I was lucky(?) enough to see three good shows in the last four days, so here are my reviews. First, for the fun of it, I’ll rank all the sets, with my favorites first:

1. Estradasphere
2. The Devin Townsend Band
3. Moonspell
4. Type O Negative
5. Symphony X
6. Soulvasq
7. Cradle of Filth

o Estradasphere/Soulvasq @ The Note, 11/21, $8
Soulvasq was the local opener, although they said Estradasphere (from California) actually got them the gig. They fit in well with E-sphere, playing a fairly eclectic mix of styles with an overall funk/Faith No More-ish backing. The lead singer wore tails and a top hat and carried a cane, and they passed bubble-making toys around. That just about tells you all you need to know. For me, their best stuff was when they went heavy, or when they played a Santana-inspired Latin number, complete with a guy on the bongo/conga.

Estradasphere was amazing, as usual. This was my third time seeing them, and every show has been totally different, yet equally incredible In a day when I look up setlists beforehand for all these other bands on the Internet, it’s so refreshing to see a band that crafts a completely different set every single night. They played for approximately forever, but that was only apparent after finding out that it was 2:30am once we got outside. We got the usual mix of gypsy jazz, death metal, bluegrass, some nu-metal, Walk Like and Egyptian, a Stairway to Heaven/Every Rose Has its Thorn/Money for Nothing medley, the Super Mario Bros. theme (played right along with video projection of Level 1-1), and a shitload more. All played with some great chops, although they didn’t quite reach the level of mind-blowing tightness that I saw from them last time. However, it was still plenty good enough to keep them right at the top with the best live bands I’ve ever seen.

I went to see multi-national bill of Dimmu Borgir, Nevermore, Children of Bodom, and Hypocrisy on Sunday at the House of Blues. It must be difficult for some to see that four mighty Swedes have to play first, ahead of some Finnish children, some fat Americans, and worst of all, a gang of ugly Norwegians! But overall it was quite an evenly matched show.

My warmup for the show was going to see Ween play for nearly three hours the night before at a sold-out show being filmed for their DVD. Luckily Ween shows are pretty tame, so I didn’t get too worn out there.

I figured the Dimmu show would sell out too (it did), so I bought my ticket a couple days in advance, to be picked up at the will call window. Doors were set to open at 5:45, with the show beginning at 6:15, so I went inside the venue to pick up my ticket a little before 6:00. However, I still had to go back OUTside, to get in the entry line. And this was a LINE. It literally stretched around the building, south down Dearborn, and completely across the Chicago River. At least it’s a pretty cool place to stand in line, looking down the river from the bridge at portions of the lit-up skyline. At one point a couple of kayakers passed beneath us, quite an unexpected sight on a dark evening with temperatures in the 30s. Of course they received their fair share of cheers and jeers.

It seemed like the doors opened about on time, and the HoB staff was operating efficiently, but it simply takes more than half an hour to get 1000 people into the venue. So by the time I got in, the place was nearly full, and Hypocrisy was playing their second to last song. Which kinda sucked, but at least their last song was “Roswell 47”, which of course is the song to see if you’re just going to see one. The crowd was pretty tame, but a “Hypocrisy!” chant did go up when they finished, so maybe they weren’t too old-school for all the kiddies on hand as I thought they’d be.

While the curtain was closed when Children of Bodom was setting up, someone played a couple of keyboard sounds to make sure it was plugged in. And a huge cheer went up. What a sad state the metal world has fallen to, when everyone gets excited by gay-ass keyboards! And this is an “extreme” metal show too! Anyway, they got going in short order. Yep, Alexi does look like Avril Lavigne. The keyboard player did something I’m surprised I’ve never seen some prog-metal keyboard-wanker-showoff do: he had his whole keyboard tipped downwards, facing the audience, so we could all see what an ivory-tickling badass he was. Ooh! At first I thought he was a new keyboard player, since he wasn’t the little kid that was playing with them when I saw them at the Milwaukee Metalfest in 2000. But I guess he just grew up. I had been standing about in the middle of the floor, but as soon as CoB started, the crowd surged forward, and I was pretty much right in the middle of the crush, about six rows back, for the rest of the night. CoB played about half an hour (like Hypocrisy), and gay as they are, they’re a fun band. Excellent sound too.

