Comedy-infused metal wouldn’t normally be my thing, but with a few friends across from Yorkshire and a couple of pints in my belly I head to my local venue in Chester, The Live Rooms, to see how much fun I can have.
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My sister has followed Massive Wagons for years. I've listened to the CD's she's bought and seen numerous Facebook posts showing she was at another Massive Wagons gig having a great time, and she's constantly telling me how good they are live, about how their brilliant party atmosphere is always delivered and how it’s like one massive (see what I did there) night out for everyyone. Can they be really that good live?
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It’s Friday, and tonight I am off out to re-live my childhood by watching one of the best pop/rock bands that the 70s managed to thow at me. As a young and impressionable pre-teen my musical journey pretty much started in the early 70s, and tonight’s headline band were a big influence on shaping my taste.
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Tonight we’re back at Rebellion for some up close and personal metal, and despite the early doors it's already pretty busy for first band on Gideon. These lads from Alabama deliver a modern take on 90’s hardcore-punk which is aggressive, intense and emotive.
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We’re back at Academy 2, and Johann and I actually allow ourselves a joke that we should possibly setup residency here such is the number of gigs we’ve covered at the venue recently. Tonight was originally listed for Rebellion, but was upgraded well in advance of the date (we later find out that tonight is completely sold-out too). As I make my way through the front entrance I can already see that it was a very good call by the promoter to allow even more people to witness what could be the start of something special.
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Three things we learnt from this gig. Number one is that GWAR do really take it up the arse, secondly that Voivod are still gleefully subverting Metal thirty seven years after they started and finally beetroot does not come out, of anything. For Metal fans of a certain age (i.e. a teen in the eighties and distinctly middle aged in this decade) this is both an intriguing and rather puzzling bill. You see Voivod were the champions of intelligent avant-garde deconstructed Metal. Their fourth album “Dimension Hatross” is the last word in complex progressive thrash and stood head and shoulder above anything else going on. GWAR on the other hand always seemed to be the last word stupid. Dressed in gross homemade costumes, they sang simple seemingly idiotic songs and poured suspect liquids all over their audience. But here they are in 2019 sharing a stage in Manchester.
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It seems fitting that as the northern winds waft icy cold blasts across Manchester that they should also blow into town an exquisite Swedish Melo-Death triple bill. Aside from the obvious combination of gruff vocals and melodic guitar lines, what all three acts have in common is grit, determination and resilience. With a heady mix of hard work, blood, sweat and road-miles, all three bands have earned the respect that the sold out crowd show them. These are acts that show that it may well be a long way to the top, but if you stick to your guns and your principals you will get there.
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Tonight’s Academy 2 lineup is a real treat for this reviewer as I’m a big fan of all three of listed bands. Silent Planet should’ve been a fourth band on the bill, but they had to pull out of the tour, and so with a later door time (and the unsurprisingly cancelled and then late train under the belt) I’m left with all killer no filler tonight. All tonight’s bands are good examples of modern metalcore – heavy naturally distorted vocals interspersed with searching melodic vocals layered over the top of pounding drums, electronic incidental elements and angular, intricate guitars and bass. That being said, each of tonight's bands add a unique characterization to this theme, so stick with me on this one or the nuances might get lost...
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Wednesday. It’s a bastard of a day. Just far enough away for you to be forgetting the fun you had last weekend, not close enough to the fun you’re going to have next weekend. It’s a desolate, bleak day, it’s the place where you can view a long horizon during the hell of another working week. So whose bright idea was it to have one of the best gigs I’ve been to this year on it then eh? Eh? Eh? I want to know who is responsible for this travesty! Well that would be the people at the Tiv, a venue that is continuing to improve every time I go there. It’s now got a lovely, shiny, new, long, well-stocked bar, so naturally it’s Wednesday and I am a) driving home and b) needing to be up for work in the morning, so I don’t get to sample the wares. Bloody Wednesday!
