Concert Review – Page 3 – DISPATCHES FROM THE VOID

Yob, Voivod and Amenra at Barracuda, Austin, TX, 4/13/2019

Well, this was another of those well put together triple bills of different kinds of metal that just meshed really well in execution. The only downside to this show was due to the fact that it was on the outside stage during an unseasonably windy and cold evening in Austin. I was a veritable ice cube by the end of the show. So, I hope you appreciate the effort I put in to bring you this report.

Ever since Yob came out with last year’s Our Raw Heart (#2 slot in the 2018 Best of Metal List), I’ve been itching to see them come through town to perform the new songs live. In addition, due to head honcho Mike Scheidt’s health scare from a few years back, you don’t want to take any Yob show for granted. Thankfully, it seems as though Scheidt is back to full health and he was downright frenetic and ferocious in his performance Saturday night in Austin. This was a spirited set performed by one of doom’s preeminent bands and surprisingly, featured a setlist that only contained one track off of the new album. I’ll be perfectly honest that I was a tad disappointed that the new album wasn’t more prominently featured in the songs presented, but the setlist did contain a wide range of songs from throughout Yob’s career. It really felt as if Scheidt crafted the setlist with the most diehard Yob fan in mind.

Second on the bill for the evening was Canadian sci-fi prog thrash band Voivod. Hard to believe, but Voivod has been toiling away in the metal trenches now for 35+ years and this is the very first time I’ve witnessed their live show. Voivod brings a stage show that is equal parts frenetic thrash, goofy Canadian stage antics and rollicking crowd participation. Frontman Snake Belanger is one of those singers who has so mastered the art of facial expressions that it becomes one of the infectious portions of their show.

Opening the show was post-metal band Amenra from Belgium. This was my first experience with this band, but they come across very much in the Neurosis vein of sludgey post-metal. Their sound alternates between almost spiritual-like atmospheric segments that blend into bombastic pounding sections. Vocalist Colin van Eeckhout provides a plaintive type screeching vocal style that invokes someone in a great deal of emotional pain. Their opening set honestly left me feeling a tad drained. Not in a bad way, but the performance was just very brutal and raw.

Sadly, no video snippets are available from this show. The lighting on the stage was minimal for all three bands and I just wasn’t able to capture any decent footage to share.

Plague Vendor and Drakulas at The Mohawk, Austin, TX 4/1/2019

Sometimes you see a band performing live and you realize that around 90% of the bands you see in a live setting are just mailing it in. Plague Vendor. Holy crapola. This was one hell of a whirlwind of a performance. I think it’s safe to say that if by the end of a show you have to ask yourself, “What the hell just happened?”, it’s probably a pretty damn good show.

Now, I have to give props out to the punk rock wife for me even being at this show. We saw Plague Vendor the first time a few years ago when they opened up for Refused here in Austin. We didn’t know who they were, but they seemed like an entertaining little punk band with some infectious energy. I had honestly kind of forgotten about them since that point, but the wife kept track of them and asked if I wanted to go see them when they set this date. “Sure. Why the hell not?” I thought. And, goddamn. I think I may have missed something that first time around. This band exudes confidence. The foundation of the band, guitarist Jay Rogers, bassist Michael Perez and drummer Luke Perine, all lay down a serious slab of impressive punk riffs and rumble. Over top of all that solid musicianship is this weird force of nature of a front man named Brandon Blaine. Take a combination of Dennis from Refused merged with the stylings of Mick Jagger and a dose of Iggy Pop’s menacing snarl and pair it with a bit of a Jack White sounding wail and it starts to explain what Blaine brings to the table. This dude just transformed into a dervish of manic energy from the moment he hit the stage. It’s just impressive to see a band come out and just buy-in 100% into the performance. These dudes just left it all out there on the stage and it was just fucking magical. So many bands just going through the motions in their live shows could really take some tips from Plague Vendor.

