Almost a full month between gigs. That's what being on call the only week people are playing out during Thanksgiving month gets you. Anyway, more than past time or not, this was Ensiferum playing upstairs at the Palladium, which made up for the somewhat uninspiring lower part of the bill and Hypocrisy cancelling due to, as I've heard anyway, visa problems. This was another struggle to get out to after work, but I made it up shortly after the announced start, and while I may have missed Under Lying Truth, I did get in just after Swashbuckle started, which would suffice for the bands I actually had the expectation of seeing.
Swashbuckle [5/7]
Since I came in late for these guys, I was back by the upstairs mixing desk, then the bar, which in both cases are the furthest distance I've ever seen Swashbuckle from, which is a little odd considering that the upstairs is usually the intimate version of the Palladium. Chart it: on top of the band at O'Brien's, first row the first time they played in this building, three rows back on the Medieval Stage this summer, three rows back in this room a month ago. This was also the fourth time I'd seen them this year, which is fucking weird for a gimmick metal band that isn't actually from this area (hell, a touring band at all), and when they come back next month with Tyr and Korpiklaani it'll be five times in nine months. More power to them. Their fill-in drummer (what, you didn't know Crashride couldn't get into Canada? tour following fail) did a good job, and the band blasted out a stand-up set of brutal pirate thrash despite getting a little jobbed by the soundboard (Justin's mic didn't appear to be on for the majority of the set), without the inflatables or fuckaroundery that they've had on previous gigs. Probably just as well; too much of that and they run the risk of overexposure and gimmick fatigue. No doors knocked down with this set, but a solid opening performance.
Blackguard [4/7]
In all fairness, this band got a great response from the crowd. I just can't figure out why. Are North American Children of Bodom fans that desperate, seriously? I mean, the band does tour on this continent pretty regularly. Blackguard, as last time, put out a technically satisfactory performance of extremely artistically limited material, including an older song that showed them as a slightly better if much more transparent imitation of CoB back when they went under the name Profugis Mortis. I'm not sure progress has been made. I can understand, in 2001, starting a Children of Bodom cover band on the theory that they're on fucking Spinefarm and unlikely to ever tour outside Europe, but then they break through and your career path then becomes to be Maurizio Iacono's pocket Bodom, trotted out to collect the acclaim of high schoolers and pelters from surly guys in kuttes whenever he can't book a better opener in this style. Yes, it's tough to even get up to average as a metal band, and this style is obviously working for them, but this was the definite low point of the night musically, and it's difficult at this point to envision a Blackguard set where a) this is not the case, and b) I actually decide to show up based on the balance of the bill.
The most entertainment during this period probably came from the Swashbuckle dudes storming the stage, still in costume, during "This Round's On Me" to spray the crowd with beer and hold up hobo signs parodying the singer's expressions. It's not really a natural drinking song out of the box even to the extent that something like Ensiferum's "One More Magic Potion" is (let alone, say Korpiklaani or Tankard's repetoire), but it got almost to that point with the fun add-ons.
Ex Deo [5/7]
I hadn't heard this band before, but was somewhat aware of the pedigree; after seeing Kataklysm tats on, like, everyone, I checked into it and found that this is basically Kataklysm hiding out in the Teutoberger Wald to get away from idiots like me who say stuff like "what the fuck is this, where's the hyperblast" about their recent material. This is fine by me; if Maurizio wants to fold Kataklysm's tents and play meat-and-potatoes death metal with black touches and Roman themes, I'll show up and give full support. Less decaying modern Kataklysm, more vital and inspired imperial crunching. Ex Deo put out a good long set that was more solid than superlative, but executed the concept without coming off as overly gimmicky, justifying the decision to pick up their record earlier. Good stuff, and while this would have been better leading into Hypocrisy, it definitely filled the RDA of death metal on the night, and it'll do a good job raising interest and expectations the next time they come around.