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It’s exciting to get a tour with excellent metal bands coming through Chester – it simply doesn’t happen that often – so with Heart Of A Coward and Unprocessed choosing to stop off at The Live Rooms, ROCKFLESH jumped on the chance to get along for the fun.
First up are local lads Severenth. They’ve only just reformed this year after disbanding back around 2013, and are looking to hit the ground running with a new album in the works.
Whoever coined the phrase "Dance like nobody’s watching bla blah blah" obviously haven't seen The 99 Degree play, or they would have changed it to "Write songs like nobody will ever hear them because that's the way you love them, then scare the shit out of everyone by letting people hear them".
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It’s a grim day today. The weather is dreadful, and low cloud hangs like a pall over the city of Bradford. So what better way to get past it than getting my glitter on and heading out for a night of party rock?
First band King Voodoo didn’t appear to get the memo. They are good, but in more of a broody, bluesy, dark kind of way. Their songs have an edge to them, and although I enjoy them they are not exactly party animals.
I feel like all my gig reviews start with a weather and/or travel update…so I’m not going to change the habit of a lifetime! This installment of Matt-attempts-to-get-to-Manchester features the usual train debacle, but has an undercard of ROCKFLESH head honcho Johann also being stuck on the M62. Unfortunately, it means we both miss opening support act Sylar.
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Tonight is an Alice In Wonderland kind of night, in the sense that I am on the M62 looking at my watch and thinking “I’m late. I’m late”. The traffic is moving slower than a sloth with a bad leg, and although on the bright side they haven’t actually closed the motorway (yet) I am fretting that I won’t make it in time for tonight’s support.
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When Astronoid describe themselves as ethereal they aren’t half on the money. Brett Boland’s vocals are only just there. Delicate, haunting and drenched in emotional fragility, they juxtapose with the thrashy prog of the band behind and you end up with music that is deep, passionate and varied. You get caught up in the swirls of driving rhythm and layered guitar and it all feels like a whirlpool that is sucking you further into its core.
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Earth are the thinking person’s Doom act. There is not the scuzzy riffs of sludge or the deep depressing tones of trad doom. They produce a wonderfully thoughtful, partially optimistic and slow variant on the whole thing. This is the blues but at half or even quarter speed, in fact the whole pace is measured, drawn out and unhurried. But before I pontificate further on the utter under-rated genius of Dylan Carlson, I need to first deal with opener Helen Money.
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Machine Head are the ultimate metal survivors. Each time we think they are down and out, they get back up again, dust themselves off and re-enter the fray. In the mid-noughties it looked like they were outdated and out of ideas but then they returned with “The Blackening”, still one of the best metal albums of this century. This time last year it looked like once again Machine Head were over. Robb Flynn on Facebook dramatically announced that Phil Demmel and Dave McClain had left the band and for a while it seemed that was that. However twelve months later here they are again selling out the 5,000 capacity Victoria Warehouse.
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A month on from my nu-metal euphoria I have returned in all my chubby glory to review A Pale Horse Named Death. Again. I for one could not be happier.
My ability to attend gigs has decreased rapidly in recent months so I am absolutely determined to savour every moment of tonights doom-laden sorrowfest.
I rock up to the club like “What up, I've got social anxiety and I want to go home”... nah, but I am late from work and I was making my journey on public transport. So inevitably I miss a bit of MAIRU.
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Support tonight is from Harry Pane, a youngish singer/ songwriter firmly in the folk tradition, less ginger than Ed and a tad less cheesy. There’s a decent variety to his lyrics and an authentic connection that translates in his delivery pretty well. Of particular note was the third song in, he introduced as a tribute to his father who passed in 2016, 'Fletcher Bay' rang true and was the strongest contender for deeper ground within his set.
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I have no idea who tonight’s first support, Rocky Kramer is. A person? A band? Having watched them I now know it’s a person AND a band. Rocky is a rather charismatic Noel Fielding lookalike who hails from Norway and is now based in the US, and his band are a competent if somewhat proggy outfit that back up his singing and guitar playing.
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