MILWAUKEE METALFEST REPORT – PART II-A: The Opinions

August 5th, 2002

Again, warning, this is pretty long. This only covers the bands I saw on the first day of the festival, and only the ones that I remember something about worth saying, so I might have forgotten one or two. In the weeks before the fest I spent a lot of time tracking all the bands down on the Internet and finding out a little information about them, so I think I was able to see the bands that would have been most interesting to me, and avoid many of the ones that I would have hated. These are basically in chronological order, from about 2:30PM until 12:10AM.

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MILWAUKEE METALFEST REPORT – PART I: The Facts

August 4th, 2002

The year 2002 marked the 16th edition of Jack Koshick’s Milwaukee Metalfest, the longest-running metal festival in the United States. While it only draws a tiny fraction of the entire U.S. population of metal fans, it can be argued that the sheer scope of the event, the history behind it, and historical lack of alternatives make the Metalfest one of the most important weekends of the year for the US metal community. Or at the least, it’s one of the events worth writing a large report on. The Metalfest has understandably gone through a lot of changes throughout the years, but reports of many of the ups and downs can be inaccurate, with some amounting to little more than rumor. This can be attributed to the limited number of people who actually attend the fest each year, the poor Internet/media presence of the Metalfest organization, and the general tendency of people to focus on the negative. I decided this year that I wanted to write up a detailed and hopefully unbiased report of the Milwaukee Metalfest, both for my own historical records, and for any metal fans who want to stay apprised of the state of this venerable event. I don’t have any connections with any band, the festival, or the industry; I go simply as a fan, but I have now attended every Milwaukee Metalfest since 1998, so this was my fifth festival. That experience, combined with the fact that I took lots of notes over the weekend (and didn’t have a drop of alcohol!) should hopefully make my viewpoint worth reading. On with it…

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Brave @ Luney Tunes

July 14th, 2002

The show was at a small neighborhood bar on the northwest side called Luney Tunes. I knew we were at the right place because the four people standing outside as we approached happened to be members of Brave. The first band got started right when we walked in; I don’t recall their name, but they were a pretty good hard rock three-piece with some thrashy and doomy influences. Those three guys took up most of the stage in the tiny place, so I was wondering how Brave would manage.

When Brave took the stage, there were approximately 20 people on the stage-side of the bar, with perhaps another 15 people hanging out in the other room. Turned out Brave actually had six people, which while thankfully not enough to outnumber the audience, appeared to be quite a challenge to arrange on stage. Three lined up in the back, and three lined up in the front. It was only after my brother pointed it out to me that I noticed the front half of the “stage” that three people were standing on was in reality a pool table.

Anyway, as for the show, it was really cool and well-done. They played a whole bunch of songs off the new album, two from “Before an Audience of Stars”, and one I didn’t recognize, which I assume was from the EP. I believe I remember reading that Michelle was incredibly shy when she started singing; well, she’s certainly gotten over that. She was quite expressive (maybe it was the bare feet) and sounded great, especially in the strong choruses where she’d really belt it out. The rest of the musicians weren’t particularly animate (except for the violinist) but I’m sure that had something to do with not wanting to fall off the pool table. It was interesting to see how often everyone except for the drummer and bassist would trade instruments; they must have had at least five different configurations throughout the night (electric guitar, acoustic guitar, keyboards, and electric violin were the instruments to choose from). Highlights for me were “Dreaming”, and then they closed their set with “Trapped Inside” from the new album, which totally slayed.

In concert reviews I often see people say “such-and-such a song sounded SO much better live than it does on CD”. I’ve never really been able to understand that, since I always like songs just the same live and on CD. I often think people would hear the same improvement if they listened at home after drinking four or five beers. However, for all the songs off the new album, they did sound better to me. I think in this case it was mostly a result of timing, since I’d just gotten the album a few days ago. I’d only listened to it four or five times, so I was still getting familiar with the songs, and thus at the time of the show, I was perfectly primed to “get it”. So that was pretty cool.

It seems one of the big questions in relation to Brave and their fans has to be “is this band ‘metal’?” Despite the lack of solid “metal” evidence in their sound, I think the answer must be yes for some strange reason. Among the twenty people, I saw shirts from November’s Doom, Lucifer’s Hammer, Incantation, and Katatonia (none of which were worn by me or my brother), so the “metal” crowd definitely seems to be their main audience (at least in Chicago). In addition, the keyboard player was wearing an old-school Amorphis shirt, and electric violinist was headbanging like crazy and throwing the devil horns every which way. For some reason it’s just very interesting to me how a band like this does very well in the metal community, while another band just like them might hit a completely different audience.

Speaking of the audience, despite its tiny size, everyone was quite appreciative and loud in their applause, giving a better response than many crowds I’ve seen four or five times that size. That, combined with one of the club’s owners coming out near the end of the set and pseudo-headbanging and generally having a great time made for a really nice atmosphere. My brother, who had just heard “Before an Audience…” once before the show, picked up two CDs, so it must have been a pretty convincing show. They said they might come back around in September, so hopefully more people will hear about the show then and come on out (or not be lazy old married people who have to go to bed early on Friday night! 🙂

