Unlike the previous two nights, I showed up a bit later, around 7:30. This is because I knew that two scheduled bands, Chaoswave and The Autumn Offering wouldn’t be playing. However, I had no idea if and how the schedule would be changing, or if any bands would be added, because not even the cancellations were mentioned officially (The Autumn Offering info was posted by a user on the Powerfest forum, and the Chaoswave rumor came solely through word of mouth the night before). I understand that the organizers are surely busy, but it takes less than 10 minutes to post a note on a forum or update a website with new information. But none of that was done, even though they must have known 48 hours in advance. I hate to say it, especially since the guys run a generally well-organized festival, but that’s a seriously Koshick-like move, and that lack of communication should never happen in 2008.

Again, just the walk from the car gave hints as to what kind of night it would be. It was a much older crowd, both in age and school. And also much more mainstream. Black Label Society and Misfits t-shirts were popular ways to express support of the underground. After Darkane’s set, I decided that I would stay up front to have a good spot for Testament, but when Pantera’s ‘Walk’ started playing over the PA and this group of 10 people around me raised their cups and started singing every single word as if it was the awesomest thing ever, oh god, I had to make a beeline out of there. I’m sure that alcohol sales were more lucrative on this night than the night before!

Twelfth Gate:
I arrived in time to hear their last two songs, and didn’t hear a single hook anywhere in either one of them. I guess I just don’t understand the point of making music without hooks.

Suidakra:
They were easily my most anticipated non-Iced Earth band of the two nights, and they lived up to that expectation. Sound was a bit dodgy, particularly in the beginning, but eventually their melodies came through, even if the clean harmony vocals never quite caught up. This band could have been on the Paganfest, but one thing that separates them from those bands is that they have a more genuine extreme-metal background, so their music has an extra intensity to it. And when that intensity is combined with sing-along melodies, it’s just awesome. Also, they have no special outfits; by their look they could have been an old-school thrash band. They did a bold move of playing an instrumental for their third song, but it was so hooky that it worked out great. An equally bold move was to walk offstage in preparation for an encore, even though they were two bands away from headliner status. Luckily for them, someone must have pushed them right back out, because no one in the audience had any idea that we were supposed to call for them! Question: did they play their song “Darkane Times” specially for the band who would be following them?

In contrast to the old folks, there were these two high-school aged couples going absolutely nuts for Suidakra, so after their set, I asked them, “so, I guess you guys really like that band?” “No we’ve never heard them before we just came here and this is awesome!!” The incongruous jumping up-and-down and ill-advised moshing continued through Darkane’s set until one of the girls tried crowd surfing one too many times, which quickly brought an end to their night. Too bad, they were a nice contrast to crotchety Testament fans yelling “get off the stage” to Darkane. Like, really, is Darkane so far away in style from Testament that they’re that intolerable, or is Testament truly the only music that they listen to? I can only imagine what they would have thought if they were there the night before!

Darkane:
I’m not too big of a fan, but I have their first album, so it was very nice of them to include the two “hits” from it, “Convicted” and “July 1999”. The vocalist even did a good job of changing up his growl for those songs to match the style of the original guy. Beyond that, the songs near the end of the set worked out better for me than the earlier ones, partly because I think their sound got a bit better. Sonically they can be a bit of a mess on the fast stuff, so I imagine it helps to know their songs. But by presence, they were easily the biggest non-headliners of the weekend. They’re a strolling band, meaning that all four guys up front constantly roam all around the stage, changing positions, which is actually fairly rare, but a simple way to make a performance seem more active. It also helps that they’re Swedish, and thus, tall. Definitely a much better and more memorable performance than what I remember from seeing them at the Milwaukee Metalfest years ago.

Testament:
I’m only a mild fan, but if I was as big a fan of them as I am of Iced Earth, then I’m sure this performance would have equaled Iced Earth’s for me. As it was, I just hung way back and enjoyed it in the sweat-free zone. It was difficult to gauge since I was in a different location both nights, but the crowd sizes seemed pretty similar, and the only way to move up would be to bash my way through. Testament’s sound was amazingly good, their lights far surpassed anything Iced Earth had, and their presence was excellent. I had just listened to ‘Live At The Fillmore’ before heading out to the venue, so it turned out that I recognized most of the songs that they played. Best for me were the two I knew the best, “Low” and “Trail of Tears”. Chuck Billy introduced the latter with a plea for human rights and environmental awareness, for which he received an enormous collective “meh” from the crowd of metalheads. Some of the other singers in the fest could really take a lesson from him in how to make the most out of a limited vocal range, because he really sounded good (it helped to have a very active soundman, who would jack up the reverb in time with his growls). Oh, and they could take a lesson from him in stage presence too. Actually all the guys in the band were quite fun to watch, although it seemed like Skolnick was going a bit overboard on the solos (or maybe I’m just not used to listening to music where guitar solos are such a focus?) On the other hand, one of my favorite parts was when the whole band was doing some improvisational jamming during the sing-along call-and-response of “Alone In The Dark”. It would have been cool to hear more of that. All in all, it was an impressive, headlining performance. And I now see that when the place is packed, including the balcony, it can be a pretty fun place for even “big” bands to play.

