children, with its scariest events being schlocky haunted trails during Halloween. Other than that, Camp Hidden Valley offers educational programs for the Boys and Girls Club serving the greater Baltimore area. For the last weekend in September, however, more than 200 metal fans and adventurous spirits were sprawled throughout its 180 acres to celebrate darkness and fair weather chaos.

BLACK TABLE

Black Table is a New Jersey-based band who is tagged as post black on their Metal Archives page. Though, like many of the bands at the festival, Black Table is part of the unsigned club, they were a band whose merch consisted of gorgeous vinyl with stellar design. The band took the stage while campers trickled in to set up their tents around the stage. The back lots, whichsnaked around various trails, were all full, and campers began to be told to just set up anywhere, as long as it wasn’t in the middle of the field stage.

The female shrieks of Mers Sumida were fitting to the music, which was grinding and emotionally exhausting. Each of the band’s songs ended with a pause in silence as if to muster up the courage to launch into the next one. At the end, the band members each meekly thanked the couple dozen people who were now drinking on the lawn after set-up. This was to be a wonderful weekend.

Sentinel by Black Table

One thing everyone could agree on about the first Shadow Woods was that it would be unique. With the entire bill being more obscure than the two