When Nevermore started up, the crowd was fairly motionless for “Narcosynthesis”. But then as Warrel Dane always does, he encouraged the pit to start up again for “Seven Tongues of God”, and it basically didn’t stop after that for the rest of the night. I was pretty well-isolated from it though, since there were still a couple more rows of the crush squeezing me in from behind. Nevermore seemed to focus on mostly more brutal stuff; I dunno if they were trying to compete with the other bands there, but that was kinda unnecessary since they would have been the heaviest band no matter what they played. And a bit more melody would have satisfied the CoB-fanboys more anyway. Their churning-thrash sound was a lot more muddled than CoB, but about normal for Nevermore. I’d say the Warrel Drunk-o-Meter was only at about 3 or so, and while his vocals weren’t the greatest, at least they weren’t embarrassing either. Looking at him I was reminded that he ain’t no spring-chicken anymore. They played about 35 minutes.

While waiting for Dimmu, the crowd was still surging around all over the place; I even heard a girl near me mention that she was getting seasick. Finally, Dimmu’s light show intro began, with a bunch of swirling backlights that were actually pretty cool, mostly because they managed to keep from blinding the crowd as such lights usually do. With the drums and keyboards being set up on opposite sides of the stage, there was a sort of pyramid of lights in the middle. Sometimes they’d light up Galder’s bald head, and the light would shine through his ears, making them bright red while the rest of his head kept the white-corpsepaint look. Quite stylish! Costco must have had a deal on knee-high spiked boots, because all four guys up front were wearing identical pairs. And perhaps they had a “Buy four, get a free codpiece!” promotion too, and Shagrath got to wear that. About halfway through he stripped off his leather jacket, and then for the encore he was bare-chested, presumably so he could show off the tattoo across his stomach, much like Tupac’s “Thug Life” tattoo. Except Shagrath’s said “Shagrath”. Ha! I guess it’s so he never forgets. Oh, and the music? It was excellent as usual. Dimmu Borgir really has to be one of the best “metal” bands out there, they’re heavy, intense, melodic, complex, rocking, epic, and fun to watch. Pretty much the whole package. They played about 90 minutes. Though if they didn’t have to hurry to come back and finish up their encore before curfew, I’m not sure if they would have come back, since the crowd was really pretty quiet (as it had been the whole night). Everyone was certainly into it, and there were plenty of people, so maybe it’s just part of the extreme-metal ethic or something to not make too much noise. Anyway, it was still a great show all around.

Went to see Tabla Beat Science at the Vic Theater last night. For those who don’t know, the tabla is a pair of tuned percussion instruments, played with the hands. Sorta like an Indian version of the bongos, but with a greater potential for playing a leading role. TBS is mainly a collaboration between Zakir Hussain (apparently considered the greatest tabla maestro in the world) and Bill Laswell, and mixes classical Indian music with modern electronics and Laswell’s bass playing.

I enjoy their album (“Tala Matrix”) well enough, but not quite enough to immediately justify a $40 ticket price. But then my Indian friend heard that Zakir Hussain was part of this thing, and she wasn’t about to pass up a chance to see him, so I figured I might as well go along too. And wow, I’m sure glad I did, because the performance blew away everything that’s on the CD.

The musicians on this 4-date tour are Hussain on tabla, Laswell on electric bass, Ganesh Iyer on violin/vocals, Karsh Kale on a standard drumkit, Sultan32 on keyboards/effects, DJ Disc on the turntable, and Ethiopian singer Gigi does vocals on some songs.

I had just been to the Vic a few weeks before to see the Nile/Napalm Death show, so it was quite a change to see the stage covered in greenery and flowers, four video screens, and no security fence. As expected at a fusion event like this, the crowd was quite an interesting mix. There were hippies (both neo- and paleo-), Indians (both ABCD and FOB), pretentious art-music posers (like myself), an abonormal number of lesbians (both real and wannabe), and even a few Gigi fans (presumably Ethiopian?)