Overall, it was a great three nights of metal. Though for me, “nights” is a bit of a stretch, because the success of each night (excluding Paganfest) was heavily dependent on the headliners. And I think that I even got a lot more out of the undercard than many people there, who seemed to come *solely* to see the headliners. So, quite a different approach than last year, and a vastly different result in terms of attendance. Hopefully that also translated into a vastly different result for CRJ. I have a hard time imagining that they’d get as lucky with headliners next year, but if they do, it really calls into question the role of the undercard…I just can’t imagine that the attendance would have been much different if Iced Earth and Testament had been the only bands playing the last two nights. But maybe the imbalance this year was just an anomaly.

The only organizational issues were the above-mentioned lack of communication, and the line for the (men’s!) bathroom. It never really affected me, but it’s unbelievable that a venue with the Pearl Room’s capacity has only one smallish bathroom available. It’s like when they built it, they never expected they’d actually get a crowd to fill the place. The security seemed reasonable, succeeding at keeping crowd surfing to an absolute minimum, while still allowing freedom in the mosh pits. Occasionally they would take a shockingly active role in the pit, but hey, some of those guys probably deserve to be flung down to the ground anyhow.

So hopefully this was good enough for the guys to keep it going, because I look forward to next year!

Like the night before, I managed to time my arrival right near the 6:30 start. This time, there were even more people streaming towards the doors, with half of them wearing Iced Earth shirts, so it was pretty clear even before entering the building what this night would be all about. In addition to the balcony, the area to the right of the stage was opened up, which I had never seen before. They definitely outdrew the night before, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more than 1000 in attendance.

Arise and Ruin:
Completely unimaginative and by-the-numbers non-melodic metalcore, but it was actually executed quite well. The guys seem ok at playing their instruments, and the vocalist gave an energetic and convincing performance. As I listened, I thought that some of their mega-downtuned breakdowns actually would be pretty cool if they were expanded into full songs, where they’d turn into some kind of dirge-like hypnotic post-metal. And their last song even had some washes of melody, so it wasn’t half bad. But the best part was their attitude: they clearly recognized that no one was there to see them, so instead of exhorting the crowd to cheer for them (which would have failed miserably), they kept the banter to a minimum, and used the cleverly-dropped names of Iced Earth and Testament to keep the crowd involved. Oh, and one guitarist wore an Iron Maiden shirt too.

Ion Vein:
Umm…wow. Where to begin? Well, the beginning, I guess. It seemed to take them forever to set up, mostly because the entire drumkit was being assembled from scratch, and when you have 400 cymbals to forge, shape, and then screw onto the stands, that’s going to take a long time. I can’t understand why they weren’t more prepared, did they only remember at the last minute that they would need drums for this performance? Finally the music starts, and those drums are deafeningly loud, and horribly triggered. Up front, we have the other two guys on guitar and bass shouting angrrry-isms into their microphones gang-vocal style while they play some nondescript groove-metal. Hmm, do we only have a trio? Nope, out sashays the singer, with blond spiky hair, oversized mirrored sunglasses, and enough flamboyant prancing to make Boy George blush. Mixed with that persona, we also have him channeling Martin Short at his comedic worst, thinking that the more exaggerated facial contortions he does, the funnier he is. Ok, so, we have this free-spirited character, maybe that could actually be kind of cool and entertaining, something fresh in the metal world. But, no. Problem number one is that he has to sing too, and to do that, he apparently attempted to channel a third personality, that of Mike Patton and his many voices. Needless to say, he came up woefully short on every style he attempted. Problem two is much more egregious: between songs, his goofy gay guy routine vanished, to be replaced by Mr. Badass, who proves his toughness by showing how many times he can angrily use the word “fuck” in a sentence. But wait, it gets worse. At some point, this clearly white man devolved into a hackneyed black-preacher caricature, even going so far as to call us his “niggaz”. Oh, and then he took the opportunity to decry “fucking non-metal fags”. Just embarrassing. I can only conclude the he’s a bigot who thinks that mocking those unlike him is the highest form of comedy. Somehow, the crowd was actually mildly supportive, which shocked me, although a chant for Iced Earth did go up immediately after they finished their set.

Epicurean:
Easily the most interesting band of the night, Iced Earth excluded. They’re one of those melting pot bands who takes influence from thrash, melodic black metal, etc. They were at their best with the more melodic and atmospheric parts, although their keyboard player contributed surprisingly little to their sound, especially given how many notes he appeared to be playing. Unfortunately, the most notable part of the band was their “singer”, who would do ok during the growling stuff, but was absolutely dreadful on the clean vocals, which he attempted quite a lot of. Honestly, I can’t remember ever hearing a worse performance from a singer, he never even came within a mile of the note he was trying to hit. He would have had no difficulty at all making it into the lowlight reel on American Idol.

A Life Once Lost:
By now, the crowd had packed in pretty tightly preparing for Iced Earth, so these guys had a huge audience watching them. Thus, it was all the more amazing how that entire crowd remained completely dead for their whole set. I was way in the back, so I didn’t notice any outright disrespect, and their was mild applause between songs, but for some reason the frontman decided to take the opposite approach of Arise and Ruin: instead of accepting that they simply aren’t going to win over the audience and then trying to stay positive and make the best of it, this guy gets his poor feelings hurt and derides us for being a bunch of pussies. Uh, yeah, that’s not going to help, genius. Musically, they were decent, but I guess if I want to hear a mix of thrash, -core, tech, and southern rock like that, I’d much rather have Mastodon.

