Just going to start off saying that I never listened to that first band before going to the concert. After listening to them at the concert I find them pretty awesome. If you want to listen to them heres a link to their bandcamp.

This is how my day started.
I got like an hour of sleep yesterday morning. For some reason I felt like taking a 2 hour long shower at roughly 1 in the morning. Then I sat up til around 4:30 and fell asleep in my bed with a towel wrapped around my head and woke up with completely dry and soft hair. After doing papers from 6 - 11 I got home and my dad kept telling me to go get some sleep because I pretty much got none. I ended up falling asleep at 2ish and got another 3 1/2 hours of sleep in and somehow managed to not over sleep and miss the concert.

I left home with my sister at around 5:30 and made it to the town the concert was in at around 6:30. So it was about an hour drive. Give or take a couple minutes.

So we get to the venue and go and park in this parking garage near the building and walk down the street to the venue.
The doors were supposed to open at 7 so we had to stand outside and wait for them to open. But they decided to dick around in the building and not let anyone in til almost a half hour after they were supposed to. So me and my sister stood around outside in line to get inside the building for almost an hour and (with wind chill) the temp was below freezing.

When we finally made it into the building I immediately went to the merch table to see what they had there. At the time I bought a shirt of The Sword's. It's a large "Hidden Masters" shirt. I got a chance to look around at Clutch and American Sharks merch tables too but didn't feel like getting anything from either at the time. After we left the merch table we got back to where we decided we wanted to stand during the show. Which was pretty close to the stage. And by that I don't mean we were like right in the front. There were like 4 rows of people in front of us and then there was a gap and then the stage. Well when we got back to our spot my sister decides to ask me to go back and get her a shirt because she couldn't do it herself while we were there. She got a small "Hawks & Serpents" shirt.

After that we just stayed where we were before when we got back to our spot. Though more and more people started pouring into the building by that time.

So finally after being in there for a half hour the lights went down a bit and the band American Sharks came on.
I'll be honest here. I had no fucking idea who they were when I initially saw they were going to be playing. But they were actually pretty good. While we were going home my sister said that the singer/bassist apparently "looks like me".
I don't really see it. This be he by the way.

Back onto the concert stuff.
American Sharks were only on for a little under 30 minutes. Which surprised me to be honest. It didn't feel like it was 30 minutes. I can't get a copy of what their set list was but I'm fairly certain it was just a run through of their first and so far only album which is also titled "American Sharks". After every other song the singer kept talking about how he was "talking to Kyle Shutt (guitarist of The Sword) in his "ear piece"" and how Kyle had some disease and that it was all over the major news networks like: CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera..... he later revealed that Kyle's disease is what doctors call "Tit-to-mouth". And that Kyle "needs to suck on all dem titties" haha. After they finished both me and my sister agreed that they were pretty good and I decided I'd go get a CD of theirs at their merch table after The Sword's set.

While we were standing around someone was up onstage checking The Sword's equipment and was doing a sound check to make sure everything was working properly. While this was going on the dude who was next to me said to someone else in the crowd "Hey The Sword have only one guy checking all their instruments. How economical." or something along the lines of that.
Afterwards people slowly approach the front area of the crowd The Sword finally came on at I wanna say 9.
I can't remember what their set list was to be honest. This is their "average" set list according to setlist.fm but I know for a fact they didn't play these songs in this order.
Apocryphon
Cloak of Feathers
How Heavy This Axe
Tres Brujas
The Hidden Masters
The Veil of Isis
Freya
Arrows in the Dark
Dying Earth
Maiden, Mother & Crone
To Take the Black
Seven Sisters

In addition to that they played Lawless Lands but didn't play To Take The Black. Throughout the tour they were kinda half and half when it came to shows with encores and we unfortunately caught em when they didn't feel like doing one. Though when it came to encores they varied depending on what they did during their set and other times they covered Working Man by Rush or Cheap Sunglasses by ZZ Top.

Right when the song Tres Brujas (third to last song) was about to start this dude decided he'd go in front of me and the dude who was standing next to me. While The Sword were playing the song the dude started jumping up and down and attempted to start a mosh pit even though Mosh Pits aren't allowed in the building. The dude was getting so annoying that the dude next to me kept trying to move him out of the way because he was blocking both mine and his view of almost the entire stage. And it got the point where he full on shoved him because he wouldn't stop. Then before things got "serious" someone behind me got in between em and broke up anything that may or may not have happened.

After The Sword finished me and my sister were standing for a couple minutes and then she asked if I wanted to stick around for Clutch because she wasn't a big fan of em and because she was getting really tired and whatnot and I told her it was up to her since she was my ride to and from there. We ended up deciding on moving further back and went back to the merch table because there were a few more things I wanted to get while I was there. I got a Sword poster and an American Sharks CD. While I was walking to the merch table the guitarist from American Sharks was walking away from the merch table to I went and shook his hand and said that they did really good and he said thanks. The drummer from American Sharks was at the merch table and he was the one who gave me my CD.
Also this is the Sword poster I got. Blah blah. They only made 90 of em and mines #74.

After I got all my stuff me and my sister were kinda just hanging around in a VERY crowded room because I'm fairly certain about 80% of the people who went to the show came just for Clutch. We decided we'd stick around for a couple of Clutch's songs and then go. We ended up leaving after the second one.

While we were heading back to the car I turned to my sister and point blank told her "Ya know. I don't really trust any part of Joliet at night." (the show was at Mojoes in Joliet, Illinois). To which she replied that she only trusts the parts of Joliet that are near the mall because thats the general area in which shes more familiar with.

So we got in the car and started the long trek home. While on our way home she asked me if I had anything to eat during the day and at that moment I realized I ate pretty much nothing at all so we stopped off and Taco Bell (because she had to go to the bathroom) at like 11 at night and I got a chicken taco and one of those chicken griller things. She got 2 of these cheese rollup things (It's pretty much just cheese inside of a taco shell) and some nachos.
When we were leaving the Taco Bell parking lot I said something about how my griller felt bigger than the ones i normally get and thats because they pretty much filled it with nothing but chicken. Which was fucking awesome.
And I don't know how but my sister somehow forgot that I had that and thought I only got a chicken taco even though I had her hold onto the griller when I got my taco out of the bag of stuff.
We also passed by a cop who was parked waiting for people who were breaking the law to pass by so he could stop em and she was going 10 mph over the speed limit and I didn't have my seat belt on and he didn't do anything. He even looked right at us while we were going by too. Then we got home at about midnight and then I got onto Newgrounds to see if I missed anything while I was gone.
So thats pretty much all of what happened.

\/pic of The Sword onstage below\/