The Metro seemed pretty full, don’t know if it sold out or not. Lots of kiddies (it was an all-ages show).

Zozobra
They were about what I expected, stoner-post-metal. So you had some guitar leads and stuff, but I think most of the stoner-rock vibe comes from the bass riffs. Some screams, some clan vocals from all three guys. Heavy, reasonably groovy, and fairly entertaining to watch. They did something that lots of new, opening bands *should* do, which is connect all their songs with various forms of guitar feedback/e-bowing, so that it was never quiet and you could never hear the crowd being dead. Except that the crowd *wasn’t* dead, and was giving them a significant amount of applause between songs that they probably never even heard!

Jesu
Justin Broadrick claimed that he was really ill, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and say that explained their boringness. Three guys in the band (drummer, bassist, guitarist/vocalist), none of which were terribly exciting to watch. The bass player looked like a roadie, though his big sloppy wet bass sound provided most of the musical entertainment. I really have no idea what the guitar/vocals were doing, since it seemed that at least 50% of the music (vocals too!) was being played by the computer. Conclusion: they need to figure out a better way to translate Jesu into a live setting, or not bother at all.

Isis
Not nearly as good as the last time I saw them, but probably as good as the first time. They’re quite a professional-looking and well-seasoned band by now, particularly in contrast to Jesu. It seemed like a lot of the songs they played were ones with odd rhythms, and only heavy at the end, so I could never quite find the headbanging groove that I reveled in at their last show. Perhaps they simply saved up all their 4/4 “metal” to unleash it in the encore, with “Celestial”, which was just awesome, and was probably worth the price of admission.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 at 11:12 am and is filed under concert. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.