Iced Earth:
Finally, the band that everyone was waiting for. From beginning to end, it was a complete no-bullshit, streamlined performance carefully engineered to kick our collective ass for 90 minutes. Zero stage decorations, no intro, they bashed through their first five or six songs without a break, and Jon uncharacteristically didn’t even say a word the whole night. If the goal was to make it seem like Matt had never even left the band, they completely succeeded. The only reference they made to Barlow’s return was when Matt and Jon warmly hugged after a huge “Welcome Back!” chant came up from the crowd, and Matt’s quiet acknowledgment of the frequent “Barlow” cheers.

It was clearly a “greatest hits” set, covering as many crowd favorites as possible while playing to Matt’s strengths. They hit at least one song from every album except ‘Burnt Offerings’, with ‘Something Wicked…’ and ‘The Dark Saga’ getting the primary focus. It’s the first time that I can recall them doing the closing songs from both of those albums without playing at least one of the lead-in songs of their respective trilogies, but the catalog is now getting large enough where that’s necessary, and even welcomed.

Early on the sound seemed a bit clicky and poppy on the bass end, and I don’t know if that improved or if I just got used to it. Then, the PA cut out twice, but apparently with their in-ear monitors, the band didn’t notice at all and just kept right on playing. That was good, because if they had noticed, I don’t think Jon would have been much pleased, and that would have brought down the vibe quite a bit. Since it cut out during a couple of classics and the band was still somewhat audible, the crowd just picked up the vocals themselves, and didn’t seem to mind much at all. The other guys in the band seemed good enough, but honestly most of my attention was on Jon and Matt. And for them, it was exactly like old times. Matt’s voice might have improved a bit as the night went on, but he was solid the whole way through, even on the Ripper stuff.

For me, it was my 20th Iced Earth concert, and it ranks right up there with the best of them. When their set started, I was at the absolute rear of the crowd, but worked my way up through the ‘Burning Times’ mosh pits. Eventually I made it to within three rows of the rail, where I spent most of my time. It was a complete crush, and sweaty enough that my fingertips got pruned. There was even a girl up there who was completely passed out and had to be dragged away; hopefully she was ok once she got some air! During ‘The Coming Curse’, Jon noticed me in the crowd, smiled, and pointed to me with his guitar, which is always cool. He was probably a bit surprised that I’m still up there going nuts for Iced Earth in my old age. It was only because the previous bands allowed me to conserve all my energy that I was able to survive up there, though I did nearly collapse when I dropped back into an active pit for some final insanity during ‘Iced Earth’.

So the crowd came to see Iced Earth, and I think they went home well satisfied. It was so great to see the universal positive reaction to Barlow’s return, and I can almost imagine that Jon is already taking the footage (there was someone filming) to the European festivals and looking to renegotiate upwards, because it’s going to be huge. Then again, the European festivals probably already knew how great the return of Barlow would be; it’s only Jon who was a bit slow in figuring it out!

01. Dark Saga
02. Vengeance is Mine
03. Burning Times
04. Declaration Day
05. Violate
06. Pure Evil
07. Watching Over Me
08. Ten Thousand Strong
09. Dracula
10. Coming Curse
11. I Walk Alone
12. Setian Massacre
13. Travel In Stygian
14. A Question Of Heaven

Encore:
15. Melancholy
16. My Own Savior
17. Iced Earth

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!

Despite the predicted -20F wind-chill, plenty of people packed into Subterranean to see this rather unusual lineup.

Young Widows was a fairly worthless guitar-bass-drums trio, playing a sort of heavy-ish, loud music with some generic yelling. Most of their riffs made it seem like they know nothing about music, since they were quite unmusical, and not in an intentional sort of way. Once every other song or so, they’d switch into some repetitive, almost atmospheric parts, and those were actually pretty good, but not enough to make up for the nonsense in between.

Then came Dälek with their alternative hip-hop. The lineup, clockwise, from the back: a big scary prison-looking dude, standing behind a table with a MacBook (and maybe a couple other boxes) on it. Then the preppy curly-haired kid who was the last guy denied entry to the final 24 on American Idol, sitting at a table, with a MacBook. Then a big angry teddy bear on the mic. Then a metal-looking guy on guitar, which was plugged into, guess what, a MacBook. The prison dude seemed to spend most of his time prowling back and forth behind his table like a caged animal, and rarely was seen doing anything musical. The American Idol kid sat at his table bobbing his head, but could have been playing Minesweeper the whole time for all I know (what’s the Mac equivalent?) I could tell that the teddy bear was actually spitting his rhymes for real, but he wasn’t especially charismatic, and his diction meant that I couldn’t really follow along. The heavy-metal guitarist was the most visibly active of the bunch, with his right hand oscillating at high speed, black-metal style, throughout the set. But his sound was so processed and delayed that it was difficult to tell exactly what component he was contributing to the overall sound. At one point, from 20 feet away, I could actually hear the sound of the pick contacting the strings as he slashed at them, because the amplified sound generated by those slashes didn’t emanate until much later.