Hypocrisy / Soilwork @ Metro

May 16th, 2002

Soilwork was, uh, ok, I guess. Certainly a lot better than when I saw them at last years Milwaukee Metalfest where they were just throwing up a chaotic and indecipherable wall of noise. It helps that their new material is far less chaotic, despite of the title of their latest album. Their sound was pretty good, not too loud, and properly mixed to highlight the new material (lots of vocals and rhythm, kinda low in the guitars). The second guitar wasn’t working for most of the first song, but didn’t make much of a difference when they got it running (then they spent a few minutes before the next song trying to find another guitar). The singing overall was pretty good. Of course it wasn’t exactly like it sounds on NBC, but he switched between styles pretty well. Backups (by up to three other guys) were generally helpful, although there were definitely points where guys were off. Also, they didn’t seem especially tight rhythmically. There were a couple points where things weren’t exactly right, most obvious being that song from the Chainheart Machine that has that huge bass-led groove in the middle of it; it was played in a sadly un-groovy fashion. It was only the second show of the tour though, so they’ll probably tighten up. For six guys, the don’t generate a whole lot of stage presence. I guess I expected a little more intensity out of a singer nicknamed “Speed”. One of the guitarists (Wichers, I believe) has a set of stage mannerisms that almost exactly copies John Petrucci (he must have watched a lot of Dream Theater videos). I don’t have the exact setlist, but they played a bunch off Natural Born Chaos (Follow the Hollow, As We Speak, The Flameout, Natural Born Chaos, The Bringer), a few off A Predator’s Portrait (Needlefeast, Like an Average Stalker, and one more), and a couple off The Chainheart Machine (the title track and whichever one has that big ol’ bass groove).

Next up was Hypocrisy. The minute they stepped out on stage, you could just feel that they were a force to be reckoned with. There are certain bands (along with Hypocrisy, Iced Earth and Immortal come to mind) that just radiate an aura of power with their very presence. I don’t know if it’s something that comes from being a stalwart force in their scene, or being leaders rather than followers, or just having been through the grind of building a band from scratch, but there is clearly something that sets them apart from a band like Soilwork. After their set, my brother said something like “they sure separated the men from the boys”, and he was right.

Anyway, to the music. For their first tour in the U.S. in their 10-year career (as far as I know), they nicely chose to do a “best of” set featuring stuff from all their albums. This worked out especially well for me, since I only own two Hypocrisy CDs, one of which is the “10 Years of Chaos and Confusion” compilation that they pulled most of the songs from. Due to venue restrictions, they only had about an hour to play, so they burned through all their songs, from the brutal, blasting early stuff to the epic, hypnotic songs of more recent years. Plenty heavy and really loud the whole time. Peter Tagtgren is indeed a pretty ugly-looking dude, but the fact that he’s a badass makes up for it quite nicely. Curiously, he speaks English with virtually no accent. He did a great job with his variety of vocal styles throughout the night, and also seemed to really be enjoying himself, along with the rest of the band (which included a second guitarist). He seemed genuinely impressed with the response, which really was quite excellent for a band that no one had ever seen before. I wasn’t quite sure which band more people would be there to see, and while there were certainly plenty of people there to see Soilwork, Hypocrisy definitely had a better response overall. Here is some idea of the setlist (not in order), although they played a few songs that aren’t on here, and I’m probably imagining one or two that they didn’t actually play:

Penetralia
The Fourth Dimension
Until the End
Pleasure of Molestation
A Coming Race
Fractured Millennium
Roswell 47
Fire in the Sky
The Final Chapter
Buried
Don’t Judge Me
Osculum Obscenum

Iced Earth and In Flames has sold out the same venue (the 1100-capacity Metro in Chicago) exactly three weeks earlier. This show wasn’t sold out, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were 700 people there, which is pretty impressive for two bands from Sweden. I have no comments on the opening bands (Single Bullet Theory, Scar Culture, and Killswitch Engage) since we expertly timed our arrival just as Soilwork was setting up.

Concert Year in Review

January 2nd, 2002

First, the boring statistics.

This year I saw thirteen shows. That includes two two-day festivals (ProgPower USA and Milwaukee Metalfest). That’s considerably more than the seven shows I saw in 2000, but doesn’t reach my sixteen-show record in 1999.

In all those shows, I saw 39 different bands (44 performances in all). Fifteen of those bands were from foreign countries, including Sweden (5), Norway (3), Germany (2), Finland, Portugal, Italy, England, and Colombia (1 each). Also, most of these shows were in venues around Chicago, USA.

Now the short recaps. Overall, I don’t remember too many mind-blowing performances, instead, the year was characterized by a large number of “very good” sets.

ProgPower USA (2/23-2/24): Hard to believe this show was in 2001, isn’t it? It was a good show all-around, although I’m not head-over-heels in love with any of the bands I saw. Pain of Salvation was the most impressive, and it was nice to be able to see “big names” like Symphony X and Evergrey.

Amorphis/Opeth at House of Blues (4/12): Opeth was great, although their set didn’t measure up to their first American show at the Milwaukee Metalfest the year before. Amorphis is worth seeing just because they’re Amorphis, but I don’t think they’ll ever be known as a great live band.

Nevermore/Opeth/Angel Dust at Hard Rock Cafe (4/26): Second show for Opeth in downtown Chicago in two weeks, and like the first one, the audience thought they should have been the headliners. Angel Dust was a nice addition, great presence and very heavy. Nevermore was Nevermore. Very good as always, with the “as always” being the only problem.

Savatage/Fates Warning at House of Blues (5/6): An unexpected pairing. Savatage was incredible, just as good as the first time I’d seen them, three years before, with both shows ranking near the top of my all-time list. I’m not much of a FW fan, so their set has pretty much faded from my memory.

