I don't know if any city benefits more in the weeks before MDF than New York; European bands looking to get the most out of crossing the Atlantic will often do one-off dates there. A week prior to MDF 2011, I saw
Miasmal play to a small crowd within the cozy confines of the Acheron, thereby freeing me from having to buy tickets for that year's Saturday line up (sorry, Voivod). This year, a number of the bands that played the sold out Baltimore Soundstage made appearances in NY, to the delight of people like me who weren't able to get tickets before that venue sold out. This show nearly slipped out from under me as well; I arrived at the Acheron to find it filled to capacity; including a surprising number of cute girls, and an unsurprising number of drunk assholes (those two things shouldn't be seen as unrelated, or even mutually exclusive).