So this didn’t do much to change my opinion that live hip-hop is fairly pointless. Their unique sound and style still came across really well, with the chilling and discomforting melodies and atmospherics mixing with the groovin’ beats, and I give ’em credit for inventing that, but it’s really nothing that I couldn’t have gotten from sitting at home and listening to their records. Their set also seemed pretty short, and there was no communication with the audience, which seems a bit weird for hip-hop.

I downloaded Russian Circles’s album ‘Enter’ a long time ago, but didn’t really pay too much attention to it, because as an instrumental post-metal/rock band out of Chicago who wasn’t named Pelican, I assumed it was just some kids doing a 3rd-rate copycat of a trendy style. But recently I’ve noticed that it’s a really good album, and from the first five seconds of drum intro, I could tell that their live set would be even better, and would easily prevent the night from being a bust.

They’re another guitar-bass-drums trio, and every one of them had excellent tones on their instruments, and in contrast to Dälek, their playing was refreshingly “live” and tight (there were a few 2nd-guitar parts coming from somewhere, but those might have been looped live). Compared to other members of their genre, Russian Circles comes off as being a bit more “direct”, perhaps because there are only three of them constructing the sound, or perhaps because their tempos seem to be a tick faster, or perhaps just because they write their songs that way. They’re just a more maneuverable vessel, though they won’t be compared to Canvas Solaris anytime soon. If Isis is oceanic, Russian Circles is a Great Lake. If Pelican is a pelican, Russian Circles is a golden eagle. If Red Sparowes is a Communist empire, Russian Circles is a privately-held multinational corporation. If Cult of Luna is…ok, no, I think you’ve got the idea.

Although their set also seemed rather short (less than an hour?), I think they played at least a couple of songs that were new to me, and they sounded just as good if not better than the ones on their album. It made me feel stupid that I haven’t made the effort to see them play before this. They didn’t say a single word to the crowd, which means that “Hey Chicago, what the fuck is going on?” from Dälek was the only banter of the whole night. I’ve seen single bands not say a word, but only one line from three bands? That’s a new record for me.

Oh, and boo to the asshole who was taking photos using a bounce flash with a diffuser, in a black room off a black ceiling. Every time he fired that thing off it was like a lightning bolt straight to the eyeballs.

The first band was from Washington state, had a blond singer with a powerhouse voice (including a shocking falsetto), and performed a cover of “White Rabbit”. But no, it wasn’t Nevermore, it was Two Ton Boa. This particular singer was a girl, and her bandmates were two bass players (sometimes one swapped with her to play keyboards) and a drummer who had genuine garbage can lids for cymbals (the few times I saw him actually hit them, they made a rather unremarkable sound). Some of their songwriting wasn’t so hot, but then at other times they’d really rock out and grab my attention pretty well. The singer is the obvious highlight (the Jefferson Airplane song was a perfect choice for her voice), but there was something slightly off-putting about her presence. However, her lyrics all seemed a bit dark and twisted, so maybe that’s the point. Probably won’t go run out and buy their albums, but I wouldn’t mind seeing them again. They said it was the largest crowd they’d ever played for (it was a sold-out show at the 1400-capacity theater).

Then we had a dancing troupe come out and do some sort of non sequitur performance called “Yes, Juliet” that involved lots of simulated sex performed to Britney Spears’s “Toxic”, for some reason. A bit amateurish, but damn entertaining.

Then it was a time for a 17-year old singer-songwriter and Dresden Dolls fan to get up and do a solo song on acoustic guitar/vocals. Turned out to be a mildly creepy stalker-song (“Yes Amanda Yes”?), but she had a very good voice and did a fine job of performing under what must have been fairly terrifying conditions, so much respect to her.

Then it was time for yet another fantastic performance by The Dresden Dolls. I’ve now seen them enough where it’s clear that I’ll never get tired of it, both because they perform so well, and because every performance is new and different. This time they did two new covers I hadn’t seen before, six(!) originals that aren’t on their albums, and even the “classics” sounded fresh, with things like an extended jazzy jam worked into “Mandy Goes To Med School”. And the improv instrumental intro to “Half Jack” seemed like the best, darkest, and most frightening version I’ve heard so far, but I think that every time I see them play it. As much as I enjoyed seeing Amanda play with Estradasphere a couple months ago, it was great to see her back again with Brian, because they have that history, and dang, can that guy play the drums.

Contrary to my belief after that Amanda solo show, the band was still able to get involved with the crowd at this big sold-out venue: during “The Gardener”, Amanda walked through the crowd in front of the stage from one side to the other, eventually ending up in one of the balcony boxes. And then during the encore (“Fight For Your Right (To Party)”), they invited the audience onstage, and it seems like nearly 100 people joined them, which started making Amanda (on drums) a bit nervous about lawsuits, and caused Brian’s guitar to get cut off halfway through, as he was absolutely engulfed by the masses surrounding him.