Mayhem/The Chasm/Disinter at Riley’s Rockhouse (7/1): Mayhem put on a hell of a show, and Maniac didn’t even cut himself, beyond driving barbed wire into his arm. Hellhammer is an amazing drummer, Blasphemer is very innovative guitar player, Maniac is very bizarre presence, especially up close, Necrobutcher was just having a hell of a lot of fun. Hard to believe that they were the worst thing I could imagine when seeing them three years previously at the Metalfest. The opening bands were blah, although Disinter played an At the Gates cover, I believe.

Aterciopelados (and some other bands) at Aragon Ballroom (7/6): A large “Rock en Espanol” concert, which I attended just to see Aterciopelados. They gave a very entertaining performance, but the best part was being a 6’4″ white guy standing out of a sea of Hispanic people. The crowd gets into the show just as much as a metal crowd, but in a completely different way.

G3 at Riviera Theater (7/10): My brother convinced me to go to this one with him. I guess it wasn’t too bad, but I don’t need to see another one. I liked Petrucci the most by far, Satriani was pretty good, and Vai just made me giggle.

Estradasphere/Tubring at The Note (7/27): Fourth show of the month, and Estradasphere probably put on the best performance I saw the whole year. Simply an amazing group of players, and a hell of a lot of fun too. Tubring was a great opener as well.

Milwaukee Metalfest (8/10-8/11): Overall it was a pretty good fest, I would rate three of the performances “very good” or better (Anathema, Einherjer, and Amon Amarth), which is more than most Metalfests. Other bands I watched that didn’t suck were Darkane, Helstar, Steel Prophet, Grey Skies Fallen, Jag Panzer, Maudlin of the Well, November’s Doom, Primal Fear, Rain Fell Within, and Soilwork.

Savatage/Nevermore at Riley’s Rockhouse (9/18): Very strange to see Savatage downgrading to a venue like Riley’s. I’m sure they had more guitars in there than they’d ever had at any time. However, although the performance was good, for some reason it didn’t come near the two previous times I’d seen them. It’s still quite amazing though how “Morphine Child” is 150 times heavier live than on CD. For Nevermore, see above.

Megadeth/Iced Earth at Midway Theater, Rockford (11/1): Iced Earth blew me away as always, even with their short opening set. Megadeth was pretty disappointing, especially since nearly every other review I’d seen from the tour said how great they were. I’m still not sure if it was their performance or if it’s just me.

Megadeth/Iced Earth at Kitt’s Korner, Cross Plains, WI (11/9): Iced Earth blew me away as always, even with their short opening set. I was right up at the front for their set, and I was sqeezed like I hadn’t been squeezed since I saw Iced Earth in Athens. So obviously people were really into them and hopefully they made a lot of new fans. I actually didn’t stick around to watch Megadeth this time.

Moonspell/Lacuna Coil/November’s Doom/Avidost: Rockhouse USA (12/13): An extremely well-balanced show and while none of the performances would reach the top of my all-time list, it was easily the best string of four bands I’ve ever seen playing together (ok, second best string, I forgot about Sentenced/Demons & Wizards/Dark Tranquillity/Iron Maiden). And that’s far more enjoyable than seeing one great band with three shit openers.

I believe Marduk/Amon Amarth is on the table for this month, so it looks like 2002 will be getting off to a good start soon…

Concert Year in Review

December 19th, 2000

I left off any bands I happened to see but didn’t really enjoy, and five of the bands listed I saw at Gods of Metal in Italy, but that still leaves 23 sets from quality mid- to big-name metal bands. And 14 were from Europe.

Opeth: Exceeded my expectations (Milwaukee Metalfest)

Anathema: Amazing emotional performance, exceed my expectations by about 10 times. (Metalfest)

Dark Tranquillity: Highlight of the Gods of Metal fest, Stanne just rules.

Iron Maiden: Their show in Chicago wasn’t nearly as cool as their one in Italy, but it’s Maiden, so both shows still rank near the top of the list.

Arch Enemy: 2 shows in one weekend, blew headliners Nevermore away both times.

Immortal: Great stage presence from three guys, and I’m pretty sure guitarist Abbath is really Jon Schaffer in corpsepaint.

Mayhem: Blood, corpsepaint, and black metal. Plus, they can play! (Metalfest)

Demons & Wizards: Hansi and Jon in Italy, yeah that’s fun.

In Flames: Their music might be a bit stagnant, but it’s still fun to hear at a show.

Moonspell: What a good-looking band.

The Kovenant: Cool show, not enough of a crowd there though, and not enough songs.

Sentenced: One band I would have rather seen on a small stage rather than at Gods of Metal

Maudlin of the Well: Ten people on stage, it must be good!

Shadows Fall: Good live band, I should probably get their CD.

Children of Bodom: Like In Flames, not the most exciting music on disc, but it’s good for banging your head to.

Amorphis: Cool stuff, maybe a little too laid back though.

Dream Theater: would have enjoyed it more if I wasn’t so far back in the crowd.

Nevermore: Always decent, never mind-blowing. Think I’ve seen them too many times.

Rain Fell Within: hooray for skinny chicks!

Garden of Shadows: hooray for guitar-playing chicks!

Edguy: The only Euro-power-metal band I’ve ever seen.

Queensryche: just seemed soulless.

Halford: Eh?

Ok, I think I got ’em all. If I’m able to see this many good bands next year, I’ll be quite happy.