Now, I’m not saying these guys are going to be huge, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if Plague Vendor ends up being the next big punk band going. I just don’t understand how anyone could not see them pull off a show like they did last night (for probably around 50-60 people in the audience, no less) and not walk away a fan. Thank you, Plague Vendor. Your performance is the kind of thing that still keeps me going to live shows at my ripe old age.

I also have to give a shout out to local band Drakulas for opening the show. Mike Wiebe is another one of these frontmen that just gives everything in his live performances. He and his Drakulas co-horts have created this interesting punk project that seems a bit like a group of weird cult figures who have a strange obsession with porn and Beta Max tapes. It’s weird and creepy and unique and fun.

Plague Vendor

Drakulas

Rivers of Nihil at Come and Take It Live, Austin, TX, 3/22/2019

Ooof. I hope there is at least someone out there that appreciates the peril I put myself and my unguarded feet in to bring you tales from the pit. Look, I’m old and somewhat fragile at this stage. Luckily, I’ve managed to avoid any serious injuries during my travails in the sweaty and stinky clubs of Texas over the years. This one, however, nearly took me down.

So, Rivers of Nihil has embarked on their first major Statewide trek promoting their latest ambitious album, Where Owls Know My Name. I was a big fan of this album (#7 on the 2018 Best of Metal List) and of its attempt to break the formulaic mold of a lot of the technical death metal bands going these days. It was a progressive break from their previous material and was notable for incorporating a saxophone player into the mix. It was very different and it appears to have paid off for the band in cementing their reputation of being one of the forefront bands in the technical death metal scene. I have seen these guys do their thing twice before, but it was only during 30 minute opening sets. So, it was exciting to see how a full hour and fifteen minute set would play out. The highlight of this tour was their full performance of their latest album complete with a touring saxophone player to bring the full impact. And the band pulled it off perfectly. You could tell that the crowd was really into the new material and especially lost their friggin’ minds every time the sax player came out. The band finished up their set with a few older songs that were markedly different in their aggression compared to the new material.

As to my aforementioned peril. So, if you’ve been to Come and Take It Live in Austin, you’ll understand that the main floor area if front of the stage isn’t that large. Especially width-wise. Well, as would have it, lead singer Jake Dieffenbach decided that it would be a good idea to have the crowd engage in a wall of death during one song. If you aren’t familiar with this particular pit activity, it involves splitting the crowd in half and then at the pivotal moment of the song both halves of the crowd launch at each other Braveheart-style into a mass of flailing humanity. So, my stupid old ass was by one wall and figured, “Huh, I’m kind of stuck here. Well, there’s enough of a buffer of dudes that I should be OK.” Nope. The wall starts and dudes start flying around. One unfortunate overweight soul lost his footing coming around in the ensuing circle pit and careens full weight right into my knee. I really thought I was fucked and had blown out my knee at first. However, after a couple of more songs, I was finally able to put some weight on it and I ended up escaping serious injury. After some serious icing that night, everything seems to be OK.

I may be getting a little too old for this shit. But them’s the price of admission if you’re going to rock ‘n roll.

The Silent Life

Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats and Graveyard at Gas Monkey Live!, Dallas, TX, 3/12/2019

I traveled up to one of my least favorite cities in America on Tuesday to check out a tasty double bill of retro-flavored metal bands. This was the second awesome pairing of bands in a span of four days for your intrepid reporter. So, life could be shittier at this point.

First up on tonight’s bill was Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats. These guys were my main reason for traveling three hours both up and back to Dallas since this was my first time getting to see them live. And they did not disappoint. Even though they have a very retro feel to their sound, Uncle Acid is most definitely a prototypical metal band. Their live sound is just filled with explosive metal riffs and leads. Vocalist and lead guitarist Kevin Starrs has one of those interesting voices that sounds like it was created in the Mason-crazed late 60s. I don’t know how he comes up with it, but it is just this weird nasally sort of whine of a vocal style that is just somehow perfect for the music that it fronts. This is a serious force to be reckoned with in the metal world.

