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Pit Stories: Fin'amor's Mosh Pit Padawan

Ready for some more mosh pit mayhem metal heads? Tuesday's rolled around again, so let's dive right in!

A few months back Fin'amor provided us a Pit Story about a fight managing to break out during every single song of a set, and today Fin'amor returns for another tale from the pit. This time vocalist Benjamin Meyerson shares a story of a student learning the ways of the mosh:

It was my first day of teaching seniors in high school, and within 5 minutes a student walked up to me and asked “Are you in a band?” I lifted my finger to my mouth and whispered “tell no one.” It was nice to be asked, but the last thing a teacher wants is for students to know we have lives outside of the class.

After the semester ended I celebrated with a Meshuggah show. The venue was wall to wall packed, and through the crowd comes the same student, who had just graduated high school. He was with his friends enjoying the show, when out of nowhere a massive pit breaks out. He turns to me and asks me very politely, “Mr. M, Can you teach me to pit?” I gave him a five minute lesson on pit etiquette and unspoken metal codes and asked “have you ever crowd surfed?” He says “no, show me.” I smile and turn to the biggest dude I can find, tap his shoulder, give him the double thumb lift sign, point to my student, and he lifts him and throws him into the pit.

I meet him a few minutes later in between two walls of death, he thanks me for everything, the walls close and I see him jumping off into the sea of fists and feet once more. He came up to me after the show and said “that was the greatest thing a teacher has ever taught me.” I smiled, and in that moment realized that I learned something too: experience and learning are like a mosh pit, you either jump in yourself and bust your ass like I did when I was a kid, or someone shows you the way and tosses you in and you bust your ass anyway. Either way, when the walls of death close, someone is going to bust their ass eventually.

Fin'amor's "Forbidding Mourning" album dropped last month and can be picked up at this location or streamed in full below. You can also read our review right here.