Milwaukee Metalfest XIV

August 1st, 2000

This was the third Milwaukee Metalfest I have attended. For many years, the show has been somewhat of a joke that I’ve felt has never lived up to its potential. While there is always a huge number of bands, the percentage of bands worth seeing is rather low. There also have been chronic difficulties with the advertised bands not appearing for various reasons, and the schedules are always a bit chaotic. The old venue, the Rave/Eagle’s Ballroom, was quite unsuitable for a fest like this, and sound quality was generally poor. Adding wrestlers and porn stars didn’t really help too much. Still, it has always been worth going to, simply for the “event”.

This year, however, many of those complaints I had were eliminated or greatly reduced. Last year’s confusing, eleventh hour change of venue from the Rave to the Milwaukee Auditorium is the best thing that could have happened to the fest. It stayed there this year, and the band list remained surprisingly consistent leading up to the show. The venue is huge, air-conditioned, has plenty of space to sit down, and the sound quality was amazingly good for the most part. Although there were still plenty of useless bands (no less than five bands with the word “flesh” in their names), there was a great pool of international talent as well as a nice selection of up-and-coming American bands. The four stages generally did a pretty good job of sticking to their schedules, and creative scheduling put “headliners” on at different times of the day to avoid major conflicts. Even the wrestling and the porn star seemed to be a little less annoying than last year.

Now, on to the bands. As usual, I actually saw only of the small percentage of the bands performing at the Metalfest. I was there for only about 16 hours of the 27 hour fest, so that eliminates a lot of bands right there. And I’ve never really been one to run around to as many bands I can see, as listening to brutal death metal band after brutal death metal band can quickly dull your senses. It’s really quite easy to fall asleep there with bands blasting in your face; I took a little nap during Destruction’s set.

This year, the three biggest highlights for me were Opeth, Anathema, and Mayhem, in that order. Some thoughts on each, as well as the other bands I saw:

Opeth – Although Opeth is one of my favorite bands, and Morningrise is my favorite album, I wasn’t expecting too much from them, since I knew they didn’t have too much live experience, and I didn’t think their music would translate too well to a live environment, particularly the Metalfest’s live environment of shitty sound and bad lighting. Well, it’s rare for me to admit being wrong, but damn, what a dumbass I was, because they totally ruled. Sound was just about perfect, and they really rocked the place. Their execution wasn’t flawless, but some of their start/stop/guitar explosions were just awesome. It was fun watching the guitar interplay and seeing who does what. They played Moonlapse Vertigo, Forest of October, Advent, White Cluster, and Demon of the Fall, in that order. Forest of October and Advent were the obvious highlights for me, and even though My Arms, Your Hearse is my least favorite Opeth album, Demon of the Fall absolutely crushes, and was a great way to end the show. Mikael’s clean vocals weren’t quite as perfect as they are on record, but his growls were great, and it showed that his shift to a lower growl is a style choice rather than a physical change. Also, hearing the new stuff back-to-back with the old stuff really highlights how much the band has changed musically. Their stage presence was nothing special, but Mikael walking out and simply saying “Hi, we’re Opeth” got a tremendous response and chant from the crowd. One of the best sets from a band I’ve seen in a long time.

Anathema – I own the two latest Anathema albums, and I think they’re fine pieces of work, but the band has always remained only semi-interesting to me. No longer. Seeing them perform live totally ignited my interest in the band, and now I wonder why I never noticed how great they are before. Upon arriving home I read a whole bunch of interviews and album reviews and definitely plan on getting some of their other releases. I haven’t done anything that “fanboy”-ish in a long time. So what was the powerful force that converted me? Simply their undeniable emotional presence and their uncanny ability to create a nearly tangible two-way connection between the audience and the band. The focal point of the band is singer/guitarist Vincent Cavanaugh, and while it’s difficult to compare the personal, emotional Anathema to other metal bands, I think Vincent is probably the best frontman I’ve ever seen. Anyone who doubts that Anathema is still a “metal” band only needs to see Vincent’s left hand shaking violently behind his fretboard before grabbing hold and launching into a powerful riff. His brother Danny is no slouch either, pouring his soul into each piercing guitar lead. Seeing Lector (ex-Cradle of Filth) on stage with them playing keyboards was just an added bonus. And what other band besides Anathema would be drinking bottles of wine and champagne on stage? They played two songs from Judgement (“Deep” and “One Last Goodbye”, the latter of which was the obvious highlight of the show), “Fragile Dreams” from Alternative 4, and then the rest were songs I didn’t know from their other albums. At the end of the show they found out they had 10 extra minutes to play, so they had a little conference and played Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” and then bashed through the Misfits’s “Halloween” with bassist Dave Pybus on vocals to close things. If I had been familiar with their older material, I’m sure it would have been my favorite set of the fest. From seeing other opinions around here, it seems like they had a similar effect on everyone.

Mayhem – I’ve always thought Mayhem was pretty much crap until I got their latest album, A Grand Declaration of War, which is a great concept album of well-produced, adventurous, and progressive post-black metal. I watched Mayhem’s set two years ago at the Metalfest just so I could say that I’d seen them, and it was just terrible, one huge mess of random noise. They were about a million times better this year. They still managed to sneak in all of their, um, “classics” amidst cuts from the new album, including “Chainsaw Gutsfuck”, “Under a Freezing Moon”, and “Pure Fucking Armageddon”, but even they sounded decent enough with the good sound and top-notch playing of the band. Their new stuff was great. Super-tall singer Maniac was the only one who was really corpsepainted up, and halfway through the set he lived up to his name by slicing open his left forearm with a large knife. Nothing like a little blood and black metal! Who knows, if Mayhem keeps going like this, someday people might not even remember who Euronymous and Dead were.