As usual, the crowd was totally lifeless during the songs, but between them, was cheering like mad (a group of teenage girls behind me nearly blew my ears out before and after “Coin-Operated Boy”)

Setlist:

In The Flesh [Pink Floyd]
Girl Anachronism
Mrs. O
Missed Me
Ultima Esperanza
Coin-Operated Boy
Glass Slipper
The Gardener
Sorry Bunch
A Night At The Roses
Mandy Goes To Med School
Astronaut
Sex Changes
Half Jack

(You’ve Got To) Fight For Your Right (To Party) [Beastie Boys]
Bad Habit

Wow, I love going to The Pearl Room now! Ok, “love” is probably a bit strong, since it still takes about 45 minutes to drive from Schaumburg to Mokena, but that’s 20-30 minutes less than it took before they opened the I-355 extension this week.

I approach the doors and the security guard points to another guy standing there and says “First, sign the petition”. Uh, no? And call me crazy, but maybe I’d like to know what the petition is about before I sign it. “It’s to stop animal cruelty”. Ok, thanks, but sorry, still no. Can I just go inside now? So that was pretty lame…it’s cool that the guy was there collecting signatures, but I’m pretty sure the venue’s security shouldn’t be telling you what to do.

I walked inside just in time to catch the last half song from The Agonist, which was probably enough.

Then came Arsis. Oh dear. During sound check, I couldn’t believe how loud and stupid the kick drum sound was. It’s like they took Fear Factory’s kick drum sample, and cranked up the gain by 10x. Completely ridiculous. The loudest clicking noise in the world. When they actually started playing, it was even worse, because then all the rest of the overplayed drums were added in too. I got madder and madder at the drummer as the set went on: how could he be so dumb to think that actually sounds good? It was rather disappointing, because I actually sort of like their complex-and-brutal yet melodic-and-grooving metal on their albums, but this was an unfortunate combination of bad and boring.

I’d never heard (or heard of) The Faceless before, so I didn’t know what to expect. Well, it was more fairly brutal, somewhat technical death metal played by a bunch of short-haired young’n’s from L.A. They had the somewhat-rare dedicated growler for a frontman, and even a hoodie-wearing keyboard player (who didn’t add much). Their sound was quite a bit more listenable than Arsis, and they played their instruments well, but that’s about all there was to recommend about them. Clearly there are guys in the band who can write plenty of clever riffs, but apparently they’re completely lacking anyone who knows how to construct those riffs into an actual song. It’s just random riff after random riff, which gets boring fast.

Phew, finally Enslaved came on to save the day. This was the third time I’ve seen them, and easily the best (not surprising, since it’s the first headling slot I’ve seen, and one of the other times was a 4-song set at the Milwaukee Metalfest). The setlist was pretty similar to their opening slot from last year, meaning lots of stuff from their last two albums. I can only imagine what a set would be like if they ever played anything from my two favorite albums (‘Mardraum’ and ‘Vikingligr Veldi’). Still, it’s pretty great how they can go from the title track of their latest album to something from their first release (9 albums and 13 years apart) and have both songs kick equal amounts of ass. Not a lot of bands who can do that. And it was great to hear the old stuff updated to the modern production values. It also helped that this time I was right up front with a lot of other obviously-dedicated Enslaved fans, so that made it a headbanging good time.

In their headlining slot, they do the same setup as Dimmu Borgir, with drums and keyboards at the left and right positions at the rear of the stage. Surprisingly, they didn’t have the projector screens they used when opening for Dark Funeral, but that meant the guys in the band were more of a focus, and they do a good job of interacting with the crowd without being overly cheesy. It was nice that they *didn’t* dedicate a song to Decapitated, which apparently they’d done at other shows; makes it a bit more meaningful if it’s not just a standard note on the setlist. Instead, they dedicated one to their “old friends in the Chicago band Macabre”. Their sound was very good, just enough of that raw blackness mixed in with their epic and psychadelic bits. Has their ever been a more mournful solo played over more brutal music than the one closing out “As Fire Swept Clean the Earth”? Brilliant.

So yeah, I still say Enslaved needs to associate more with bands like Isis, but I guess on this tour, the contrast with the opening bands just makes them seem that much better.

Setlist (complete, mostly in order):
Path to Vanir
Fusion of Sense and Earth
Bounded By Allegiance
Gylfaginning
Violet Dawning
As Fire Swept Clean the Earth
Isa
Return to Yggdrasill
Ruun

Allfadr Odin
Slaget I Skogen Bortenfor

My story begins on Saturday, October 20th, when I happened to surf over to The End Records’s website (I think to find information on the new album from Anneke van Giersbergen) and saw this: “ESTRADASPHERE to perform West Coast dates with Amanda Palmer (Dresden Dolls)”. What?!? Both acts are easily in my current top-20 list of favorite bands, but more importantly, they’re probably both in my top-5 list of favorite live bands. And they’re playing TOGETHER?!? Never in a million years would I have guessed the two bands would have anything to do with each other; I can’t imagine too many other people have them both in the top 25 on their last.fm profile. I’ve been to five concerts from each of them: Estradasphere from 2001, watching them press on through (self-induced?) obscurity, and the Dresden Dolls from 2004, watching them rise from the bottom of a 4-band bill topped by Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, to a headlining band selling out the 1400-capacity Vic Theater. Seeing them both together would be like seeing Iron Maiden playing with Nick Cave, or opening Christmas presents while riding the Tilt-a-Whirl, or winning a spelling bee while having sex: crazy and unexpected, but so awesome!

