Jasmine Wright Photos
Roots of Deception lays it down at Connecticut Death Fest.
Hubert Smith took to the stage for the second time in two nights. The night before, he was playing drums for Necrocunt, something of a supergroup within Connecticut’s death metal scene. Now, he was laying down distorted guitar grooves for brutal death five-piece Roots of Deception. Photographers — myself included — wormed between audience members, who stood so close to the stage that their hair lashed its surface with each headbang. Behind us, the crowd was arranged in a circle of potential energy, the center of the Beeracks’ cavernous garage, waiting for the next mosh pit to break out.
Over the weekend, 16 New England extreme metal bands descended on the Beeracks in East Haven for two evenings of unrestrained, eardrum-blasting noise. The Connecticut Death Fest, now in its third year, took things up a notch this year: With the support of New England Obscura, it brought together hundreds of fans, a variety of vendors, and sideshow acts, including a magician-cum-comedian and a no-ring hardcore wrestling deathmatch.
The festival blurred the lines between performers and audience. Carlos Estrada, guitarist and vocalist for New Jersey two-piece Bayht Lahm, played the grindcore band’s set in the middle of the audience, stepping away from the microphone during instrumental breaks to play as close to people’s faces as possible. New York act Doomcreeper invited up Izac Garcia to perform guest vocals on the mic — which he promptly carried down with him into the mosh pit, delivering guttural growls from the epicenter of the chaos.
Jasmine Wright Photo
Carlos Estrada of Bayht Lahm pumps fists with the crowd.
“The stage is like a barrier between me and the people I’m trying to connect with,” Estrada told me after Bayht Lahm’s set, echoing statements I’d hear from other bands throughout the weekend.
Ringed around three walls of the garage were tables set up for merch stands and vendors. Josh Swingle brought along a massive sample of jarred reptile specimens for sale (“all specimens sourced ethically,” a sign was careful to note). Naugatuck tattoo artist Luana Gama offered flash tattoos ranging from spiderwebs to ram skulls. Frozen Screams Imprint offered up vinyl records, zines, and tapes (cassette and VHS).
Roots’s guitarist Smith, along with Spencer Haddad from Marvel of Decay and Joseph Zembrowski, Jr. of New England Obscura, helped organize and promote the festival. Smith said it was all about community — and carving out a specific identity for Connecticut death metal in a crowded New England scene.
“It’s very sacred,” Smith told me backstage after his second set. “Because, for someone that lived in Connecticut and stuff, growing up I didn’t have that many friends that were into the music I listen to, which is just primarily death metal and what not.”
He said Connecticut Death Fest is the product of a new generation of organizers.
“Without the internet, this would not be a thing at all, to be honest. As I personally branched out to more people — and more people started branching out, I wasn’t the only one — we just became a community with a new generation of specifically Connecticut death metal bands, hence the name.”
Zembrowski agreed with Smith’s idea of a new generation of organizers. He said the Connecticut death metal scene has exploded since the early days of the Covid pandemic.
“Right after the pandemic, everybody just wanting to get back out there, to see new things, to have new experiences, and to find out more about what they like and who they want to be around — it’s really helped, and I only see it growing from here,” he said.
There were a lot of new experiences to be had at the festival. One of those experiences: ducking my face behind my arms after one wrestler smashed a PVC pipe over another’s head, fragments of which flew directly at me. And while the wrestling deathmatch, organized by promoter Elm City Hardcore, may have been a bit much for me, it wasn’t hard to see the link between the no-holds-barred fighting and the moshing I’d both watched and participated in. After wrestler Kamikaze jumped off the stage, landing a double foot stomp into an already-bloodied Hardcore, the match came to an end. Both wrestlers — whom I’d just seen shooting staple guns at each other and rubbing cheese graters against each other’s foreheads — stood up, shook hands, and hugged.
As the festival’s last act, New York death metal veterans Afterbirth, took the stage, I looked around at the audience. We were all too exhausted by that point to continue the moshing that had gone on for the last six hours. But I had come to recognize a lot of faces. There was Rob from Delta Protocol, headbanging as enthusiastically as ever, who had butted shoulders with me in the pit more than a few times. There was Karl, the vocalist from Necrotic Remains, who earlier confessed that all of the band’s lyrics were improvised (“it’s death metal, I didn’t have any words for any of those songs,” he said). And there were the two Nicks — one, the vocalist for Necrocunt, who spent the rest of the festival glued to the stage, contributing occasional guest growls, and the other, who recorded all of the bands on his phone and handed me a CD for his own band, Vomit Fist, between sets.
Sitting in Zembrowski’s office after the crowd had dispersed, we reminisced on where the scene had come from, and what the future has in store. It’s still a very male-dominated scene, but Zembrowski said its formerly endemic toxic masculinity had evaporated.
“Everybody was in the pit this weekend,” he said. “All fucking races, genders, colors, it doesn’t matter. And no matter what, if somebody bumps into you, they’re gonna help you up. It’s a beautiful fucking thing, it really is.”
I asked him what Connecticut Death Fest 2025 will look like.
“Three days, and twice the bands.”
A flyer for the event can be found on the Instagram page @connecticutdeathfest with all of the bands who performed.
Marvel of Decay, with John Yack on vocals and Spencer Haddad on guitar, performs "What Lies Beneath The Deep" at CT Death Fest on Friday, March 8.
The quote below is how it was in the late eighties and early nineties
Everybody was in the pit this weekend, he said. All fucking races, genders, colors, it doesnt matter. And no matter what, if somebody bumps into you, theyre gonna help you up. Its a beautiful fucking thing, it really is.
Im glad that the camaraderie and civility with chaos has returned to the mosh pit. The last time my sibling went to a hardcore or death metal show he said participants seemed to not understand this credo.
I used to love to attend local shows at small venues in CT and watch the participants in the pit and on stage having a great time.