Children of Bodom – I ran down to catch their set already in progress right after Anathema finished. Now THAT’S quite a contrast. Once again the sound was amazingly good, and I could actually hear all six of the instruments clearly. The band was pretty intense, and was playing great, even the seemingly 12-year old keyboard player. Alexi strangely reminded me of Larry Tarnowski of Iced Earth. The band and the crowd appeared to be having a great time. “Children of Bodom” was the highlight for me, although all the songs sounded great.

Maudlin of the Well – I saw this strange and unique band with 10 members after watching Hate Eternal’s 3-man approach to death metal. Once again, quite a contrast, and a bit too much of a contrast for many in the room. Definitely not for me though, as Maudlin’s album rules and they did an admirable job reproducing it live. I’m really glad that they had the balls to play their wussiest song, “Blight of River Systems”, since it totally rules, both on record and live. Female vocals were unfortunately a bit quiet, but they’ve got this big lead guitarist dude who just nails that shit. Three songs doesn’t sound like too much, but they did a good job with the time they had.

Rain Fell Within – These guys ‘opened’ for Anathema (and were obviously quite pleased about that). They did a nice job, and like Maudlin, only managed to make it through three rather lengthy songs. I figured super-skinny singer/keyboardist Dawn would have a hard time reproducing her vocal lines live, but she seemed to be dead-on as far as I could tell. Interestingly, they had another female singer to do backups, harmonies, and tradeoffs with Dawn, and I thought that worked out really well. It was also fun watching one of their guitar players who appeared to be a total posing rock star.

Garden of Shadows – This is an American melodic death metal band who I really wanted to see. They’re somewhat similar to Rain Fell Within, except with death growls, and the female in the band plays guitar, believe it or not. They were scheduled for really early on the first day, so I thought I’d miss them, but somehow they ended up with a slot later on the second day. They only managed to play two songs, neither of which was one of the better ones from their album, but they were still cool and I’m glad I was able to catch them.

October Thorns – We were waiting in the hallway after Children of Bodom, waiting for OT to come on. Suddenly some pretty serious death metal came blasting out from the stage, and I was sure that there had been some kind of mixup. Nope, it was really October Thorns, wisely playing to suit their audience. They put together a nice stage presence with the outfits, the OT logos, and the crazy bassist. The guys can play the shit out of their instruments, and when they’re doing the dirty, heavy stuff, they’re awesome, but I just can’t handle Paul’s high, “prog-metal” vocals. Normally I like high-pitched vocals just fine, but these seem so generic and characterless, especially when contrasted with all the other really cool stuff he can do with his voice. While metal fans are getting more and more open-minded, there still aren’t a lot of death metal fans who can handle high vocals like that, and not a lot of prog-metal fans who can handle the death vocals. It’s great to see a band like them taking chances and mixing stuff up, I just hope the metal world is ready for them.

Hate Eternal – I watched this death metal band for no particular reason, but they were great. An incredible amount of sound coming from three guys, mostly from guitarist Eric Rutan. Not only was his playing hand a constant blur, his fret hand was also nearly invisible flying up and down the neck. Pretty amazing to watch. The dual vocalist attack was pretty cool too.

The Chasm – I’d seen them open for In Flames when they were without a bass player, and strangely, I think they sounded better then.

Immolation – Saw them play on the main stage to a couple thousand people for the second year in a row, and I still have no idea why anyone likes them.

Destruction – Also drew a huge crowd and had quite a light show. I wonder if their fans realize that there are a bunch of new bands out there who actually make interesting music.

Ok, enough music. How about the people? First, the Milwaukee newspaper said their were 5000 people there the first night, which sounds about right to me. But what was cool was all the great people I knew/met there. I went up with Goughmer, and met up with Jen G and dweeb as soon as we got there. Dweeb sneakily tried to get us all wasted, but only really succeeded with Jen. After reading all the Powermad stories, I knew it might not be a good idea to try and keep up with him, unless I wanted to be the subject of embarassing stories for years to come! 🙂 I think we did a good job of showing him the darkside, he bought a Mayhem CD after all! We also spent a lot of time with Greg Massi, the famous celebrity from Maudlin of the Well, and it was nice to see that he was just as cool in the U.S. as he was in Italy. Also spent some time hanging out with the conspicuously white-shirted mental hygiene, who was just as cool and contrary as he appears on the board. Definitely fun to see some more PM-ers there, and hopefully there will be more next year. Oh yeah, the picture above is one of the promo shots for the newest and best metal band ever. Left to right is Jen G (lead vocals and hiding), Goughmer (lead posing, phat beats), Greg (guitar, solos only!!!), and dweeb (gangsta rapping and sissydrum). Sadly, they disbanded seconds after the photo was taken, well before they could even think up a name.

Oh yeah, can’t forget about the cool vendors too. I got:

Primordial – Spirit the Earth Aflame
Primordial – The Burning Season: both better than A Journey’s end
User Ne – Nibelum Das Uhort: Cool weirdo black folk metal.
Haggard – Awaking the Centuries: much better than their first, mostly because of the great production
Rajna – Yahili: non-metal Tibetan music from Holy Records
Lux Occulta – My Guardian Anger: symphonic yet original black metal
Havayoth – His Creation Reversed: The best of the bunch so far, gothic rock/metal with Vintersorg on vocals, singing English and sounding a hell of a lot like Dan Swano. A must for Nightingale fans.
The Black League – Ichor: Taneli Jarva’s new band, seems like it pretty much takes off from where he left Sentenced.