The show began with only Hussain and Ganesh onstage, improv-ing off each other for fifteen minutes. This was a chance for Hussain to show off his mad skillz, with his fingers literally becoming a blur for extended periods. The mood was pretty playful, as he inserted some well-known bass licks from time to time, which seems to be a pretty impressive thing to do with one hand on a single drum. I’ve only seen one tabla player before in my life, so I probably don’t even have the experience to judge his greatness, but I did get the same feeling watching him as I’ve had when watching Hellhammer or Gene Hoglan.

Eventually, the rest of the band showed up, and they started laying down some serious groove. One of my problems with the record is that it’s pretty one-dimensional. It’s very rhythmic, repetitive, and there aren’t a lot of parts that stand out. Live, each non-tabla instrument became much more prominent, although I never got a sense that anyone was trying to outdo or overpower anyone else; they all gelled perfectly. Compared to the album, there was far more violin being played, Kale’s drums were omnipresent (sometimes jazzy, sometimes very intense and “electronic”), and Laswell’s bass was all over the place; he had a whole set of switches and pedals that changed his sound to everything from standard rock bass, to funkified chirping, to rolling fuzzballs of distortion.

Most of the 2-hour performance had the improv feel of a jazz combo, and although not many “solos” went around, the tabla did some pretty cool back-and-forth exchanges with the violin, drums, and most notably, the DJ scratching records on the turntable. Things would ebb and flow and build and fade; I’d often close my eyes for a few minutes at a time, and upon opening them, I wouldn’t be sure if three minutes had passed, or a hundred years. And that was without any drugs.

So all in all, quite a memorable event that far exceeded my expectations.

Oh, ok, maybe not.

But I went to see one of my favorite bands, Aterciopelados, last night at the House of Blues in Chicago, and damn, what a fun time it was. They aren’t related to metal at all; the best succinct description I’ve seen is a combination of alt-rock, electronica, and Colombian folk music. Not a word was spoken in English at the show (even their cover of Queen’s “Play the Game” was in Spanish), but to use a hackneyed cliche, music crosses all boundaries.

During their groovier songs, most of the crowd would be bouncing around, with the floor going up and down right along with everyone. The middle area often formed into a curious mix of half-mosh pit / half-dance party. And let me tell you, that combination is a hell of a lot better than either of those things on their own. I’m not much of a dancer, or much of a mosher, but here I really ended up gittin’ my groove on. I can definitely recall getting that dance-y feeling at an Amorphis show, and perhaps at a Gathering show too, but there was never enough crowd density at those places to share in my groovy mood.

It was also cool being at a show with such a variety in songs, from rocking things, to atmospheric acoustic stuff, to phat beats.

The crowd size seemed about the same as it was at the Opeth show (meaning it was pretty much full). That’s interesting because Aterciopelados is a major-label band with 5 albums, albums that have sold over 500,000 copies, and playing in a city with a huge Latino community. Not quite sure if that means anything, but there it is.

Next up on the world music tour: Tabla Beat Science on March 5th

Oh yeah, and just so I don’t sound too pretentious or gay (too late?), I’m sure I’ll be banging my head off at the Amon Amarth show coming up.

I think this was a landmark event for the Chicago/U.S. metal scene, for a few reasons:

First, the show was sold out. The Metro has a listed capacity of 1100, so that’s quite a turnout, especially for a German band playing their first-ever show here. It was quite a pleasant surprise when Iced Earth/In Flames sold out the same venue in April, but Blind Guardian/Symphony X repeating that feat is an even more amazing accomplishment. The day before, there was actually a pretty long article/interview with Hansi published in the Chicago Sun-Times (circulation: 500,000).

Also, Jon Schaffer came out and introduced Blind Guardian (and he said a bit more this time than he did at ProgPower). His appearance may seem like a small thing, but Jon was never introduced by name, and still most people knew exactly who he was. He’s also really good at doing the introduction, and got the crowd wound up in a matter of seconds. To me, that just shows a level of scene awareness and and genre popularity that would have been unheard of a few years ago. Maybe in the future this will become annoying, but for now it’s just kinda cool that things have gotten big enough to produce “celebrities”.

