Drown Mary is among the heavy metal acts launching the Mayhem festival

With Ozzfest taking a break from the road, the Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival will be the biggest heavy metal show touring this summer.

That's good news for Everett resident Troy Rimstad, a drummer in the heavy metal band Drown Mary. He plans to help launch the tour on Wednesday, as his band plays the White River Amphitheatre in Auburn alongside hard-rock stars Disturbed and Mastodon.

Rimstad, 35, fielded five questions from The Herald about playing metal and his band, Drown Mary.


What attracted you to metal?

It's just fast and aggressive and it's a lot of fun seeing all the kids get crazy. It's like, wow, you're creating that.


After your set opening the Jagermeister Stage, who are you looking forward to seeing most at the festival?

One of my favorite bands is Machine Head. They're headlining our stage. … I'm really looking forward to seeing Slipknot. It's their first tour for their new album. It's cool getting to say we played a festival with them.



Where does the name Drown Mary come from?

Basically … this guy I hooked up with was a Filipino guy who had this band, called Down Mary. He said we needed to come up with a name. Drown Mary. That sounded pretty cool for a metal band. I wrote Drown in front of Mary and it sounded good.

My stepmom's name is Mary, which she thought it was named after her, but it has nothing to do with her. It just sounded good.


How would you describe your sound?

A lot of people have the generalization of heavy metal as satanic, but we're not (satanic), obviously. Heavy and fast.


What's your favorite song to play live and why?

"Policy of Loss." It's got a good groove to it, and people across the world are hearing it because it's on rotation on Sirius Radio's Hard Attack. That's a fun song to play live.

Andy Rathbun: 425-339-3455 arathbun@heraldnet.com.