Ok, Neil, settle down for a second and look at the details: as far as I can tell, Estradasphere will both play a set of their own, and then act as the backing band for Amanda. They’re only doing four shows, three in Estradasphere’s home/studio in Seattle, and one in a small restaurant/club in Portland a week from now. Conveniently, you have family in Portland that you can stay with (and your brother might even want to go to the show too). And it’s on a Sunday, so you’ll only have to take one day off work. Ok, airfare. $300? Damn, that’s a lot. Can I really justify that to myself?

I realized that it could only be a one-day trip (I had to stay in Chicago on Friday and Saturday to see Therion and Nightwish concerts), and then I also checked out some of Amanda Palmer’s solo songs, and wasn’t especially impressed. So that made me pull back a bit. But in the end, some good advice friends and skilled attempts to justify it to myself (“It’s been a while since you’ve traveled to see a show”, “People pay that kind of money all the time to far crappier bands in far crappier places”, etc.) made me pull the trigger. I bought three tickets: $300 for the flight, and two $12 tickets to the show for me and my brother.

The ironic thing is that I sometimes justify all the time I spend searching through obscure music by calling it a time-is-money tradeoff: rather than simply liking what radio wants me to like, and then paying out the nose for the privilege of seeing those celebrities perform, I find the unpopular stuff that’s just as good (and usually better) than anything mainstream, and then I can see it performed up close and personal for hardly any money at all. Well, I’d still be seeing these guys close, but the money-saving part of the plan completely backfired in this case!

It was an over-21, late-starting show: 11:30pm in Chicago time, which is what I was operating on, especially after catching less than five hours of sleep between the Nightwish show and my flight out in the morning. Eskimo & Sons was a late addition as an opening band. They played a chiming form of indie-rock with a piercing girl singer, coming off a bit like a less-layered Sufjan Stevens. Ok, but nothing that got me too excited. But when Amanda stepped onstage (wearing a Black Sabbath t-shirt) to introduce Estradasphere, I woke right up.

Estradasphere’s set seemed like a perfectly orchestrated, compressed overview of everything they’re about; being an opening band is relatively rare for them, so it was probably a good way to advertise themselves to people who didn’t know them (even though there weren’t more than 70-80 people in the place to advertise to). We got the gypsy-metal (“Smuggled Mutation”), video-game music (Zelda), the hilarious “Rainbows & Unicorns”, some covers, including a religious number and “The Rainbow Connection” (did they know the Dresden Dolls have done this too?), teases (“Smells Like Teen Spirit”, and “Sweet Child o’ Mine”‘s guitar solo played on violin), and even an old one (the title track from ‘Buck Fever’). The last time I saw them they played the entire ‘Palace of Mirrors’ album, which was great, but it was nice to see them back to mixing it up again. And they pulled it all off even though they were missing their shamisen/guitar player. They must have also been missing a distortion pedal; that, or they just made a conscious decision to un-metal all the metal guitar parts. Either way, it made for a very cool version of “The Return”, which was played with a completely different arrangement from its normal tech-metal version. Man, I love seeing Estradasphere so much that them alone would have almost been worth the $300. The rest of the crowd seemed to dig it too.

Then after a break, the five Estradaspherians reappeared and began to play the Dresden Dolls’ “Missed Me”. Eventually Amanda came out, now all costumed and made up, to complete a piano-free version of the song. One of my worries was that I would travel all the way to Portland and the bands would just do half-assed, short, unfocused sets, but clearly they had thought this out and were making a serious show of it. That was the only Dolls song, so then the rest of the set was made of songs from Amanda’s upcoming solo album, and covers: two cabaret numbers from Brecht, one from Madonna, and the second G’n’R reference of the night: “Patience” (complete with whistling and mandolin solo from Timb!) The solo songs, which I had been a bit apprehensive about, sounded instantly familiar and excellent to me, even though I had only heard them once before. Silly me for being a doubter. Especially “Astronaut” and “Blake Says” stood out to me. For the latter, Amanda disappeared from the stage, only to reappear in black-and-white on the projector screen when the band started playing. After looking around for a while, the audience found her sitting and singing at the bar in the corner of the room. She ordered a drink and then slowly made her way back across the room, with the camera following her the whole time. It was a very cool concept, watching a music video that was being performed live. She repeated the trick a couple more times, once walking across the top of a bar, and another time sitting between two generous audience members on a bench. Definitely not something you see every day at a concert.

The mix of the two acts was perfect, although Estradsphere is so darn good that they’d probably sound great backing anyone from Manilow to Mudvayne. Amanda’s voice was the best that I’ve heard it in a while. And watching the fun they had interacting, it suddenly made perfect sense that the two found each other. They both have a broad knowledge and interest in music, they both can convincingly pull off serious and silly in the same set, and most importantly, they both have the increasingly rare skill-set that makes truly great live musicians: the ability and desire to change up their songs, improvise, and make it always feel fresh and alive. Juxtaposed against the orchestral metal shows I had seen the nights before, where everything is locked to a click-track and half the music is flown in from a computer, this aspect really jumped out at me. It was great to once again see music with room to breathe.

