I had to laugh when I realized that I was once again heading to the Hot Sauce Expo after having attended a crushing Metal show the night before. In this particular case I was actually at a few shows in sequence but that is just the way life rolls in a Metal Metropolis such as this one. Last night was the final night of tour for Children Of Bodom and that is not easy to pass up but now that this stuff had completed it was again time to offer up an objective and informative view of this year’s Hot Sauce Expo. I attended last year and it was a blast and of course I am not just speaking about the levels of heat that would invade my stomach at that affair but instead just a damned good time. This year’s Expo offered a few changes that I felt immediately worked out for the better and the first was that it would be in Manhattan, at the Penn Plaza Pavilion. This particular space often plays host to Comic Conventions and with it being indoors would not have weather as a concern for vendors and the all so important patrons with the money. Some readers might recall that last year’s Expo was held outdoors in East River Park down in Williamsburg. Once again I would be a journalistic guest of the fine folks at High River Sauces and was not going to decline based on our having known them for years now. They have a killer sauce from Savatage’s Chris Caffery among many others and I would be hoping to catch Eddie Ojeda once again since this year is the 30th Anniversary of Twisted Sister’s seminal release “Stay Hungry”. This year I would endeavor to be better prepared for the onslaught and brought along some unsalted crackers to ensure that I had a proper coating if necessary in my stomach. Sampling hot sauce after hot sauce after hot sauce was going to do me in otherwise and I wanted to avoid that.

As I approached my second go round at the event I thought back to the enjoyable time that was last year’s happening and should you want to see that report just click HERE. As mentioned, one of the main organizers of the affair is Steve Seabury of High River Sauces and since there are Rock notables often present it made sense to visit this one more time. Check out the poster. It’s cool isn’t it? Trust me, this was going to be one of the only cool things that would be encountered across the course of the day and I am speaking about temperature. Now it was time to get a little spicy.

Continue reading PiercingMetal Goes To The 2nd Annual NYC Hot Sauce Expo (3/30/2014): Part One →