It was definitely the best Metalfest so far, and I’d like to hope that it’s turned the corner into becoming something even better.

Samael / Dimmu Borgir

September 12th, 1999

It’s good that it’s been a long time since I’ve seen someone make a post about how dead metal is, because I just might have to smack someone around if they were to be so stupid today.

Case in point, I saw two European bands, Samael and Dimmu Borgir, twice in the Chicago area in the past week. And not only did they make two appearances, both shows were surprisingly well-attended. I estimate they drew 150-200 people on a Tuesday-night 21-and-over show in the city (Doubled Door), and around 300 (completely packing the place) at an all-ages show on Sunday (Riley’s Rockhouse).

Before the tour started I’d seen a fair amount of questioning who would be headlining, and I was rather surprised to hear that Samael was playing last. As it turns out, it seemed to be more of a co-headlining kind of thing, as both bands appeared to play about the same amount of time. Although Samael has been around longer and has toured the U.S. before, I think Dimmu Borgir is the bigger band around here these days, and it was proven by the small dip (or at least no increase) in attendance after Dimmu’s sets. Personally, I like Samael a little more than Dimmu, but they’re both great bands, and hopefully Samael showed some of the Cradle of Filth kids there that you don’t have to wear corpsepaint to be cool.

Ok, on to the music. Epoch of Unlight and Monstrosity opened, I missed EoU at both shows; I saw them at the Metalfest though, and they seemed pretty cool there. I would have gotten there earlier to see them if not for having to endure Monstrosity. Unfortunately, I didn’t get there late enough for the second show, so I had to sit through Monstrosity’s wonderful new take on shitty death metal.

Then there was Dimmu Borgir. I guess there is a point in most successful bands’ careers where they sit down and decide that they’ve had enough of just jamming together for fun, and realize that they want to go all the way and do everything they can to be the best they can and really make a name for themselves. It’s just very pronounced in the case of Dimmu Borgir, mostly because of the stark contrasts between For All Tid / Stormblast and their latest works. Seeing them live, their distance from the “true” black metal scene becomes even more obvious. These guys seem to be first and foremost, entertainers. Or it’s at least equal with them being “artists”. That may make a lot of people uncomfortable, but personally, I love it. As I was watching them, I realized that even if I completely didn’t care about Dimmu Borgir, I still wouldn’t have felt ripped-off going to the show, simply because they put on such a quality act. Even though they had very little room to move at both places, all of the members were very into their performance (except for Mustis) and quite fun to watch (particularly with the impressive use of lights and fog). It’s funny how they’re all the same height, except for Simen who is about a foot taller than the rest of them. Astennu really does play his guitar between his legs like in that pic in GSG. Very strange. Anyway, it was nice to see that they know the first three songs on Enthrone… are about 100 times better than any of their other stuff, because they played all of them, and a bunch of stuff from SBD. The Insight and the Catharsis, In Death’s Embrace, and Mourning Palace were probably the highlights for me.

After they finished, they cleared the drums off the stage and replaced them with Xy’s keyboard and big rack of electronics, along with a couple real toms, cymbals, and snare. Darkness fell, the stage filled up with fog, and moments later the synth and drum machine started blaring as Xy appeared alone in the fog. The other three guys then made it up on stage and started kicking ass. I’ve definitely never seen anything like a Samael show, and at first it was a little off-putting, but once I caught the vibe it was incredible. Like Dimmu Borgir, Samael has also evolved from some kids trying to be evil to a professional band that’s doing everything they can to get their music and message across. Vorph is a completely unique stage presence, he’s very aloof yet very intense, much like his lyrics and Samael’s music, so it fits perfectly. Most of the time he was tied to his microphone (which was placed very low to match with his spread-legged stance), but Kaos handled most of the guitar work, and on a couple of songs (Moonskin, All), Vorph went completely without his guitar, which allowed him to do even more of his strange and almost spooky hand gestures. As for the other guys, Kaos was rather interesting, a very clean-cut, short haired guy who would fit in perfectly in a Calvin Klein ad. He must have been taking some happy drugs the second show, because he was way more into it, going nuts with the crowd and screaming along and stuff. Masmeseim on the other side was the bounciest and happiest-looking of the bunch, mostly whapping haphazardly at his bass. And finally there was Xy in the back, easily the headbanging-est keyboard player I’ve ever seen. And it was awesome when he’d play the real drums, he’d basically jump up in the air and just beat the crap out of them whenever he got the chance. They played mostly stuff off of Passage, with three new ones from Eternal, one from Exodus, and Baphomet’s Throne off of Ceremony of Opposites. Their CDs have a very unique atmosphere, and the feeling at the show was much the same. Very cold and heavy, yet quite danceable and majestic at the same time. I’m not quite sure what I mean by this, but I get the feeling that Samael might be just a bit too “European” to gain mass appeal with American audiences. Anyway, halfway through the set, Vorph, Masmeseim, and Kaos went off stage while Xy did some drum and synth stuff, and two fire jugglers came out. Then they got back to the metal. At the second show, apparently Xy was having monitor problems, since his live drumming kept getting off time, and they ended up stopping right in the middle of Baphomet’s Throne, and Xy walked offstage for a couple minutes. Apparently everything got fixed, since he came back and was dead-on for the rest of the night. The second show then got an encore that we didn’t get at the first one, which included The Cross from Eternal, and My Savior. They left the stage (except for Masmeseim, who jumped into the crowd for some surfing) while keeping a synth loop still playing, and the jugglers came out with some different stuff, and then that was it. My favorites were probably Jupiterian Vibe, Rain (which was rather different, particularly the intro, which seems like a strange thing to change since it’s such a kickass and memorable intro), My Savior, and some of the new stuff.

