I arrived right around the 6:30 start time to see plenty of others streaming in from the parking lot. When I tried to pick up my will-call ticket, they couldn’t find it, which always gives you a bit of a shot in the pit of your stomach. But the girl was exceptionally cool about it, simply taking down my credit card information and letting me through (apparently I wasn’t the first one). Now, hopefully I don’t get charged twice!

Inside, there were CD vendors to the left and right, but neither was doing as brisk of a business as the tour t-shirt stand. The crowd was the largest I’d seen that early at the Pearl Room; the balcony was open and well-filled along the rail, and the main floor was occupied (in decreasing density) all the way back to the sound booth. I heard the number 700 being thrown around, and I wouldn’t argue with that as an estimate of total crowd size.

Earthen:
This is my second time seeing this band. First was at Heathen Crusade II, where they had an interesting approach to acoustic-driven folky metal, but rather poor execution. By now, their execution was much better, except for their female vocalist, who at least has her heart in the right place even if her voice isn’t. However, their style seems to have changed considerably, having dropped a violinist, and with only one song (the best one) featuring acoustic guitar. So now it was fairly conventional doom-death, which was a disappointment. I would have much rather seen them continue to develop their previous approach. Though it’s interesting to see that they seem to be recreating the path of fellow Chicagoans Avernus, 10+ years later. I should note that their singer wasn’t there (because he had to work!) so vocals were handled by the band leader. I’m a bit confused as to what role he would have played had the singer been there, since he only played guitar on one of the songs.

Eluveitie:
A crew of eight onstage is quite a rarity for an opening international band on a four band tour, but here they all were. Drums, bass, two guitars (one borrowed from Tyr), violin, hurdy-gurdy, pipes/flute guy, and a lead vocalist. Much like their albums, I greatly preferred their older songs, where the songs are folky both in instrumentation and approach. Their newer stuff is simply In Flames-style death metal with the folk melodies sitting on top as a gimmick, completely disconnected from the chugga-chugga below. Still, In Flames chugga-chugga isn’t bad to see live, especially when it’s performed by eight entertaining and unkempt medievalists. I admit to falling in love with the girl playing the hurdy-gurdy. Most of the time while spinning the crank on her instrument, she would sway back and forth in a complete chilled-out hippie way, but then would occasionally break out the full-on helicopter hair in convincing fashion. Too bad the hurdy-gurdy could only be heard rarely over the din, but overall, their sound was quite good for that many people. Finally by their last couple songs, a jolly heathen pit got going, which took longer than I expected, but I guess despite their good fit on this tour, they were still three bands from the top.

Tyr:
On record, this was the most interesting band of the tour for me, because their style is really quite different from the other bands, taking a more unique, almost prog-metal writing style, and connecting it to the pagan theme only by lyrics, and perhaps vocal melodies. Unfortunately, this was their downfall in the live situation, particularly since they completely refused to pander to the crowd looking for a simple, headbanging good time. They do have some songs that would have had the ability to get the crowd going quite well, but they really only played one of those, with the rest being either new, slow, or both. So while they gain some points for sticking to their guns, that wasn’t enough to counterbalance what they lost. Still, they played well, and it was especially nice to see a band that makes extensive use of two vocalists doing real harmonies; that’s a fairly rare sight in the metal world these days.

Turisas:
After the stripped down and unornamented performance by Tyr, it was quite a contrast to jump to the fully war-painted, fur-clad wildmen in Turisas. They followed the prototypical rules for a pagan-metal lineup, also seen in bands like Skyforger or Manegarm: the short, blond, not-quite metal-looking guy plays violin, the tall bearded guy is on guitar, the bright-eyed skinny guy does the vocals, and the jolly teeth-baring fat guy is, of course, on bass. The only oddity was their accordion player, who looked less like a Finnish warrior princess, and more like a corn-fed American college co-ed, all painted up to go see a Seminoles game. Well, except that you don’t see those girls playing accordion very often, and never so enthusiastically. So obviously, they really got the crowd going, even though they also will sometimes will forgo obvious straight-rocking opportunities in favor of bombastic Hollywood-metalism.

Ensiferum:
Compared to Turisas, their war-paint was minimal and they were all shirtless (except the female keyboard player in the back!), although the bass player was still the portly one. With just three guys up front, there was no room for gimmicks, which meant that all they could do was play straight-ahead ass-kicking music. One of their great advantages seemed to be that both of the guitarists in the band are leaders. At first, the all blond guy in the center seemed to be the obvious focus, but then I started noticing the second guitarist more and more, both from his playing and his attitude. Only later did I learn that the second guitarist is the true leader of Ensiferum, whereas the “frontman” is the leader of Norther. The only downside was their drummer, who gave most bored-looking performance I’ve ever seen! I seriously think that he had a small TV down on the floor next to his kit, and he spent half the show looking down at it to watch the Cubs game while he played. Still, the rest was enough to get the crowd to its most excited point all night, and they proved themselves the clear headliners. Best band of the night for me too, and I’ve never even really listened to their stuff before.

Top to bottom, it was one of the better shows I’ve seen in a while, which is really what I expected from this lineup. The great thing about “pagan metal” (or a Heathen Crusade) is that you can put together a tour where all the bands are linked by theme, and thus by audience, even though within that theme the musical variations can actually be quite large. So you have a situation where all the bands are well-liked, and that just gives a healthy spirit to the whole event.

I wore my Einherjer t-shirt, and got several comments throughout the night, but none more memorable than from the war-painted guy who nearly wanted to kill me for possessing such an awesome shirt. Odd thing was, while my shirt said “Einherjer” on the front, he had “Einherjer” on his back. No, not on the back of his shirt. On his actual back, in a big tattoo. Uh, dude, I think you have me beat, you hardly need my shirt to show your dedication!

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 1st, 2008 at 10:01 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.