The bluesy, barroom rock of Graveyard finished out the evening. These guys are really feel like a band that you would find in some hole-in-the-wall dingy dive bar. Songs of loss, hard-livin’, hard women and the blue-collar struggle of life all delivered with a soulful croon and dirty distorted guitars. These guys bring the soul to metal. Seriously. There is an absolute R&B influence to their songs.

Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats-I See Through You

Graveyard-An Industry of Murder

Saxon at Come and Take It Live, Austin, TX 2/14/2019

I feel sadness for those in the world who have never witnessed a Saxon live show. This being the celebration of their 40th year as a band, it goes without saying that the boys have gotten their performances down. But it never feels like jaded pros just going through the motions. I mean, shit, the eldest guys in the group have got to be pushing 70 at this point. You’d honestly have to understand if they weren’t giving it 100% on an average night at a small club in Austin, TX on a random Thursday night running through their umpteenth-thousandth or so performance of Wheels of Steel. But there they were just banging through their massive catalog of songs like a much younger band with plenty to prove. Biff is just an ageless wonder. Headbanging and jumping up and down like a maniac with a mischievous gleam in his eye like he still can’t believe people are still paying him to do this shit. This band is a fucking institution and if you haven’t seen them play, get to rectifying that shit immediately. They aren’t going to be going forever. You’ve got to cherish the special ones.

Strong Arm of the Law

Crusader

Princess of the Night

All Them Witches at Antone’s, Austin, TX 11/3/2018

It’s election day here in the States. Hooray. I have zero faith in my fellow Americans to do anything right. Let’s just burn this fucker down and start again, shall we?

Anyway, I went to a rock show on Friday because nothing else in the world matters. It was rocking. It was grooving. It was good. All Them Witches hit the legendary Austin blues club Antone’s. This was cool for a couple of reason. First, I’m new to the All Them Witches bandwagon. I just stumbled across them a couple of weeks ago when their new album, the unfortunately named ATW, came out. I dug it quite a bit (there’s a review in the archives somewhere if you are so inclined) and I gathered up a group of friends to see them perform their songs live. Second cool thing was seeing a show at Antone’s. I’ve lived a good majority of my life in this town and you would have thought that I would have seen a show at a famous club like Antone’s before. Well, if you did think that, you would have been wrong. Now, it’s not like this was the original home of Antone’s. This place has moved multiple times all over town. Stevie Ray Vaughan never played at this location. So, it’s not like this location has a great deal of history in it. It is ultimately just another club in downtown Austin that caters to live music and just happens to have a famous name in the history of the Austin music scene attached to it. I guess what I’m saying is “meh” on my overall impression of the club. It’s a decent venue, but it just doesn’t really have anything special attached to it. But, at any rate, I finally saw a show at a club with “Antone’s” on the marquee. Yippee.

Anyway, enough rambling. This show was great. All Them Witches ditched their keyboard player somewhere between the recording of the new album and this current tour. So, you’ve got a tight little power trio going. I was really impressed with the guitar playing of Ben McLeod and the low-key sardonic vocals and in-between song banter of bassist/vocalist Charles Michael Park, Jr. Not to overlook the great foundation laid down by drummer Robby Staebler. These guys are a power live. Go check them out if they roll through your town.

Diamond

Behemoth, At The Gates and Wolves In the Throne Room at The Aztec Theatre, San Antonio, TX 10/23/2018

I absolutely love packaged tours that don’t have any filler. Give me a triple or quadruple stacked bill and I am just about as happy as I get. This one was a great blend of European and American black metal with a chaser of Gothenburg death metal.