Ensiferum [7/7]
No "Token of Time", but no injuries either. Call it a mixed bag -- or, really, a typical Ensiferum set, blending epic humppaa metal with gonzo floor action and stretching out to take full advantage of being the sole headliner on the bill. They played just absolutely as long as the venue allowed them (modulo the obligato pretend off before the encore that really needs to start getting cut in favor of MOAR by the bands that do this crap to fap their egos), weighted a little more to the new stuff but still covering their whole catalog, and after having the crowd pick "Iron" as the closer, decided to jam "Battle Songs" (the other option) in after it to take full advantage of the remaining time until the lights went back on. I didn't know they were slotted for nearly two hours, nor did it feel like it on the floor; just a splendid performance of kickass music by probably the best current exemplar of the accessible side of viking metal, and an incredible headliner to a good solid show.
Out on the sidewalk as I was leaving, Eric CSDO was doing promos.....of what looked like porn DVDs, but probably also including drag racer and old-school thrash content. Eric Paone, ladies and gentlemen. This wasn't really a "scene" draw, so hopefully those intrigued by this stuff will outweigh those weirded out and the deep underground gets a bonus shot of new blood as a result.
Next gig: same bat-time, same bat-station (almost); Municipal Waste, Brutal Truth, Phobia, and Cauldron Tuesday. This is a knee-brace-or-upstairs show -- and hell, Brutal Truth and Phobia, even upstairs isn't guaranteed safe.
Unrelated: I'm wearing my Swashbuckle "Splashzone" shirt for the second Saturday in a row, and for the second Saturday in a row Celtic have run riot over the opposition. Correlation is not causation, but this is a streak worth trying to sustain.
Showing posts with label blackguard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blackguard. Show all posts
Saturday, December 05, 2009
Saturday, May 02, 2009
Korpiklaani with Primordial, Moonsorrow, Blackguard, and Swashbuckle [Worcester Palladium, 5/1/2009]
Behold the power of the internets; the first proper US tour for any of these bands, and the biggest real-metal room in New England between half and three-quarters full. And worth it; this turned out to be a pretty epic show.
Because I wanted to see Swashbuckle again, and at a range that would matter, I left again directly from work and got in shortly after doors. Because the tour organizers decided to backline everybody (a smart decision that more tourmanagers should look into; it saves gas, space, and time, and virtually eliminates the possibility of shit getting stolen since you can just cycle guitars and cymbals in and out of the green room and have everyone drag their own shit out to the vans/buses at the end), this meant about an hour of downtime before the music actually started. This was enough time to do beer and merch and still get way ahead on the rail, where I hung out, shot the shit with various peeps, and chuckled at the illuminated inflatable palm trees.
Swashbuckle [5.5/7]
This may have been their first time back in New England since that infamous show at O'Brien's; they did a mini-tour with Revocation (at least 2/3 of whom were on hand as guestlist/roadies), but I'm not sure it ran this far north. Nevertheless, they got a nice reception as soon as the board got them properly dialed in, despite being by far the thrashiest band on the bill and debatably the heaviest. The new material is pretty good, and I'm looking forward to their Nuclear Blast debut – fuckin A, doods, right on!
Before the band went on, the security was laughing at their inflatable stage set and mocking as though the band was going to be poncy Jack Sparrow disciples. In the break after them, several of the secus who were ripping on them the most had ordered up to the merch stand for shirts. That's how you define a musical tour-de-force – emphasis on force.
Blackguard [5/7]
Les enfants de Bodom must have been taken. These Canadiens were pretty good, and well-matched to the headliners, but their early-Bodom-following style wasn't the most differentiated in the world; Equilibrium's middle-of-the-road sound without their epically expansive compositions. It was good music, overall, but it ran on for a bit longer than might really have been optimal; nevertheless, they pretty much had to play in this spot based on the structure of the rest of the bill, and competitive pressure from the other bands will push them to improve as this tour goes on.