Both bands seemed geniunely pleased with the crowd reactions, particularly the second night (when the crowd was much more into it), and I was very pleased with the bands. Hopefully everything else will go well for them on this tour, and they’ll keep the stream of European bands coming over to the States.

Emperor / Borknagar / Witchery / Peccatum

July 7th, 1999

The Scandanavian Invasion of the U.S. began on Friday night in Chicago. The massive tour of Emperor, Borknagar, Witchery, Peccatum, and Divine Empire (plus four local acts) rolled into the Congress Theater and played to a crowd of what I’d estimate as 300 to 400 black-clad dark metal fans. The crowd was much more like what you’d see at the Milwaukee Metalfest than at an Iced Earth or Iron Maiden show or something like that (except that there were a lot fewer CoF shirts than you’d see at the Metalfest!) The Congress Theater was a nice, big, airy place, but as a general rule, the sound sucked ass. Then again, I don’t imagine that black metal bands are the easiest thing to reproduce correctly in a live environment.

Anyway, on to the bands:

The local acts: I missed the first two bands, and got there in time to see the end of a curious black-ish metal band led by a diminutive, corpse-painted singer wearing a hooded jogging suit. He drew one of the most enthusiastic rounds of applause of the night when he proclaimed that he was going to kill himself soon. Next up was some brutal death band with some blackish tendanices. They had some cool riffs, and the singer did a lot of pretty impressive alternating between the low death grunt and the high black scream. Nothing I need to even know the names of though.

Divine Empire: Ah, my favorite, brutal Florida death metal. Why do bands like this still exist? There must be bands out there that are doing new and innovative things with the style, but Divine Empire isn’t one of them, as far as I could tell.

Peccatum: If you thought their CD was weird and/or silly, seeing them live takes it to a whole new level. The band consisted of Ihsahn on guitar/vocals, Ihriel and Lord PZ on vocals, some a fatter version of Ihsahn on second guitar. They covered up the drum kit with a Peccatum banner for their set, I guess so that people wouldn’t think that Peccatum had an invisible drummer. Thus, the drum, bass, keys, and maybe even another guitar track were provided off a DAT, or maybe even the Peccatum Karaoke CD. Ihsahn was dressed like a first-rate dork in a plain white Peccatum t-shirt, primly tucked into his pants. Lord PZ, on the other hand, was a black-metal badass, with the long hair, corpsepaint, and weird leather skirt/pants outfit. Ihriel was looking like you’d expect, in a multi-layered goth-ish outfit, complete with the swirling cloak. The sound for Peccatum was overall very good, maybe because much of it wasn’t live. Ihsahn and Lord PZ actually both do a wide variety of vocals, it almost seems like one of them could cover all the styles. But it was really cool when the three would sing together. Ihsahn was pretty much normal, just playing his guitar and singing off to the side, but Lord PZ and Ihriel were doing their overly-dramatic strutting around and leaning on each other and stuff like that. Anyway, I’m sure Peccatum doesn’t intend their performance to be liked for its cheesiness (“Peccatum is Art” after all…), but I definitely had a good time watching them, and the music was cool too. My second favorite act of the show.

Witchery – I like their CD, it’s pretty fun to listen to, but they didn’t impress me too much live. Their sound was rather bad, everthing kind of ran together, and the vocals were really quiet. They put on a good show, definitely way more interesting than brutal death metal, but it just seems like there would be bands doing the same thing that live a lot closer than Sweden.

Borknagar – The band I had the highest hopes for, and they didn’t disappoint. Their sound actually ended up being rather good, the unique Borknagar guitar sound which sounds like nothing else was quite recognizable and clear. Nick Barker was of course a badass on the drums (which didn’t have a riser, for some reason), Oystien was clearly into it on guitar on one side, while Jens handled the other side, and
the really tall Simen was front and center singing and playing bass. Notably absent, however, was a keyboard player. Keyboards are rather integral part of Borknagar’s sound, and with Emperor/Peccatum bringing over 8 people, it seems like Borknagar could have rustled up a keyboard player somewhere. Maybe CM just wasn’t willing to pay for one to come over. So there were points in the music where something was clearly missing, but I think in some points they might have replaced the keyboard melody with a guitar to fill things in. Also, Simen didn’t seem to be the most comfortable singing and playing bass at the same time, occasionally he’d look down at his bass and forget to continue singing. Anyway, the songs were great, they split things pretty evenly between The Olden Domain and The Archaic Course. I know that they played A Tale of Pagan Tongue and The Dawn of the End (including the excellent “…and I close my eyes” part I love so much) off the former, and Oceans Rise, Nocturnal Vision, and Ad Noctum off the latter, and probably something else too. Simen did a good job of Garm’s parts, and of course a very good job of his own parts. Definitely the highlight of the show for me.