Finally, at the very close of the show, the band came back out on stage, and we were told that we were going to be the cover of an upcoming issue of Metal Maniacs. The band lined up facing the drum riser, and the crowd formed a big ol’ backdrop of devil horns behind them while we did a few takes.

So overall, everything came together last night to highlight just how far things have come since August 1997, when Iced Earth did their first U.S. tour, which was the thing that basically got this whole ball rolling. If there was such a thing as Heavy Metal stock, and if I had invested in it back in ’97, I think I’d be doing pretty well right now.

Oh yeah, and then there were the bands too…

Only saw one song of Twelfth Gate, sounded pretty good, kinda like Solitude Aeturnus to me.

I was rather surprised at the response to Symphony X, I didn’t realize that that many people were into them that strongly.

But then of course everyone was REALLY into Blind Guardian. I don’t think the singing was quite as loud as it was at ProgPower (not really surprising since ProgPower geeks are a lot more likely to sing than badass Chicago metalheads), but I think the overall level of excitement and appreciation was just as high. It’s cool that they’re mixing up the setlist, because this time I got to hear three songs they didn’t play at ProgPower: “Under the Ice” (one of my favorites off ANATO), “Harvest of Sorrow” (which I’d never heard in English before), and “Born in a Mourning Hall” (one of my favorite BG songs ever). Although if they would have just played “Lost in the Twilight Hall”, “Valhalla”, and “Lord of the Rings” again, I wouldn’t have complained about that either.

So yeah, it was a great night.

Next up, Dillinger Escape Plan, Mastodon, Yakuza, and Tub Ring, same place, same time, on Tuesday.

First, my apologies to Glenn for not writing a report as lengthy and detailed as the Milwaukee Metalfest report! But there were just a whole lot more reporters on the scene for this one, so it’s not as important for me to be the one to get the word out there. Maybe sometime soon I’ll do a side-by-side comparison of the two festivals though, that might be interesting. Anyway, the whole thing kicked ass. I guess I’ll just go through the bands, so I can get my thought recorded before I forget them.

Zero Hour
Wasn’t really familiar with their stuff, but I enjoyed their set. Nothing that had me jumping up and down and going crazy, and I don’t think I’ll run out and buy their albums, but it was a decent way to start things off.

Silent Force
Skipped out to the gyros place during this set.

Edguy
Power fuckin’ metal. Distilled and purified to its most basic and important elements, played with vigor and a sense of humor. They seemed to be basically channeling Keepers-era Helloween, which was great for those of us who never got a chance to see Helloween in those days. Even better, they made no attempt to hide that fact, with much of Tobias’s banter seemingly borrowed straight from Helloween’s “I Want Out – Live” (“Do you want a faster song???” “Turn on the lights so I can see the people in the seats back there!”) I don’t even own any Edguy albums, and still don’t really feel a need to pick any up (although I do own Avantasia Pt. I), but at that point in time, for that style of metal, I don’t know if there is anyone out there who could have topped Edguy.

Blind Guardian
I liked this set just as much as Edguy’s set, but for rather different reasons. Whereas Edguy captured me with their energy and performance, Blind Guardian captured me with their songs. I’m very familiar with all the songs they played, and for me, the setlist was as good as it possibly could have been. Very nicely loaded with “Imaginations…” stuff (which I love), only two from the new one (just fine with me), and all of the ones that I really like from “Nightfall…” (which doesn’t do much for me as a whole). The sing-a-longs were great, and “Lost in the Twilight Hall” was just amazing. I had absolutely no complaints with the sound, vocals, or overall performance. In fact, I didn’t even think of any of that stuff during the show, as I was too wrapped up into the songs. I’m starting to think that a lot of that may have to do with standing down on the floor, headbanging, and letting the music grab hold of you; sitting calmly up in a chair makes it much easier to do a more critical and technical analysis, which I really have no interest in doing at a show like this. Everything, including the new stuff, sounded just fine (or even better) to me with only one Hansi and one Andre up there. I think that’s more proof that all the insane layering they’ve done on the last couple albums is quite unnecessary. At best, it wastes a lot of time, and and worst, it buries the songs. Everything in this set was immediate and powerful, and I’m really glad I’ll be seeing them again soon.

