By Sean Palmerston

This Saturday and Sunday will see the city of Montreal play host to the second ever HEAVY MTL. As longtime Hellbound readers will remember, we ran a belated review of the 2008 edition last summer that featured photos by our own Adam Wills and a few write ups by me. This year Hellbound.ca has a group of our writers heading down yet again, including Albert Mansour, Adam Wills and Laura Wiebe Taylor. They’ll be able to tell you how great it was afterwards, but in the meantime here are my Top 10 reasons why you should head down to Montreal on Saturday  if you are on the fence.

10.  SKELETONWITCH rules live! When they hit the stage at 1:15 on Saturday you will see Ohio’s finest dole out their own version of blackened thrash that always pleases. Their two albums on Prosthetic are great, but this is a live band and one that keeps getting better and better.

9. HIGH ON FIRE on a big stage. Having just seen them decimate Hamilton’s Casbah on Tuesday night, the thought of HOF on a huge festival stage at 2:15 playing as loud as fuck sounds great. Make sure you’ve got earplugs.

8. MELISSA AUF DER MAUR has some cool artistic ideas. She won’t be able to do much multi-media stuff at 2:45, but I am sure she’ll be rocking out.

7. The upcoming KATAKLYSM album Heaven’s Venom is some good shit. We’ve had a chance to hear it here at Hellbound HQ and we’re giving it an early thumbs up. Catch their 3:15 set and find out for yourself  if they play any new tunes!

6. Hearing ANVIL play “Metal On Metal” and “Winged Assassins” at anytime is a treat. Seeing them play them live in front of 20,000 diehard Quebecois metalheads will be surreal. “Keep on rocking! Keep on rolling. Fight the Heavy Metal Fight!” Look for Mad Dog and Cut Loose in the audience signing autographs and maybe snorting up some beers too.

5.  45 minutes of TESTAMENT at 5 PM should include “Over The Wall”, “The Preacher” and “More Than Meets The Eye” in their set. Plus, Alex Skolnick is just about the best thrash soloist of all time. Mandatory metal mayhem.

4. This will be the only Canadian show by HALFORD in 2010. How cool is that? The Metal God cometh to HEAVY MTL at 5:45

3. SLAYER is doing the Seasons In The Abyss album in its entirety. I wrote an essay in Grade 13 English in 1991 (yes, I am old) that compared the SITA album track “Skeletons of Society” to the Kurt Vonnegut book Cat’s Cradle and I got an 89 on it. Take that, literary snobs!

2. ALICE COOPER  sandwiched between SLAYER and MEGADETH? Sick. I hope he plays “Black Juju”. 

1. MEGADETH will play their best album ever, Rust In Peace, in its entirety from start to finish. With a Canadian on drums. And a former Jag Panzer member on lead guitar. And Dave Ellefson on bass. Fuck me.

All of this incredible shit is happening on Saturday – and I haven’t even got around to Sunday. Jesus, there’s some good stuff happening there too, like HATEBREED and 3 INCHES OF BLOOD. It’s going to be another incredible festival; if you have the chance to go JUST GO!