If you had approached me years ago and said that Behemoth would be a band that would start to gain a fairly substantial footprint in the mainstream metal world, I probably would have considered you a nutball. Black metal is just extreme. From its blasphemous subject matter to it’s scary visuals to the extremity of its abrasive sound, black metal isn’t something that is going to appeal to your average metal fan, let alone your mainstream consumer of music in general. So, for Behemoth to ply their trade in black metal and not compromise in its presentation of such and to start to accumulate a very strong fan base within the metal community is still surprising to me. Granted, Behemoth has enjoyed a healthy reputation in Europe, but I’m used to seeing them play small, dingy clubs. The Aztec Theatre in San Antonio is one of these fancy old theaters that has been refurbished recently. It’s a classy venue is what I’m trying to say. I think the pull of this band and the reason for their upward ascent to becoming one of the first black metal bands to fully gain widespread fame/notoriety is due to the creativity and charismatic performances of their frontman Nergal. He’s one of those guys who is hard to take your eyes off of. He has crafted Behemoth in his image and has created this stage persona of Nergal into one of the more interesting stage characters in metal today. Going beyond just corpse paint, Behemoth comes out in full costumes, masks and all sorts of headgear. At one point, Nergal even channeled his inner Gene Simmons and coughed up blood during the beginning of one song. Which.Was.Fucking.Awesome! I couldn’t repress a goofy grin when this happened. Its theatrics, dammit. And the metal world is better for it.

Openers At The Gates and Wolves In The Throne Room both brought energetic sets prior to Behemoth taking the stage. At The Gates is touring off of their second post-reunion album, To Drink From the Night Itself, and they hit the new album and their classic period albums in about equal force. Seeing the energy these guys bring to the stage really makes me wonder why it took so long for them to get back together. This was my first experience with Wolves In The Throne Room and was kind of surprised to see them come out as a five-piece rather than the trio that performs on their albums. At any rate, they provided a wall of sound and really captured the sound of their albums in the live setting down to the ambient fires burning and dripping sounds of water interspersed between songs. They definitely seem like the band who will be filling the void in the Northwestern U.S. black metal scene left by Agalloch.

Behemoth-Ov Fire and the Void

At The Gates-At War With Reality

Wolves In The Throne Room-Angrboda

FIDLAR at Emo’s, Austin, TX 10/22/2018

My first experience with FIDLAR was a fabulous trainwreck. The punk rock fiancée had come across these guys and was very enthusiastic about their debut album. She found a gig that these guys had during SXSW at the Historic Scoot Inn in Austin. If you’ve never been to this venue, it’s a two-headed beast. They have a nice outdoor stage surrounded by old oaks trees. It’s a lovely spot for a show. Then, there is the hole of an inside stage. This is a dingy and cramped space on the best of days. We managed to make our way into the venue as FIDLAR was already in the middle of their set on this inside stage. By the time we worked our way over to the entrance, the room was at capacity with a “one out-one in” policy in effect. We could hear the destruction going on inside and randomly some sweaty and pummeled punk youth would come staggering out of the door. One we finally made it just inside the door we were sucked into downright punk anarchy. The place was an absolutely sweat-house. Kids were being hoisted in the air. Kids were jumping on and off stage. Kids were slamming everything and everyone in sight. Sweat was pouring out of the walls. The band, meanwhile, was crammed into the corner stage and was just pounding out their caustic punk tales of degradation while the chaos of the room just swirled around them. It was truly one of the most unhinged moments I’ve been a part of over the course of many years of going to shows. And it was fucking glorious.

The first FIDLAR album is a downright near perfect platter of punk. It’s a bunch of fuckups celebrating being complete wastoids. Beer, cheap pills, cocaine, skating, surfing, homelessness, jail time and just being an all-around directionless asshole hanging out with your shitty friends. It’s all here is stark depiction. It’s one of those albums that just feels wrong and right at the same time. Shit, it makes you want to quit your job, cash in your 401k and go on a world-is-going-to-shit-fuck-it bender. We were able to see these guys once more in a dingy little club here in Austin while they were still touring off of this debut album and it really felt as though they had tapped into something amazing…if they could only manage to not completely burn out in the process.

Now this is going to sound really shitty, but fuck it. Sometimes a band getting cleaned up is the worst possible thing that can happen for the quality of the music they produce. Call it the Mustaine Principle. Now, it’s great personally that the dudes in FIDLAR are getting cleaned up. I’m glad they aren’t going to die of an overdose. But, damn, album number two just completely lacked the edge and danger of the debut. It sounded more like a commercial pop-punk band trying to follow in the footsteps of a Blink 182 or Green Day than a genuine punk band coming up from the L.A. gutters. And it was sad. And this leads us into last night’s show.

