The bar manager signaled it was time and we made our way to the stage and got our instruments set up. Solomon took a seat and thumped the bass drum, pattered the snare. Kevin positioned himself on the right-hand side of the stage, me on the left. The guitar strap felt snug on my shoulder, my Jim Root Telecaster thrummed in my hands. And it all came flooding back through me in that moment. That otherworldly energy that comes when the amp is turned on and the audience is tuned in – even in half-empty dives like this.

Caspian, standing center stage, stomped his foot to the beat of the bass drum. Then, right on cue, threw his fist in the air and for the first time in ten years summoned the dead to rise. A chorus of drunken howls came from the meager crowd, the faithful few who had come to watch their favorite cult band from an era they hardly remembered.

I turned to Caspian and grinned at the absurdity of what I saw. The greying hairs sprouting from his armpit were fluttering like the tentacles of some diseased sea anemone. Ten years ago he would have been shirtless, oil glistening off his rock-star abs. But tonight he was wearing a tank top to conceal his sagging gut and fleshy breasts. At least the pentagram printed on the front of his shirt reinforced the rage that still existed in his ageless heart. And the ink on his arm sleeves remained as bright as fresh blood.

Solomon was now pounding the foot pedal, a ritualistic war beat that counted down to showtime. Three, two, one.…

I strummed the guitar as hard as I could; a single downstroke that turned time back ten years, blasting a chord of distortion so loud it caused one of our old roadies, Sam Holt, to stumble back and drop his beer. Sam had been fired from three jobs, ditched by two wives, and lost the bus keys more times than I could count. But this was the first time I’d ever seen beer slip though his veteran hands.

We opened the set with ‘Coffin Dust’, a power ballad about unrequited love that Caspian had written after being dumped his sophomore year in high school. It was a lewd metaphor for what his ex-girlfriend was like in bed. Lance Caspian, always the class act. Next came ‘Within a Cage of Hate’. There are no lyrics to this one, only screams and guttural howls. The guitar riff is basically me raking my pick across the E string as fast as I can while Kevin drops bombs with his bass.

I spread my legs and hunkered down, assuming the pose I had always imagined striking in front of an arena filled with screaming fans. That had never come to fruition. This would have to do.

Still, it felt damn good.