Dragonforce
Posted by Skrud at Tuesday, September 26th 2006 at 1:50am
Article Pending…
In the meantime, I will leave you with a small taste of awesomeness.
Children of Bodom still rocks
Posted by Skrud at Friday, November 11th 2005 at 1:52am
Despite questionable recent releases, Children of Bodom still rocks it, hard. So much so that I’ll see them again on this tour in December. Definitely. I would’ve liked to have heard Lake Bodom or Towards Dead End or Deadnight Warrior … But I’ll settle for the Bodom After Midnight, Silent Night, Bodom Night and Downfall that we got.
And the award for most trivial metal show of all time goes to the aptly named Trivium. The music was there, but there was just nothing _in_ it. It was hollow, like a pure abstract class; all interface, no implementation.
Megadeth is badass / I Love Hurley’s
Posted by Skrud at Saturday, September 3rd 2005 at 3:20am
A very busy day. I got up early, I went down to Concordia and got my 1337 bright-red Frosh Leader polo shirt. I helped set stuff up - Aaron and Louis did an awesome job of manning the CCSS booth. After leading around a Froshie tour group, I stuck around with Phrook for some beers… then this really heavy thick rain hit, and we went in to save the DJ booth. The tent actually snapped. And I mean the aluminum supports itself, not just the joints popping out. So we held that up until it cleared up a bit. Then a few more beers, and off to the Bell Centre for Gigantour.
We missed Bobaflex, and we only Symphony X’s last song (which is a shame - but I’ve seen them five or six times so I’m not fretting). Fear Factory played Edgecrusher and Replica, so I was happy. Life of Agony (at least I think it was them) sucked. Why the hell did they play after Symphony X? Boo. Nevermore was and always is sweet, but they didn’t play old enough stuff for me (I’ve been a Nevermore fan forever, they were the first real metal band that I got into). Dream Theater is spectacular live. But I was really only interested in the songs I knew well (Pull Me Under and The Glass Prison were the only ones I recognized). I mean, I love Dream Theater, but I really have to be in a certain mood and frame of mind to truly enjoy and appreciate them.
Megadeth was totally badass. I love Megadeth. Their show was totally 80’s thrashish, with the headbanging longhaired band members (yeah, it’s tough to find nowadays) and ripping solos throughout. Megadave, James (the bassist), and the two Canucks (Shawn & Glenn Drover) performed extremely well. Again: badass. They were filming for the Gigantour DVD tonight, so I’m hoping we’ll see A Tout Le Monde live in Montreal on that. Seriously, there is probably no other city that takes to the three lines of French lyrics like this one. Megadeth puts on a killer show.
After the show, Josh and I went to Hurley’s to meet up with Laura & folk. We also found Jim (who lives at Hurley’s) and had a couple of pints with him. The band playing celtic folk stuff was (as always) fucking amazing. I really have no idea why people never want to go to Hurley’s whenever I suggest it. I love that place. Hopefully Josh now agrees. I guess I just need Gill and Ed to come back into Montreal. I know they’ll appreciate it. :D
Hedguy & Ammerfall!
Posted by Skrud at Friday, August 12th 2005 at 12:52am
I understand why francophones tend to ignore H’s at the start of words, but why do they add an H in front of words where there is none? It boggles the mind.
Anyway, I just got home from the Edguy and Hammerfall concert. I showed up late and missed the opening band (Into Eternity) thanks to Paul and Behrouz who convinced me to join them for a couple of beers and burgers at McLean’s. :)
Edguy completely stole the show. Their performance was mindblowingly awesome. They played a great set that included awesome songs… like Babylon. I love that song. Babylon kicks ass. Tobias also changed up the ending a bit. Instead of saying “Babylon” he said “Montreal” (I bet they do that everywhere). And then “is much”. And then “louder than”. And then “Toronto”. (I bet they don’t do that everywhere). The crowd at the Medley was totally into the Edguy performance. Those guys h ave amazing stage presence and really know how to perform to a large group. The energy emanating from the stage was enough to knock even the lamest of fans to their feet. There were huge amounts of rocking out, and more rocking out. It was everything that I love about heavy metal. Edguy are fucking amazing live.
There was an Edguy drum solo. It was the Imperial March. Yes, the Imperial March. With much fancier drumming. The highlight of the evening, actually. It was one totally rockening drum solo. I’d see them again anytime. The only thing lacking from Edguy’s set was The Headless Game or Walk On Fighting. I would’ve settled for either, but they played neither. This worked to Hammerfall’s detriment since during their whole set I couldn’t help but long for Edguy. I wanted more. Edguy was just too damn good.
Then Hammerfall took the stage. They had an OK set list… and by that I mean there wasn’t enough older stuff. I’m not really familiar with Hammerfall’s most recent efforts so I didn’t really get into it all that much. It seems the rest of the crowd was also less enthusiastic about Hammerfall than Edguy. Now don’t get me wrong, they played some awesome tunes and they played them damned well: Let The Hammer Fall, Hammerfall, Glory To The Brave, Heeding The Call…. It’s just that played a lot of newer stuff that I just didn’t recognize or care for. What I did like however, was when they stopped in the middle of Glory To The Brave due to technical difficulties, they just broke into an impromptu cover of Enter Sandman - where the whole audience sang along. :D
Overall, Hammerfall was great - Edguy was better.
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.
