similar to Jason McMaster was helping with the load in.  While waiting for the band to formally take the stage, I ended up chatting with a delightful older guy from Canada who’d actually drove in for the fest and was leaving town the following day.  As we were spinning yarns about shows we’ve seen and doom bands we love, he casually mentioned “did you hear about (SA vocalist) Robert Lowe?”  No, do tell.

Apparently, after a less than exceptional performance in Greece where Lowe was a hot mess vocally, he was excused from the band.  And rather than cancel their headline appearance at MDF, the remaining members of SA recruited, wait for it…Jason McMaster to fill in on vocals!  For those asking, “who the hell is Jason McMaster”, he’s fronted bands like Dangerous Toys and Watchtower and recently sat in with Armored Saint while John Bush was under the weather.  And when singing his own tunes, he’s a fine vocalist, but he doesn’t have nearly the range necessary to do justice to the Solitude Aeturnus catalog.  The set leaned heavier on lower register material and McMaster tried his darndest to accommodate the material, but being unfamiliar with the tunes, it looked like he was forced to keep his eyes glued to the floor prompter to feed him the lyrics.  While I’m proud of the band for powering through a difficult situation, I was still a bit disappointed.  Here’s hoping that the guys can work things out.

Weedsconsin’s favorite herbalists Bongzilla closed out Nevermore Hall’s schedule for the night.  And while it’s easy for the uninitiated to dismiss Bongzilla’s green themes as gimmicky, it’s much harder to dismiss the trio’s penchant for writing thick, tasty riffs.  As spiritual successors to the house that Sleep built, albums like Dab City and Gateway are true stoner doom classics.  And lest ye think that the band is all shtick, there is a persistent haze that follows the band, particularly bassist/vocalist Muleboy.  The number of deep hits the dude took from his pipe before, during, and after the show would be enough to sedate an elephant.  But somehow even while looking like he was on another planet, it was a great set.

Before calling it a night, I ducked into Soundstage to catch some of Torsofuck’s set.  I was not previously familiar with Finland’s finest, but with a name like that, I had to at least check it out.  And it was about what you’d expect from a band with an album titled ‘Erotic Diarrhea Fantasy’ – nothin’ but love songs.

And with that, Day 2 of Maryland Deathfest was in the books.  By this point, the cold dreary weather had begun to translate into actual rain, a theme that would carry on through the remainder of the weekend.  But you’ll have to wait for the next entry to hear more about that.