Over the New Year’s Eve holiday, I traveled from my quiet hometown of Overland Park, KS to the bustling and ever popular city of Denver, Colorado for Decadence festival. This has been home to the world’s top acts for the past five years. Now this was a switch from last year as I went to Lights All Night, which was a blast, but aside from acts like 12^th Planet, Crizzly, Kayzo, LOUDPVCK, G Buck, Rezz, Feed Me, and RL Grime. I wasn’t really feeling the main event headliners. So I took my party crew to Decadence.

Night 1: We Ubered out to the Colorado Convention Center around 7:30, and after find our way through the maze of an entrance where we finally entered the Daydream stage area around 8:15 pm where we walked in to RL Grime Vs. Baauer. I’ve never really understood what the “Vs” or “versus” means. I assume it is like a B2B (back to back), but it seems like it is missing the competitive element. I think it should be like guitar hero where if the crowd gets louder, that DJ wins, hahaha just an idea. Anyways they were all slaying it back and forth.

We spotted a divide in the crowd to navigate through and we make it near front to watch Marshmellow and GRiZ. I will be controversial. Marshmellow was DECENT AT BEST. I had a good time watching his set, but by no means was I like “Oh my God ITS F*CKING MARSHMELLO GGAARRRARGGGGHH” like I see just about everyone doing. This pic of Marshmallow is sweet though.

Anyways, for the third time I saw GRiZ, F*CKING EPIC. He really is finding his groove and I think 2016 did him very well. Now his focus is on overall show quality (as he has already demonstrated laser focus in his production), he sways around on stage, grabbing his sexy sax and still drops some heavy bass when he feels the need and can sense the crowd yearning for more.

Now for Bassnectar. This was MY FIRST BASSNECTAR SET EVER. And I mean, well what more is there to say. He blew it out of the water in your typical Bassnectar fashion. I thought his song selection was pretty good, but I will say it didn’t have me going in as hard as I would on day two. After hearing many great things, we nagivated over to the Timekeeper stage where we saw Zeds Dead for the first time,nand had a blast during their set. Adventure club went on next to close out day 1 and pretty much murdered it and laid the carcass across the decks. Nice👌

Day 2: We began earlier as we got there at around 6:30 not trying to miss any of the action. I hung out in the self dubbed “veg garden” where they had glowing awesomeness everywhere. This was an sweet place to look around and a great place to meet people outside of the rambunctious loud music going on both sides of it.

I meandered over to the Timekeeper stage where I saw Trajikk and Ecotek. Both started the night of poppin. Then Michael Brun came on and threw a great set. He really had the crowd in unisen with him and after he said, “this is the best show I’ve ever had in my life, thank you Denver!” which really seemed to resonate with me as I was having a great time 😃. After Michael Brun, I look around and there are SO MANY PEOPLE, I honestly felt like I was trapped. When you don't know what to do in life or various situations, my dad says to,"stand still.” I took this sage advice and stayed right where I was. It turned out to be perfect because The Chainsmokers were up next. Ok, I will start this off by saying I did not want to like The Chainsmokers as much as I did. I won’t go as far to say I hate them because they are mainstream, but I mean I like dubstep and more alternative "EDM" types. Yeah, they were catchy but after a few listens I was just like “meh”. That was one of the most fun sets I have ever seen or been a part of. They were so fun up there and honestly I felt at times I was up there with them. The crowd involvement was great and they threw some gnarly fucking dubstep too which was just superb.

Next came on the trance legend Eric Prydz. The music seemed to increase tenfold in volume and I could feel every thump of the beat deep in my chest, this man is known for his production elements and light shows so I stayed for longer than expected. Finally, I got out of the “trance” I was in, lol, and found my way to the Daydream stage where up next came Flume. I had a lot of friends see his set in KC and they had nothing but good things to say. He had an awesome looking set of LED picture frames that were set up above him. I was so captivated that before I knew it, it was the New Year. I Facetime my girlfriend at 11:59, Call Fail, Life Fail. Ugh. But the big balloons drop, confetti everywhere, and how could I not be happy? Still ugh.

So after his set the crowd starts to clear and I make my way front and center for Snails. About 15 to 20 minutes of preparation goes by and them bbbwwwwwaaaaaaaammmmmmm. The intro. HO. LEE. SH*T. He just continued to slay the crowd and I’ve never seen rails being pushed that hard. As Herobust’s song goes, “break the f*cking barricade”. I headbanged my way into a neck aneurysm and my body was dunzo after his set. My friends and I went back to the hotel, dead, as I had dreams of Snail drops, and smoke bombs in my head. It was a time to be remembered.

*not Snails

Overall: The reason I went was for the lineup. They kept the suspense well by announcing a few headliners at a time and had people in the comments begging for more. Denver was a fun place to travel to although a bit crowded with traffic. Dispensaries. There are plenty of hotels around there, but we managed to pic the one that was five miles away. I will coordinate hotels next time. The Colorado Convention Center was a pretty building on the outside and I wouldn't really have an recommendations on how they can get all the attendees inside in a more organized way. Security was there to make sure you weren't bringing in suitcases full of drugs or professional recording equipment, but beyond that not invasive at all which is still nice to the clean travelers. Additionally, I enjoyed Lights All Night more in that I could bring my GoPro (legally) and YOU CAN'T at Decadence which was a bummer.

Anyways, the stage designs were as you would expect so nothing really blew me away with new and innovative set pieces, but it all looked great still and the visuals provided were still great. NO CELL PHONE SERVICE. Night one was not too crowded and I had plenty of room, in most places, to get around and have my own dancing space. Night two was a cluster fuck. The stages seemed to criss cross and at the intersection there were 4 directions of thousands of people trying to get through at once. So if you can avoid moving around, do that unless you like being engulfed in swarms of people. The “veg garden” where the silent disco was provided a great area to take a breather and look at a few of the vendors. I bought some bracelets from Electric Family, be sure to check them out.

This was a great festival and well organized for the amount of people they had to get through checkpoints. The bracelets where scan-able so to enter different areas you had to scan, both good and bad. We don’t want people sneaking in to something everyone else paid for, but at the same time I’m already here, let me just go! The lineup was pretty stacked and there were so many different genres presented that it would be hard to not hear the style of music you like, or at minimum have a good time. The DJs loved playing in Denver and the crowd was excitedly awaiting the New Year’s celebration together. On the surface, people may believe that 2016 was a bad year, but EVERYONE grew as a person and learned about themselves and accomplished SOMETHING. Keep those positives in mind as you attack 2017 wholeheartedly and don’t let strife get you down. There is always something to look forward to. Like Datsik’s Ninja Nation Tour or Excision’s Paradox 😱.