At one point Amanda apologized for not doing anything to promote the concert, but I have to imagine it was somewhat intentional. Clearly she still has the heart of a pretentious artist (meant in the best possible way!), but I’m sure it’s rather difficult to express that side of yourself once you’ve become famous and are normally playing in sold out, corporate venues. So this was a good chance to slum it for a bit, and us few fanboys and girls who check the Internet were lucky enough to not just see it, but participate.

So yeah, it was totally worth the money. Even if they do follow through with their claim to do a proper tour in the spring. It would probably be hard to make those shows into such a close-up experience, though I wouldn’t mind if they tried. I’m pretty sure I’ll never get tired of seeing either of them, so I’ll take as many chances as I can get to see them both together. Maybe they’ll even bring Iron Maiden with them next time.

We arrived at the venue to see a long line stretching down Dearborn onto the bridge over the Chicago River. I went in the other door to pick up a ticket for the upcoming Amon Amarth concert (which saved me $11.03 vs. Ticketmaster!), and could already hear a band start playing upstairs. Maybe there’s a local opener? Nope, that sounds like Paradise Lost playing already. Crap. I’m not even sure if we’d made it to the 8pm listed start time yet. So then it was back outside to the end of the line, which moved like molasses. When we finally made it through, I dashed up just in time to see them play their last song. At least it was a song I like (“Say Just Words”). The sound seemed really rumbly and muddy, so maybe I didn’t miss that much, but I would have liked the opportunity to judge for myself.

Nightwish came right out of the gate with great sound, and Annette, the new singer, seemed to have the crowd won over in no time. She would sound a bit strained on some of the high parts, but overall, her vocals were excellent throughout the night. In contrast to Tarja’s Opera Ice Queen persona, Annette is a sprightly little thing bouncing around the stage, thankfully stopping just short of embarrassing dance moves or attempts at “metal” poses. It’s funny that after seeing Therion the night before, this is two bands in a row who have switched from cold to warm performances out of their vocalists. I really liked Tarja’s performance the one time I saw her with Nightwish, so one approach isn’t better than the other; it’s just nice to see a different approach. That said, I might have been most impressed by Annette’s pained emotional display during one of the more quiet, introspective songs. I’m pretty sure Tarja would have demanded in-ear monitors that actually fit though, unlike Annette’s that were stuck in with white strips of tape across her ears. Since she was wearing a corset, that means I saw three corset-wearing female metal singers in two nights. C’mon ladies, try something new!

Of course, the new Nightwish presents further proof of the “It’s the songs, not the singer” theory, so pretty much any singer could sing the hooks that Tuomas writes and it would still sound great. I could feel the floor bouncing from the first notes of “Bye Bye Beautiful”, and the sold-out crowd kept it going for most of the night, although, rather surprisingly, a mosh pit never broke out. There were moments between songs where the crowd got nearly silent, which seems odd for a room full of so many obviously-dedicated fans, but maybe they were just knocked speechless or something. It probably didn’t help that the pre-scheduled banter from Marco and Annette usually didn’t make any sense (Annette was rightly quite impressed with the building though). Overall I didn’t see nearly as many young people as I was expecting; maybe us old folks beat them to the tickets.

One thing I want to know is how Tuomas decides what he should play on his keyboards. It seems so pointless to play one particular melody or atmospheric “ooh ahh” part live when there are dozens of pre-recorded backing tracks already filling out the sound. He could play nothing at all and no one would notice. Heck, for all I know, maybe he is faking it. That’s the most annoying thing about seeing heavily-orchestrated bands like this perform “live”: it never feels especially live, with all the sound coming from who-knows-where, and everyone locked down the tempo of the click-track (though Nightwish is good at projecting energy despite those shackles). I think Tuomas should just stand in front like an orchestra conductor and conduct his band, that would be a nice twist.

Despite that annoyance (or maybe because of it?), the band comes off as one of the most “pro” bands that I’ve seen, though maybe not quite to the level they were with Tarja. Still, it’s clear from their stage presence that they’re now an arena-sized band in Europe, so it’s nice to be able to get their American “discount” and see them at relatively small places. I’ll certainly check ’em out again when they come back to Mokena in the spring.

Minneapolis’s Aesma Daeva apparently serves as the farm league for the European operatic metal scene. Their previous singer, Melissa Ferlaak, was called up to the big leagues a couple years ago to sing with Visions of Atlantis, and their current singer, Lori Lewis, is now doing her rookie season as a huge part of Therion’s live incarnation. I saw the band perform years ago at a Milwaukee Metalfest (the sexiest performance by a female vocalist I’ve ever seen), but the 2007 version is a completely different band. From industrial-tinged avant-garde to symphonic doom, from two guitars and drums to a normal band lineup, and mainman John Prassas bucked the trend and went from short hair to full-length metal-man hair. Their latest album is an easier listen than their previous stuff, and they were smart enough to play all their best songs from it (particularly the ones that have a looping woodwind figure backing them, like “Artemis” and “The Loon”). Nice headbangable epic doom stuff, although for some reason the crowd seemed completely indifferent. Lewis is a hell of a singer (I finally realized she sounds almost exactly like Helena Michaelsen from the first Trail of Tears album, especially in the lower register), but an unfortunately awkward frontwoman. Hint: talk about the song you’re about to play, not the one you just finished! To her credit, she’s one of the only people to actually recognize that The Pearl Room is nowhere near Chicago (“Is there anyone here actually from Mokena?”) They finished with Lewis doing an admirable Kate Bush impression on a cover that probably no one knew (I didn’t recognize it, and I even know some Kate Bush!), and then a Mozart aria that even fewer people knew, but they did finally wake up the crowd a little bit.

