LEWISTON — They mostly huddled in groups, swapping stories and killing time.
The teen who’d stood there for hours balancing on crutches. The 15-year-old girl who almost “broke my face” the last time she saw the opening act. The friends who’d driven back roads for more than two hours to make it to the Androscoggin Bank Colisee. That guy in slippers.
They were ready to rock.
Box office manager Jim Mercier expected 3,000 fans, close to a sell-out, at the Five Finger Death Punch “Share the Welt Tour” show with All That Remains, Hatebreed and Rains on Saturday night.
Nate Hider, 17, of Scarborough, declared Five Finger “the best band ever.” Hider had broken his foot in gym class. His game plan: Race “as fast as I can with these crutches” to the front of the stage when the doors opened at 6 p.m.
Cassie Diffin, 19, hung onto her boyfriend, Carl Martin, 20, for warmth. The South Portland couple planned a four-hour wait in the cold.
“I waited at the Civic Center one time for 12 hours,” Martin said. “I’m one of those people; I go all out.”
He was game to join the show’s mosh pit but told Diffin they’d probably avoid it for her sake: “I can mess up my face; yours is too pretty.”
Jean and Matt Gosley, 44 and 43, and their friend Peter Zambon, 44, made the trip from Littleton, N.H. The couple saw Five Finger in Bangor last year. It was Zambon’s first time.
“They’re good and there’s not too much to do this time of year,” said Matt Gosley, a self-described “old-time metal-head.”
“Some years, we get eight or 10 shows,” he said. “This is an off-year.”
Only three shows under their belts.
He’d started talking to a stranger who, it turned out, worked at the same shop as a cousin and also spied a familiar face in the crowd. Or, make that feet. Gosley told his wife, “Holy, there’s the guy with the slippers!” They’d seen him at an Alice Cooper show a few years ago, same metal fan, same fluffy tan mocs.
Sisters Rachel Miller, 15, and Gaby Miller, 17, of Lisbon arrived at 11 a.m. to make sure they could stake out a spot in the front of the stage for the general admission show.
“You can collect stuff: picks, dropped sticks. They’re all memories,” Rachel Miller said. She was too nervous to eat, too many butterflies in her stomach.
“Last time I saw All That Remains I almost broke my face,” she said. “Some guy was crowd-surfing, my face went on the rail. No blood, though. We’re all good.”
kskelton@sunjournal.com
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- Cassie Diffin of South Portland tries to stay warm with her boyfriend, Carl Martin, also of South Portland as they wait outside the Androscoggin Bank Colisee in Lewiston on Saturday. They were on track to wait four hours for the doors to open for several bands, including headliner Five Finger Death Punch.
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