Pain of Salvation
Not that big of a fan, although I enjoyed their performance at PP1. Went up in the seats for this one, and was liking what I heard, but I was just too worn out by that point to really enjoy it. We left after 30 minutes or so, simply because it was getting hard to keep our eyes open. I’ve seen lots of people complaining about Gamma Ray’s drum solo (and I totally agree), but Daniel seemed to be spending at least as much time telling jokes and stuff. I guess they’ve played here before though, and don’t have as many albums, so it’s not that big of a deal. This set also made it clear how limited the audience for that type of music truly is, relative to other styles. While the total number of people remaining was still fairly large, ProgPower seems to be the premier event for a band like Pain of Salvation, so I don’t think they’d ever be able to draw more people than that, anywhere. Just in case anyone needed another reminder that it was the power metal that sold all the tickets to ProgPower, seeing the crowd remaining for PoS really brought that home.

Reading Zero
Heard a bit through the walls, but spent the time CD shopping, having a nice chat with teri, and hanging out in one of those cool alcoves (before they were all occupied!)

Threshold
I’d never heard a note of Threshold in my life, but I really enjoyed their set. From the songs they played, I actually find it a bit strange that they’re even classified as “prog metal”. It must be one of those cases where people say “ok, they have a high-pitched, melodic singer, and keyboards, but they aren’t power metal, so they must be prog metal, since that’s the only other possible alternative”. To me, they sounded like mostly “metal”. Maybe “melodic metal” or something, and they certainly had some “prog” tendancies, but I think the “prog metal” tag might have kept me away from them in the past. I really liked the guitar playing style, which often wasn’t even very “metal” at all, though the nice heavy rhythm section most definitely told us they were in the right place.

Devin Townsend
It was very cool of Glenn (and the other guys) to bring the band to a festival where they might not fit, and for the band to play at a festival where they knew they didn’t fit that well. I find it pretty funny how some people were offended enough by his performance to label him an asshole. Sure, his music obviously isn’t for everyone, but I guess the joke totally flew over the heads of some people. You’d think starting off the set with “Summer of ’69” might be a clue that he was being way silly. Personally, I found him hilarious, and his music kicked ass too. I only really know the Ocean Machine stuff, and that totally rocked, but some of the new stuff sounded cool too. I was very impressed with how well the sound of the records was reproduced live, and I actually didn’t notice it being louder than anything else (I was up front on the floor, maybe that made a difference?) I loved the serious low-end chunk they had on the later songs. Oh, and the whole band seemed excellent too. Seemed like he got a good response, so I hope Glenn continues being adventurous like that in the future.

Gamma Ray
Ran to dinner between sets, so unfortunately I missed the “Land of the Free” stuff. I thought that might have been ok, since that’s not my favorite GR album, but I like it a lot more than ‘Powerplant’ or ‘NWO’ (which I never even bothered to buy), so then it was a bit disappointing how much they played from those discs. Basically this was the opposite of Blind Guardian for me in terms of playing what I wanted to hear. Someone mentioned how Gamma Ray’s first U.S. appearance was a historic event, and I agree. The only problem is that Gamma Ray seemed totally oblivious to that fact. I was hoping for a “best-of” set, but they didn’t even come close to that, with only one song from their first three albums. Instead of endless crowd games and a drum solo, they probably could have squeezed in two more songs for an audience that had never seen them before. And hmm, would I rather hear “Heavy Metal Universe”, or “Heal Me”? Oh well, they still kicked plenty of ass, particularly the SoiS tracks, and “Dream Healer” rocked even though there were probably a lot of people who didn’t agree. And of course the Helloween stuff ruled, and it was finally something that got the overly peaceful crowd reacting in a physical manner. So overall, it was still really cool, but after Edguy, I was thinking “how amazing will a power metal band like that be when I actually know and love their songs?” And so it never quite lived up to those expectations.