I got a CD from them, but not a shirt; haven't listened yet, but the cover looks like a reference to La Maudite – and if the record's half as good as MPD's song of the same name, it'll nearly be worth the $20 I dropped on it. Srsly, dudes, this is 2009, you're supposed to sell your CDs cheap at shows and pocket the extra the record store would have made.
Moonsorrow [7/7]
There is something seriously going on with Trollhorn/Henri that he keeps not coming to the US with the bands he's in. First Finntroll, now Moonsorrow; the silver lining in this, though, is that Moonsorrow, like Finntroll, appears to be perfectly capable of knocking out an ace set without him. They only played five songs, and even at that, the set only ran about 45 minutes....which is about half as long as a five-song Moonsorrow set might take in the optimal case. Still: amazing, epic music, the crowd thoroughly into it, a good balance of new material and old, blacker, stuff; not the absolutely optimal set, but fuck was it good.
Primordial [7/7]
My first time seeing this band without dirt under my feet: neither as magical as that first outing in the tentstage in '05, nor as straightforwardly powerful and transformative as this summer on the Party Stage, but still, an eminently worthy Primordial set, covering basically the same core of material that they did the last time I saw them.
Setlist:
Empire Falls
The Golden Spiral
As Rome Burns
The Coffin Ships
Gods To The Godless
Heathen Tribes
Six songs, 45 minutes again; it's how this band rolls, and though this was debatably the third best of the three times that I've seen them, it was still so good as to tremendously overpower nearly all of the people who, due to the band having played exactly one show (last year's Heathen Crusade) in the US before this, had never seen them live. Primordial is a transformative band live or on record, and you do not forget the first time you see them.
Korpiklaani [6.5/7]
Korpiklaani had a tough act to follow, but they followed it up as only they can: by sheer obliviousness, the distinct selling point of their particular brand of deer-camp humppaa metal. It was a fun time, but there was certainly also a certain intellectual disjunct; Primordial leaves throwing up shadows of diaspora, genocide, nationalism, post-nationalism, tribalism, and post-corporatocracy, and then a bunch of Finns start bumping the bass and squeezing an accordion. The new material sounded fine, if completely indistinguishable from their old stuff; "Wodka" is going to be an infield favorite on a par with "Beer Beer" and "Happy Little Boozer", for sure. They also had a couple breaks of pure open-bow Finnish humppaa, which maybe nobody else recognized as such, but people dug all the same. Despite the thick language barrier (vice the singer's impenetrable accent), people certainly got into it; as much dancing as moshing, as odd as it looks and seems. Even up here in New England we aint got nothin agin a good ole-fashion barn dance on a Frid'y night, 'long's it's a band we done importered from Finland up on stage a-sawin th'fiddle.
After a good long show made smoother by the large-scale backlining, the venue eventually put the lights back up and things had to be over. This is going to be one of the standout shows of the year when all is said and done, and if you missed it, especially if you haven't seen Primordial before, those who were there are going to be scoffing at you at some point in this conversation.
Because I wanted to see Swashbuckle again, and at a range that would matter, I left again directly from work and got in shortly after doors. Because the tour organizers decided to backline everybody (a smart decision that more tourmanagers should look into; it saves gas, space, and time, and virtually eliminates the possibility of shit getting stolen since you can just cycle guitars and cymbals in and out of the green room and have everyone drag their own shit out to the vans/buses at the end), this meant about an hour of downtime before the music actually started. This was enough time to do beer and merch and still get way ahead on the rail, where I hung out, shot the shit with various peeps, and chuckled at the illuminated inflatable palm trees.
Swashbuckle [5.5/7]
This may have been their first time back in New England since that infamous show at O'Brien's; they did a mini-tour with Revocation (at least 2/3 of whom were on hand as guestlist/roadies), but I'm not sure it ran this far north. Nevertheless, they got a nice reception as soon as the board got them properly dialed in, despite being by far the thrashiest band on the bill and debatably the heaviest. The new material is pretty good, and I'm looking forward to their Nuclear Blast debut – fuckin A, doods, right on!
