Pas de Mushing

Posted by Skrud at Wednesday, June 15th 2005 at 12:43am

Just got home from the Manowar concert.

First was the opening band, “Holy Hell.” At first, I thought “meh, they can’t be any good”. Then the came on stage, and they had it where it counts: ripping guitar solos … I think the best way to describe this would be Axel Rudi Pell if he had a female lead singer. Indeed lead guitarist Joe Stump is one helluva guitar player, and lead singer Maria Breon has a chilling, stunning voice. When they first took the stage playing some basic rhythm riff I thought the music was going to be typical generic power metal … and then Maria came on and gave it much more of a twist. By the time Stump had played through a guitar solo I was sold. Holy Hell was damn solid, damn loud, extremely powerful and energetic and put on an awesome show.

At one point during Holy Hell’s performance, the lights went dark and the keyboardist played a very familiar melody … none other than Phantom of the Opera’s, at that. (I don’t know why every metal band with a female singer needs to cover this song… and I think it’s starting to get old. BUT! …) This was an excellent top-notch Phantom of the Opera cover. After the first verse we paused and wondered - “waitaminute… who’s going to do the man part?”. An all too familiar voice then chimed in from off-stage, and it was none other than Eric Adams himself, holding a rose, who appeared to do a duet. Fuckin’ eh. The award for most random ripping guitar solo in the middle of an Andrew Lloyd Weber song goes to Joe Stump from Holy Hell. I was extremely impressed. … I was even more impressed when they kicked into a cover of Yngwie Malmsteen’s Rising Force and extended the solo to give both guitarists plus the keyboardist some time to play off each other.

After the set I immediately ran to the merchandise booth where people were rapidly buying up all the solo albums of Holy Hell’s guitarists (the band doesn’t have any CDs of its own as of yet)… but the ATM was out of order and I hadn’t enough cash :(

Next was Rhapsody. One word comes to mind to describe their set, and that is confusing. I have never been confused at a metal concert. Bands show up, play some music, and that’s all there is too it. But I had no idea what the hell was going on with Rhapsody. The fact that the drums and bass overpowered every other instrument including the vocals didn’t help. The whole set was practically a drum solo - and the drum solo part was mediocre at best. The audience-better-sing-along-or-be-blinded lights flashed so randomly at the most awkward points that I just started to get lost, and the lack of balance between the instruments made it sound like listening to a clamour of percussion with many barely distinct, smaller, disconnected sounds that didn’t make any sense all fighting to be heard, and failing. I was utterly disappointed. I mean, I know Rhapsody is supposed to be one of these huge power metal bands… but what the hell! This was terrible! (Harley assures me that if you already know all the lyrics to every Rhapsody song, then you don’t care because all you’re doing is singing along anyway… but even he agrees that they were pretty damn crappy live). They totally failed to live up to their introduction, performed by Christopher Lee.

Manowar wastes no time on stage. Really. They kicked straight into Manowar and then Brothers of Metal and played straight through to the end, only taking one short break before their closer of Black Wind, Fire and Steel. There was barely any talking, either. Just straight-up true pure fucking heavy metal. And that’s why I love Manowar. They perform incredibly, playing through tons of old songs and I was singing along to (almost) every one. Manowar is loud. Damn loud. And we like it that way. (I think they were louder when I saw them 3 years ago at Spectrum, though). Manowar was, as always, brimming with pure energy. Their live show was explosive. I love Manowar, and I’d go see them again in an instant.

And why is this post called “Pas de Mushing”? Well, there were signs on the front door to The Metropolis telling people that “Mushing” will not be tolerated. And “Pas de Mushing”. People moshed mushed anyway, but not very many. I think Iouri was disappointed.

Tags: metal, music