Angra
Thankfully I felt much more energized for the last band on this day. Like Gamma Ray, they did minimal stuff from their back catalog, but at least that’s what I expected here, and the new stuff is really good (and I think I like it a whole lot more after seeing it performed). Edu was a great frontman, and I loved the stage setup with the beautiful backdrop, and the amps moved off to the sides. Excellent guitar playing, as expected. And the drumming thing was really cool. Very good backup singing all around, particularly from the bass player, which is not really something I would have thought of with Angra. Not much else to say except that they totally lived up to my expectations, and while Matos would have been nice, I didn’t feel cheated at all.

The last time I was at The Rave/Eagle’s Ballrom was for the Metalfest in ’98, and it was a lot better-looking than I remembered. Unfortunately, I thought the sound was quite poor. Very echo-y, so it was almost impossible to make out vocals or hear guitar lines. Everything would get jumbled together. Maybe it was just me, although my brother felt the same way. We were right in the middle, about 8-10 rows back, although I moved up right near the front during “Punish My Heaven” and it sounded even worse.

I love Sentenced (all eras), but after seeing them twice now (first at Gods of Metal in Italy), I think their stuff just doesn’t translate that well live. I mean, I still really enjoyed their set, but not as much I normally would for a band I like so much. Ville doesn’t sound quite as good live as on record, Tenkula could have been standing offstage for all the action he showed, and the atmosphere just doesn’t seem to come through like it does on record. I don’t want to make it sound like they suck, since I’d still definitely go see them if they came around again, but I guess they just haven’t lived up to my expectations yet. Here was the setlist:

Konevitsan Kirkonkellot (tape intro)
Cross My Heart And Hope To Die
Neverlasting
Bleed
Sun Won’t Shine
Brief is the Light
The Suicider (first half, into…)
Excuse Me While I Kill Myself
Nepenthe

Next, Dark Tranquility. I saw them at Gods of Metal a few years ago (coincidentally, they played right after Sentenced then as well). So I knew they kicked ass live. But it was so much better to see them close up.

Mikael Stanne is one of the best front men ever, just a skinny, happy ball of energy and charisma. It’s too bad he didn’t sing much clean stuff, because I love that. They played one song off Projector, but it’s the one without any clean vocals that just sounds like their new stuff anyway, so that was a little pointless. He sounded just fine doing the “heaven and heeee—eee—-eeeeelllllllll!!!” stuff in “Punish My Heaven”, so he doesn’t seem to lack the ability to do it live or anything.

But there’s a lot more to the band than Stanne…it’s a very well-balanced band. Not only do all the guys get in on the writing, they all get in on the performance too. I read that at some of the shows, Sentenced was following DT, but it was probably a good idea to change it around, because no matter how much you like Sentenced, it has to be hard to follow up a set like DT’s.

Again, the only problem I really had was the sound. When they were just laying down some of the heavy grooves of the new stuff, it was fine, but it’s almost useless to play something from The Gallery with sound like that.

Here was their set:

The Wonders at Your Feet
Treason Wall
White Noise/Black Silence
Punish My Heaven
Monochromatic Stains
The Sun Fired Blanks
Zodijackyl Light
Final Resistance

Made a quick exit back to Chicago after that. Wasn’t really interested in Killswitch Engage, and although In Flames would have been ok, I’ve seen ’em 4 or 5 times already, and they were playing basically the exact same setlist (except adding the new album and completely removing The Jester Race), so that wasn’t enough to keep us there on a Sunday night.

Friday night, went to see Brave at Rube’s in Harvey, IL, which is a restaurant/bar where they have a separate room cleared out in which bands can play. 4-inch high stage, dropped ceiling, and it kinda felt like you were seeing a band playing in someone’s basement at a college house party. So nothing fancy, but it was good enough to get the job done.