Before the band went on, the security was laughing at their inflatable stage set and mocking as though the band was going to be poncy Jack Sparrow disciples. In the break after them, several of the secus who were ripping on them the most had ordered up to the merch stand for shirts. That's how you define a musical tour-de-force – emphasis on force.
Blackguard [5/7]
Les enfants de Bodom must have been taken. These Canadiens were pretty good, and well-matched to the headliners, but their early-Bodom-following style wasn't the most differentiated in the world; Equilibrium's middle-of-the-road sound without their epically expansive compositions. It was good music, overall, but it ran on for a bit longer than might really have been optimal; nevertheless, they pretty much had to play in this spot based on the structure of the rest of the bill, and competitive pressure from the other bands will push them to improve as this tour goes on.
I got a CD from them, but not a shirt; haven't listened yet, but the cover looks like a reference to La Maudite – and if the record's half as good as MPD's song of the same name, it'll nearly be worth the $20 I dropped on it. Srsly, dudes, this is 2009, you're supposed to sell your CDs cheap at shows and pocket the extra the record store would have made.
Moonsorrow [7/7]
There is something seriously going on with Trollhorn/Henri that he keeps not coming to the US with the bands he's in. First Finntroll, now Moonsorrow; the silver lining in this, though, is that Moonsorrow, like Finntroll, appears to be perfectly capable of knocking out an ace set without him. They only played five songs, and even at that, the set only ran about 45 minutes....which is about half as long as a five-song Moonsorrow set might take in the optimal case. Still: amazing, epic music, the crowd thoroughly into it, a good balance of new material and old, blacker, stuff; not the absolutely optimal set, but fuck was it good.
Primordial [7/7]
My first time seeing this band without dirt under my feet: neither as magical as that first outing in the tentstage in '05, nor as straightforwardly powerful and transformative as this summer on the Party Stage, but still, an eminently worthy Primordial set, covering basically the same core of material that they did the last time I saw them.
Setlist:
Empire Falls
The Golden Spiral
As Rome Burns
The Coffin Ships
Gods To The Godless
Heathen Tribes
Six songs, 45 minutes again; it's how this band rolls, and though this was debatably the third best of the three times that I've seen them, it was still so good as to tremendously overpower nearly all of the people who, due to the band having played exactly one show (last year's Heathen Crusade) in the US before this, had never seen them live. Primordial is a transformative band live or on record, and you do not forget the first time you see them.
Korpiklaani [6.5/7]
Korpiklaani had a tough act to follow, but they followed it up as only they can: by sheer obliviousness, the distinct selling point of their particular brand of deer-camp humppaa metal. It was a fun time, but there was certainly also a certain intellectual disjunct; Primordial leaves throwing up shadows of diaspora, genocide, nationalism, post-nationalism, tribalism, and post-corporatocracy, and then a bunch of Finns start bumping the bass and squeezing an accordion. The new material sounded fine, if completely indistinguishable from their old stuff; "Wodka" is going to be an infield favorite on a par with "Beer Beer" and "Happy Little Boozer", for sure. They also had a couple breaks of pure open-bow Finnish humppaa, which maybe nobody else recognized as such, but people dug all the same. Despite the thick language barrier (vice the singer's impenetrable accent), people certainly got into it; as much dancing as moshing, as odd as it looks and seems. Even up here in New England we aint got nothin agin a good ole-fashion barn dance on a Frid'y night, 'long's it's a band we done importered from Finland up on stage a-sawin th'fiddle.
After a good long show made smoother by the large-scale backlining, the venue eventually put the lights back up and things had to be over. This is going to be one of the standout shows of the year when all is said and done, and if you missed it, especially if you haven't seen Primordial before, those who were there are going to be scoffing at you at some point in this conversation.
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