Hit up 3 metal shows this week, here are my writeups:
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Hypno5e / Revocation / The Binary Code @ The Empty Bottle
The "Metal As Art" tour arrived for a free Monday-night show. The bands seemed surprisingly pleased with the 70-person turnout, saying it was the best of their 6 shows so far. Though maybe that's not really surprising when your tour is headlined by a French band no one has ever heard of.
The Binary Code played some decent-enough tech-death. A lot of it was just random riffs pointlessly stuck together (a fault of most tech-death), but occasionally they'd hit a nice groove or even something recognizable as a song. They also has a few lava-lamp moments to break things up, so that was nice. Their vocalist was mostly useless, except for his weird drunken "moshing" while watching the other two bands.
Revocation was the only known band on the tour, but also the least "Art". Death/thrash of a reasonably melodic and non-sucky variety. It seems to be largely a vehicle for their frontman/guitarist, who certainly does know how to play. During some of his solos, the 2nd guitarist would completely stop playing, which was odd. He randomly teased the intros to both "Symbolic" and "Tornado of Souls", and both sounded stunningly identical to the original recordings. Though I suppose those really weren't exceptionally random selections, since a combination of Death and Megadeth is pretty representative of the band.
Hypno5e tried to bring the Art, but unfortunately the stage didn't have any room to show their video projection, so we missed out on whatever art was there. Instead, we only got their backlit stage presence, lit with multi-color LED can lights. That's a cool bit of equipment I haven't seen before, and one that makes a lot of sense for something that small bands can bring along that might be a little better than the crappy rigs at tiny clubs. Musically, they alternated between aggressive rhythmic metal, and atmospheric lava-lamp prettiness. Despite having very little melody, the metal parts remained quite interesting, and with the stark contrasts, it made for a really cool performance. Too bad only about 40 people stuck around to see it.
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Korpiklaani / Tyr / Swashbuckle / White Wizzard / Waves of Amphitrite @ Reggie's Rock Club
Holy hell, that was the most fun I've had at a metal show in a while.
Local opener Waves of Amphitrite was alright, and a perfect fit for the bill. Folky-epic-synthy metal with clean and growled vocals. No confusing them for a band with a lot of live experience though.
White Wizzard's NWOBHM-isms were kinda fun, especially since you don't see that too often these days, though their energy seemed a little low. Maybe because they're a band you'd expect to see go on at 2am rather than 7pm on a Tuesday.
Swashbuckle play generic thrash while wearing pirate costumes. The guys are pretty funny between songs, but you'd think by now they would have worked out a way to inject some of the pirate-theme into their actual music. Oh well. They were roadie-ing for the rest of the bands on the tour, which is probably a better use for them than playing. Maybe that's their deal? "We'll be the techs for all of you, and you only have to pay us in stage time"?
Tyr was so much better than the first time I saw them (at the Paganfest/Powerfest), because they actually played a bunch of their "hit single" songs rather than their progged-out weirdisms (which are great on record, but not so great for the live show). The sound wasn't as good as it should have been (second guitar was really low, lead vocalist would sometimes sound incredible, sometimes nearly inaudible), but they still sounded plenty fine. They closed with "The Wild Rover", the world's only prog-drinking-song; it's a perfect example of how they make their odd rhythms and timings nearly unnoticeable, for it literally got a line of 20 metalheads arms-around-shoulders singing and swinging along.
Then Korpiklaani. I don't know if I've ever heard a note of their music before (I missed their last tour here), but they were exactly what I expected them to be. Music that provides the perfect backdrop for one of the rarer-but-most-beautiful things in metal: the Dance-Mosh Pit. I honestly have no idea if the band was any good, though I really liked their bass player (who looks like he sits in Saturday afternoons with a country band), and I added yet another live-band-with-accordion to my ever-growing list. What I do know is that the spirit of the crowd was incredible. It was an absolutely perfect level of jumping around and bashing into each other. Almost everyone was groovin' on the exact same vibe, and those few who had a tendency to be a bit more asshole-ish were calmly advised against it by the excellent and almost-unseen security staff. Arms-around-shoulders circle-dances would form regularly, but unlike the three-too-cool-friends doing it to be "ironic" that I've seen at other folk-metal shows, these were equal-opportunity, everyone-welcome affairs. There was one guy who would bash his bald head into people's arms and shoulders in time to the music, which was strangely awesome. The only downside was that their 90-minute set was a little longer than most of us could handle cardiovascularly, so our energy started to flag a bit by the end. Oh yeah, and I didn't have a drop of alcohol, it was the music and the spirit doing all the talkin', not the beer.
Any fan of live-Korpiklaani needs to go to a concert from Gogol Bordello, who, hard as it is to believe, are at least twice as awesome at doing almost the same thing.
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Blackfinger / Earthen Grave @ The Pyramid Club
First, weird place. It's a suburban mega-bar, with 40 pool tables and other games extending for miles down its warehouse interior. The music area is just one small part of it, with a low corner stage and lame lighting. I'd imagine most of the people there were wondering "wtf is all that noise?!?" It grabbed a few of the Pearl Room shows when it disappeared, but even though it's close, I'm not really hoping that it makes a play for many more metal shows.
I don't really know anything about Trouble, except that they probably should have been added officially to this bill, instead of playing in sneak-attack mode.
Earthen Grave is a new doom metal band with ex-Trouble bass player Ron Holzner on bass, that frequently plays Trouble songs in their live sets.
Blackfinger is a new doom metal band with ex-Trouble singer Eric Wagner on vocals, that frequently plays Trouble songs in their live sets.
Bruce Franklin is an original and current Trouble guitarist who played Trouble songs with both bands.
I suppose a Trouble fan might wonder why all these guys don't just play together in a band called "Trouble".
Anyhow, I was there to see Earthen Grave. They blew me away a few months ago closing out a show that Novembers Doom mistakenly thought *they* were headlining. The band is a sweet combination of experienced old dudes (Holzner, and Chicago metal emcee Scott Davidson on drums) and fresh new blood. First is songwriter/guitarist Jason Muxlow, who takes the style of the old dudes but makes much more interesting compositions than they would. And then there's Rachel Barton Pine, internationally-acclaimed classical violinist and closet metalhead.
Not being much of a classical aficionado, I initially wondered, "will I even be able to tell the difference between her and some random drummer's-girlfriend playing violin in a metal band?" That question was answered after hearing the first 2 seconds of her soundcheck. When she did her solo at this show, even the girl walking around serving drinks stopped dead in her tracks and didn't move until the solo was finished and she could get her jaw back in place. Oh yeah, and she rocks out more than any of the guys onstage.
So this was another great set from them, just an awesome headbanging environment. Having Eric Wagner join them was cool to mix things up a bit, but the Earthen Grave singer was actually much better, even if he doesn't quite hit every note. Their Witchfinder General and Pentagram covers are cool, but hopefully they'll have some more originals to fill out the set soon. So far they only have a 5-song demo, but they've been playing out like crazy, and they seem like a really obvious band for a label to take a serious interest in.
http://rock.rachelbartonpine.com/rec_cd.php?id=15 for samples (for some reason their myspace doesn't have full songs anymore)
Blackfinger was pretty good too, but don't touch Earthen Grave. And the three Trouble songs at end (with the 2 other Trouble guys added) were clearly a cut above, even though I was just as unfamiliar with them as with Blackfinger songs. Wagner was even singing with more clarity and conviction. Oh, and Bruce Franklin is an awesome performer...all in all, I'm quite a bit more interested in Trouble now than I ever was before.
Neil