Therion came out in the same basic structure as their last time around (four metal guys playing instruments, and four vocalists), but with a vastly different approach. Instead of the “we’re too cool for you” stoic opera singers, this new set of vocalists theatrically stalks the stage and works the crowd. For example, “The Perennial Sophia” featured opera-like romantic play-acting between Snowy Shaw and wild-eyed Katarina, which was only slightly spoiled by Snowy’s inability to resist the reach-around tit-squeeze. Even Lori Lewis was a far more impressive stage presence than she was in her own band (she even looked a lot hotter!) My conspiracy theory is that Therion forces her sandbag her act for Aesma Daeva (“we can’t have you upstaging us, dammit!!”) Being the pros that they are, they performed with all the animation required to reach a 10,000-person crowd, even though they were only playing to a room of only 200-300.

So although the show was really impressive and something I’ve never quite seen before in a metal context, I wasn’t quite feeling it as much this time as I had the last time around. That might be because it wasn’t “the first time” anymore, or more likely, because the stuff from “Gothic Kabbalah” just isn’t that great. But then once they got through the drum solo (yeah, having the two male singers whack a drum made it slightly more interesting, but it’s still a drum solo, ugh), things really took off. Their last six songs are basically unbeatable: “Muspelheim” (great acting!), “…Sodom and Gomorrah” (worth the admission for this song alone), and “Ginnungagap” closed out the normal set, and then “Lemuria” (the best song from those sessions), “Cults of the Shadow” and “To Mega Therion” made for a heck of an encore. Why couldn’t we get the “‘Theli’ played in it’s entirety” set in the US, you jerks?!?

This was the first show I’ve ever bought tickets for on ebay. I’d already seen Rodrigo y Gabriela before (for free, no less!) at the Old Town School of Folk Music, but between then and now, I’d really grown to like their album a whole lot more. I didn’t buy tickets immediately because the concert was the night before I was scheduled to photograph my cousin’s wedding, and by the time I was sure there would be no conflict with that, the show was sold out. I still didn’t really care that much, but then I saw stuff like this video of ‘Diablo Rojo’ (where the crowd is just going insane), and read reviews of this tour with quotes like “the loudest crowd I’ve ever heard”, and I figured I needed to see them at a non-sit-down place. Plus, I saw that their entire US tour was sold out, and since I tend to avoid arena shows, I thought it might be my last chance to see them.

Opening act was Krystle Warren, a solo modern-blues-woman with acoustic guitar. She had one hell of a voice, but her songs were a bit boring. I’d be interested to see her fronting a whole band, where I think she’d do a lot better. She ended her set with the two most intense numbers (including a badass take on ‘Eleanor Rigby’), which woke the crowd up pretty well. Unfortunately for her, I think she needs to either grow her hair out, or wear some pink or something, because I overheard more than one group around me comment afterwards: “hey, he was pretty good…”

Then came Rodrigo and Gabriela: just two people, two acoustic guitars, and two mismatched chairs, sitting alone on a stage built on top of the stage. They did have a large projection screen behind them, showing artfully-reproduced close-ups and wide-angle shots of the two as they played.

They had the whole crowd in the palm of their hand from the first note. Early on, they said some nonsense about “not following a setlist on this tour”. But it was pretty clear that they knew exactly what they were doing and had everything planned out quite strictly, in spite of Gabriela’s hilarious, rambling, and “fookin’-” filled story-telling. When they finally got to ‘Diablo Rojo’, the crowd wasn’t whipped into quite the frenzy seen in that video, but it was pretty close, and they left the stage to the loudest ‘encore!’ cheer I can remember. Then coming back, they closed their encore with their big radio single, ‘Tamacun’, to an equally big cheer.

Beyond those hits, they played a good bit of their s/t album, a new one, and a collection of covers. But even their choices for covers show how calculating they are: by choosing such populist hits as Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here’ and The Eagles’ ‘Hotel California’ (with the vocals enthusiastically provided by the crowd), they risk neither boring nor offending their audience. Their metal choices showed the same pattern. Despite name-checking influences like Testament, Sepultura, and Slayer, they drew exclusively from the far more popular Metallica (ok, Rodrigo teased a couple bars of Iron Maiden). While again it makes sense for their goal of pleasing a wide audience, it sure would be nice to hear them play some Megadeth or something (which would be a better match for their skills anyway). Still, that’s only a small gripe, and while I probably won’t pay that much money to see them again, it was worth it this time around.