Two Tides Brewing Company is doing Black Friday the right way—by hosting a metal festival featuring some of the best metal and heavy rock that Savannah has to offer.
Headlined by Black Tusk, the free festival will include special beer releases, a metal-centric record booth from Graveface Records, food from Krazien (with a menu that includes some very appropriate squid ink pasta) and specialty merch.
Other bands on the bill include Hotplate, Knightsquatch, All Black Everything, and Sins of Godless Men. We caught up with Sins frontman Greg Rettig ahead of the event to learn more about their involvement and what’s in store.
How did y’all get involved in this really amazing event?
James and Liz at Two Tides are pretty excellent people. Liz said, “I want to do a Black Metal Black Friday.” But she was like, “The only metal band I really know is you guys.” I said, “Well, we’re not even really metal. So that’s even better!” [laughs]
We started talking and figuring it out; really, Liz is the powerhouse behind all of it. All we can do is sit there and nod along. They’ve expanded the lineup a little bit. They got Black Tusk and us, and they’ve also added Knightsquatch and Hotplate, as well as All Black Everything—which includes James Massey, the owner and head brewer at Two Tides.
It sounds like a great way to get your Black Friday aggression out.
I think loud sounds and beer is a better way to spend Black Friday! Especially when it’s a local thing. Local brewery, local food truck, local record stores, local bands.
And you’re not going and falling over a crowd people at Target or something
Right! The funniest part of this whole thing has been James Massey learning that loud bands don’t play for very long [laughs]. He’s dealt with jam bands for so long that the idea of bands only playing for 30 or 40 minutes is a new concept.
That’s why two of the acts were just added. I was like, “You really don’t want us to play that long.” [laughs]
I don’t think anyone wants that loud of a sound for an hour and a half! Nobody wants that.
Is Sins working on anything new at the moment?
So, we’ve been a band for 10 years, and the last five we’ve been working on one album. It’s almost done. Technical issues have held it up for the last several months. I was really hoping to have it out by 2020—all of the artwork and concept and everything is done. There are just literally a couple of vocal tracks, mixing and mastering left. It’s not that far away, but in the last five years I’ve recorded and dumped it four times.
When things end and start again over time, do you conceive the songs differently or change a lot of the arrangements?
It’s definitely played differently over time. I don’t think our drummer, John, plays the same thing twice. But I’m very robotically consistent. We added some things, took some songs away; it does progress. Everything is learning, and I’m always trying to find new things. So yeah, it has developed in five years.
Hopefully this year this main release will come out, and then I also have other stuff that is waiting for this big thing to be done so I can move on and immediately not play half of it [laughs].