The opener was the local band Abolisher, who I really wanted to see after downloading some of their songs in preparation for the show. The band’s name doesn’t really fit their sound, IMO. I guess they’d probably be classified as “power metal”, but of the American variety like Iced Earth, Jag Panzer, or Nevermore, rather than the European variety. Meaning that much of the sound is based in their melodic, galloping riffs, and they aren’t happy-sounding at all. Unlike the aforementioned bands, they don’t have an operatic singer; the vocals are more of a somewhat rough thrash style. Not a lot of range, but effective, and the lead guitarist and bass player contributed some additional styles of vocal delivery from time to time. What makes them really cool are both the frequent, good-quality head-bangable riffs, and also their epic tendancies. They write some long songs, have some very good extended solos, and mix in some keyboard parts that bring to mind a band like Savatage. Unfortunately, the keyboard (apparently handled by the bass player) was in the shop, so they weren’t able to play what probably would have been some of their best songs. Still, the stuff they did play was great. I picked up a 4-track, 31 minute CD for $5, and am really enjoying it. Go to their website and download the 13-minute “A Stolen Season”, and you’ll understand why I was so interested in seeing these guys.

Then after a pretty good wait, Brave came on. Everything was pretty similar to the show in July, but since that show was excellent, that was perfectly fine with me. The setlist was pretty much the same as far as I could tell, except that they played “Bluer Skies” (which was cool because I really like that one) and did an encore of “Spirit” (from the EP) as a request from the crowd. Although the “stage” was low, it was big and wide, so the band had a lot more room to move around and were more animated this time (particularly in the singer and bass player positions). The violinist even walked out into the “crowd” for a solo. There were 50-60 people watching them, so that doubled or tripled the turnout at their last show here. I finally picked up the EP to round out my collection, and it’s really good; I can understand why it’s the only thing some people really like from them. I don’t agree, but it’s definitely different.

Concertgoing is no longer what it used to be.

Not that I’d really know myself; I attended my first live rock concert in 1994 (Dream Theater), and although there are a lot more metal bands to see these days, the types of bands and the venues are pretty much the same. I’m certainly satisfied with the current state of affairs (and I think things have been on the upswing for the last several years), but I can recall some of the “old-timers” around here spinning their tales, telling of a day when things were different. A day when you could go out every weekend and see a good live band (that wasn’t just playing covers). When an unsigned local band could get a good following, and bands and fans would mix to create an integrated scene. When people would go out to see some bands they had never heard before, because it was a fun night out AND a good way to discover something new.

I think scenes like this started to decay as people became more averse to risk. This includes the club owners, booking agents, and the bands themselves. But most importantly, it includes the fans, the customers who drove the whole system. People became less willing to come out and spend money to see a band they’d never heard before, and then predictably, clubs became less willing to book bands that wouldn’t bring out the people. I imagine a combination of factors contributed to this decline in risk-tolerance, from a perceived decline in the quality of the acts, to a shift of interest to styles of music that don’t benefit from a live performance, and finally to an entertainment explosion that created all sorts of alternatives in the fight to win the consumer’s time and money. And once people stopped taking chances and stopped going out to see shows, the whole thing started to fall apart.

Read the rest of this entry »

o RWAKE – Jacksonville, AR – http://rwake.homestead.com/
Started off today noon with a band that I’d labelled in my pre-planning as “doom/death/stoner metal”. Usually that’s not a style I’m a big fan of, but stoner metal can be a pretty good choice at a festival like this, as long as it’s not stupid. You’re generally guaranteed to have a good amount of melody, groove, and not much pointless extremity, all good things when being exposed to music that you’ve never heard before. And Rwake surpassed the hopes I had for them, and actually left me quite impressed. Screaming death vocals over their fairly simple but effective riffs, combined with non-standard song structures broken up by good atmospheric sections. Halfway through the set I noticed they had what appeared to be a crippled child laying on stage, but it turned out to be a small woman crouched over a little box. She seemed to be doing something related to the sound, and checking out their website, it says she’s in charge of “samples/vocals/Moog”, so maybe it was a Minimoog? Couldn’t really hear it anyway, but regardless, this band was an auspicious start for the day.

Read the rest of this entry »