FIDLAR has a new album in the can and it is supposed to come out right after the first of the upcoming new year. They have dropped a couple of singles. And, man, are they shitty. It’s even more polished and more poppy sounding than the stuff on the second album and if they are any indication as to the remainder of the songs on the new album, it doesn’t bode well. However, the punk rock fiancée and I were such big fans of the first album and have always had a rowdy good time at their shows, we decided to go check out how their live show is at this point and time.

So, the older songs: perfect. Just great and the band still brings the same amount of energy that was present in days past. The new songs: not so great. Some just come across as sad emo pop punk anthems. Some, however, did come across a little better live than the recorded versions did. The majority of the crowd at the show was definitely there for the new material. It feels like this new material is definitely aimed for the late teen and early 20s crowd (i.e. I felt old as fuck at this show). The band would launch into an older song and the reaction was OK. The band would launch into a newer song and the place just exploded with hipster 20-somethings just bouncing up and down. It was weird. And it just made me long for that sweaty hot box back during SXSW 6-7 years ago. Punk should be dangerous. This felt sanitized. I guess that’s the price of progress and sobriety.

White On White

Cheap Beer

Amorphis, Dark Tranquillity, Moonspell and Omnium Gatherum at The Rock Box, San Antonio, October 2, 2018

This was one hell of a quadruple bill of melodic death metal that rolled into San Antonio this past Tuesday.

Kicking things off in proper fashion were one of my favorite underground bands. Omnium Gatherum is one of those bands that I just can’t help but root for. And judging from the crowd’s reaction to their opening slot, I don’t think I’m the only one. Normally, the first band out of the gate gets a fairly lukewarm response from the folks that bothered to show up early. But San Antonio did me proud. Omnium came out swinging and hellbent on making sure the crowd was an Omnium Gatherum crowd by the end of their set. Lead singer Jukka Pelkonen had the crowd chanting and headbanging while the rest of the band’s energetic stage presence seemed to grab everyone in attendance. I keep saying that these guys deserve a bigger stage and if they keep putting on performances like this one, I can see it happening soon.

The second slot of the evening went to Portugal’s Moonspell. These guys were kind of the outlier for the evening in that they were the only band not from Scandinavia and in the fact that they are really more of a goth-influenced band rather than a straight death metal band. They definitely didn’t lack for stage props and atmosphere. Singer Fernando Ribeiro came out looking like an old-time town crier holding a lantern which was in line with Moonspell’s latest album 1755. He even broke out a plague mask for one song.

The last two bands were basically granted dual headlining sets. Finland’s Amorphis came out first and, in my opinion, really deserved the top billing for this show. Amorphis has really helped define the entire sub-genre of melodic death metal over the course of their career. Blending death and clean vocals over grandiose guitar and keyboard driven songs that play heavily into the folklore of their homeland, Amorphis is just one of the standard-bearers for this kind of music. It’s a moving experience in a live setting.

One of the progenitors of the Gothenburg sound, Dark Tranquillity finished out the evening. It’s always a little weird when a band comes out of stage and your first thought is, “OK, who the hell are some of these guys?” Present were mainstays vocalist Mikael Stanne, keyboardist/programmer Martin Brandstrom, drummer Anders Jivarp and new guy bassist Anders Iwers. But who the hell are these guitarists? Longtime guitarist Niklas Sundin was not on stage (it turns out that he is currently on hiatus). In turns out that Dark Tranquility had to hire two touring guitarists to fill out their lineup for this recent tour. Luckily, one of the replacements was none other the Christopher Amott, co-founder of Arch Enemy with his brother Michael and current guitarist of Armageddon. The other guy (Johan Reinholdz) I had never heard of before, but he was downright awesome. As such, the band really didn’t miss a beat live. This was probably as sharp as I’ve seen these guys in a live setting. I’m not sure of the liklihood of either of these guitarist joining Dark Tranquillity on a full-time basis, but it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea for the remainder of the band to consider it.