Emperor: Finally, Emperor came on. Let me say first that I rather dislike the earlier Emperor releases, and have a lukewarm appreciation for IX Equilibrium. So I wasn’t expecting a whole lot, although I really enjoyed their performance at the Milwaukee Metalfest last year, even without their keyboards. This time they had the keyboards, but not even that was enough to save them from the terrible sound (and annoying music too, I suppose). There were a few slowed down parts where Ihsahn sang with clean vocals that sounded really good, and occasionally the keyboard would throw out a recognizable melody, but for the most part, Emperor just put forth a solid wall of unrecognizable cacophony, which, after prolonged exposure, my overstimulated brain just converted into buzzing white noise. It was actually difficult for me to sit there and listen. Anyway, Ihsahn was looking a lot cooler with Emperor (even though he didn’t bring his spiked shoulder pads with him), TYR (of Beyond Death fame) was a monster on his six-string bass, doing some backup vocals as well, and the keyboard player was yet another Ihsahn look-alike (although he was skinnier this time) who also did backup vocals. I guess most of the fans like the show enough though, because they brought the band back out for an encore with a rather loud “Emperor!” chant. The whole time Ihsahn was apologizing profusely for the sound problems, and was clearly unhappy with the situation, which is an attitude and professionalism I don’t think you’d really see out of a “true” black metal band. “You deserve better than this, so we’ll try to give you the best we can!” (said with a Norwegian accent)

Overall, it definitely wasn’t the greatest show I’ve ever been to, but I wasn’t expecting it to be. It was kind of like the Metalfest, just a thing to see for the sake of seeing it. It’s definitely not every day that such a package plays in the U.S. Hopefully this tour will do well and open the doors for still more bands to make the journey across the ocean. Actually, things are already looking up, since Century Media’s page mentions a Dimmu Borgir/Samael tour in the fall, and Cradle of Filth/Rotting Christ is going to be coming around soon, and at the Nevermore show (which was AFTER the 9-band Emperor show, if you can belive that), Warrel Dane said that they’d be back touring again in the fall with no less than Arch Enemy!

Alive In Athens With Iced Earth – Day 5

January 25th, 1999

I got up the next morning at about 9 or 10, and went down to the lobby. And all the kids were still there! Apparently, many of them had stayed overnight. Unfortunately for them, Jon and Matt had already left to do interviews (Jon recorded a show for Germany’s VIVA at various places around Athens). There were a couple other members of our group down there, and the fans knew we had something to do with band, so they all came and questioned us! Thankfully no one asked for my autograph! Of course, none of them really believed that we didn’t know where the band was, but we really didn’t. Rick (who played keyboards for the shows) was the only person who actually had something to do with the music down there, so he got mobbed by autograph seekers. Jim Morris and I were laughing at his predicament, so in turn, he made a general announcement that that was Jim the Producer over there…so that made a whole wave move over to Jim to get his autograph, which was a completely bizarre experience for him. I had to go up to my room once to get my sunglasses, and a crowd of 10 or 20 chased me up the stairs and all the way to my room…it was a real frenzy! I told them there wasn’t anything exciting in my room, but apparently they assumed I had the whole band stashed in the bathroom or something.

Finally, the whole non-band portion of our group got together, and we headed out as tourists to the Acropolis. It was a beautiful day, and the Acropolis was just amazing. As we walked around, our group got split up, so I spent the afternoon with Jenny and Claudia, the new managers of Iced Earth’s European Fan Club. They’re definitely dedicated to putting together a much better club than there was before, and it was cool to hang out with them. After walking around a while, we returned to hotel (still full of fans), and waited for the bus to get together to go back to the club. As we were sitting in the bar talking, I realized that there were six of us sitting at a table, and we were all from six different countries: Greece, Germany, Sweden, Japan, the UK, and the US. I thought that was very cool. The guy from Greece was Joe, who was with the promotion company, and he finally told the hotel to clear the fans out of the lobby. I don’t know why the hotel didn’t do that themselves long beforehand, but anyway, they just stayed out on the street then, right in front of the doorway. Eventually, everyone got together, the bus showed up, and we returned to the Rodon Club.

Since I got there a lot later than I had the previous day, the crowd of fans waiting out front was MUCH larger this time. Because it was their second night in a row at the same place, all of the equipment was exactly where it was the night before; there had been no need to tear down the equipment and set it up again, which was very nice for the band and crew. The soundcheck was much shorter, although several adjustments were made of course. It was at that point that my new digital camera decided to break, so I only got about half the pictures that I wanted to from the trip. After a while, the doors opened, and the same process which had occurred the night before commenced again: the fans running in, waiting, the excitement building, singing to the pre-show music, and going crazy when the show began

For this show, I got a completely different perspective than I did the night before. I was at the very back of the club, up against the wall. After a while though, I still had to get into the crowd, but I stayed pretty far back, where it was slightly more relaxed. It was a nice change, because I could observe everything better, from the band, to the sound, to the crowd. One amazing thing about the Greek fans is that they seem to know and love every song equally well. In the U.S., people are generally more familiar with the newer stuff than the older, but these kids knew everything. Most people I talked to who saw both nights seemed to enjoy the second night more. For me, it was hard to say, since they were both so different, but the second night was definitely more “evil”, as it seems like they played more of their darker songs. They only repeated a few from the previous night, so those fans that came to both shows got to see two very different sets, and that provided more songs to put on the live album.

After this show finished, there was a much longer wait, since the equipment had to be broken down and taken with us. So by the time we left, the crowd outside was much smaller than the night before and more manageable. This time, instead of going to the hotel, the promoters took everyone to a very nice restaurant, where we were given tons of great food and drink. It was a very cool experience, sort of like a very big family dinner. The promoters were very pleased with the results of the two nights, as they apparently didn’t really believe Iced Earth would be able to sell out both shows…but the band (and the fans) proved them wrong!