Cathercist

It was the fastest 20 minutes of their lives. They’re still young, so they’ve got time to have a better 20 minutes, but all things being equal, it was pretty darn good.

Gulfport-based hard rock act Cathercist (Clint Rog, vox; Taylor Roberts, guitar; Brian Lowman, guitar; Cedric Feazelle, drums; Phillip Wicht, bass) opened the Rockstar Taste of Chaos show last Saturday at the Mississippi Coast Coliseum before more than 5,000 hard-rocking music lovers. The band, relatively unknown in some circles of the local scene, shocked many here when they were picked as the winners of the (online) Ernie Ball Battle of the Bands.

Just one week prior to the Taste of Chaos show, Cathercist had even more to celebrate when they were named the top band to proceed to the semi-finals of the CPR Fest Battle of the Bands. Saturday afternoon, however, none of that mattered.

"He’s off in another world, man," Roberts said before the show, referring to himself, during a walk through the still quiet Coliseum. "I used to build stages like this, now I’m getting to play on one. Just looking at the size of that stage, we’re really going to be up there playing for a couple thousand people. It’s going to be nuts. Kind of a dream come true, you know?"

Wicht and Roberts were seldom seen without mini-cams in hand, and nobody in the band stayed motionless for more than six or seven seconds at a time. People sometimes wonder what bands do before a show of this magnitude. Cathercist tossed a beach ball around with a member of the road crew while the members of Bullet For My Valentine, who played later in the evening, lounged around the dressing room with fans. Headlining act Avenged Sevenfold spent some quality time with a terminal cancer patient and his son, who had traveled from Baton Rouge to see the band perform.

The doors opened an hour or so before Cathercist’s set. The multiple thousands of heads that would see these five kids from Gulfport rock out filed in. Roberts couldn’t resist the urge and, mini-cam in hand, rushed from behind the stage and stirred the crowd, who instantly responded with the evening’s first collective roar.

Five minutes before the show, their pre-gig rituals complete, Cathercist was a singular knot of excitement. I was getting nervous for them and I wasn’t even performing. And then the lights faded. The rookie mentality left them all like it had never been there. The nerves, the stiff fingers, the queasy stomachs - gone.

Their performance was one to remember for the local scene, and a perfect fit for the other bands on the bill. They represented themselves better than I think most thought they would, honestly. Though they did fall victim to the imperfect sound mix most opening bands suffer through, I doubt anyone in the band went to bed that night feeling inferior.

"When we started playing shows, people told us our music wouldn’t make it," a pacing Rog said earlier that day. "I want to try to get those people who don’t know who we are and introduce a new style of music for local bands in this area."

Right before showtime, Rog related to me stories of some of the people who had voted Cathercist to this spot. He got lost in relating a nice story of a teenager in Ohio who had messaged him, thanking him for brightening her day with his band’s music. His thanks to her came a few minutes later, when the sound of the little local band that could filled the Coliseum to a roaring applause. Feazelle said it best, I think.

"Look out for Cathercist in the future."

Justin Hooks covers bars and bands along the Coast for the Sun Herald. He can be reached at jhooks@sunherald.com.

- Justin Hooks