Omnium Gatherum-Over the Battlefield

Moonspell-1755

Amorphis-Bad Blood

Dark Tranquillity-Where Death Is Most Alive

River City Rockfest, parking lot of the AT&T Center, San Antonio, TX 9/22/2018

Well, if you were a 90s kid, this fest was a trip down nostalgia lane. Nine Inch Nails! Primus! Bush!(Who knew they were still a thing???), Scott-less Stone Temple Pilots! Joan Fucking Jett!(OK, not really 90s) Clutch! Living Colour!

So, this whole thing seemed doomed earlier in the week. The weather forecast throughout the week said 100% of thunderstorms in the San Antonio area. My luck with fests and rain of late is not good. My little bunch of ruffians and myself had pretty much resigned ourselves to having a cancelled fest and were already coming up with contingency plans to pass the time in our AirBnB (i.e. drinking). But, lo and behold, the storm front was accommodating to our plans and decided to blow through the area the night before. The resulting day was perfect for festing.

Out of the gate was our local Austin metal heroes, The Sword. We were all looking forward to this show in lieu of their recently announced hiatus. No telling how long we’ll have to wait until out next Sword show or album. Sadly, even though the band played a decent short 30 minute set, the dude running the sound board absolutely murdered their set. The sound was absolute mud with the vocals and guitar leads buried under the bass and drums. It was a damn shame.

Next up was a band that I had never had the opportunity to see perform live before, but had always heard really good things. Living Colour just absolutely tore it up. Vernon Reid showed everyone in the crowd why he has such a legendary reputation. Corey Glover just worked the crowd as well as any frontman I’ve come across. At one point, he jumped into the crowd and just took a stroll from one side of the pit to the other while his band crushed their biggest hit, Cult of Personality.

Next up for us was the inimitable Clutch from Maryland. Beginning their touring cycle for new album, Book of Bad Decisions, the band hit the new material hard. Luckily for the band and for the audience, the sound dude got his shit together (or replaced by someone competent) and the sound issues seemed much better. The crowd was treated to one of those cool fest-only type things when Les Claypool joined the band for a rendition of Earth Rocker.

Joan Jett and the Blackhearts was another one of the bands that I had never seen in person before. The 60-year-old Jett prowled the stage like the touring pro that she is while rolling out all of her hits from The Runaways’ Cherry Bomb to I Love Rock n’ Roll. Shit, I remember jamming out to these songs when I was in elementary school. I can’t say that I’m the biggest Joan Jett fan, but dammit, this was a treat getting to see her tear up a stage at this point in her career.

I didn’t bother to make it over to the secondary stage at all during the fest. It just seemed like they had a sad mixture of metalcore and 90s stalwarts trying to relive some of their past glories. I saw a few of the performances on the video screen at the main stage and things just looked kind of sad over there. Bush is still a thing apparently. I think the only real positive thing that can be said about them is that Gavin is still apparently hunky. So, there’s that. Stone Temple Pilots are trying to keep things floating in the wake of the deaths of Scott Wieland and his replacement Chester Bennington. They managed to pull some random dude off of The Voice and he seems to be trying to do some sort of Scott Weiland imitation. It really came off as sad. This is one of those bands that should probably just stop before and further damage can be done.

On the main stage, weirdo metalfunk outfit Primus delivered their trademark infectious thing. They brought out a wide selection of songs throughout their career. The musicianship of these guys just has to be seen to be believed. I’ve seen these guys a ton of times over the years and they just never disappoint.

Headlining the evening was Trent Reznor (and his big beefy right arm, as Punk Rock Fiance likes to call it) and his merry band of black clad industrial mayhem makers. NIN brought out around an hour and a half set headlined by the performance of The Perfect Drug for the first time. I’m guessing that because this was a fest set and not a regular tour date, the stage set was extremely stripped down to the basics than your normal NIN stage setup. Lots of smoke. Lots of strobes. Lots of angst.

All in all. Not the best fest I’ve ever been to, but still a really enjoyable day

The Sword-Tres Brujas