Metal Reviews

Thanks to all the planets coming into alignment I was able to catch these guys last week, and it turned out to be a pretty interesting show. I haven't been to a concert in several years, and wasn't sure what to expect. One thing I wanted to mention before I got into the show itself was the crowd. Legacy of the Night's comments caught my attention in the Ozzfest thread as I have made similair observations....

So um yea... emo kids. Everywhere. Welcome to the new world, where the boys are prettier than the girls. Not that it bothers me who else goes to a concert, I mean, show up in drag for all I care, just thought it was odd is all. For that matter, if you walked in and didn't know who was playing, there was no way to tell by the people in attendance. Your stereotype true metal warriors were nowhere to be found, and in there place was a strange assortment of ...well you name it.

The venue itself has a sort of interesting history. It never ceases to amuse me that alot of these places once housed legendary jazz artists and high society types from a bygone era. Today the interior of this building is completely covered in pyschedelic grafitti and is overun with children, beggars, and crack heads.

Sanctity The opening act was a 4 piece melodic death band from South Carolina. They didn't get much of a response from the crowd, it seemed alot of people were shuffling around, not sure of what to do at a concert. However, these guys are not bad at all.
http://myspace.com/sanctity.com

Protest the Hero According to the myspace blogs, these guys have been getting heckled by crowds, because lets face it, there is definately alot of animosity floating around between those who consider themselves metal purists and the current new wave of umm...anything that ends in core. I am all for giving a band a fair chance, and I even liked their songs that I had heard off their site, but live, they were absolutely terrible. I don't know if they were even trying. The venue was definately not the best in sound quality, but these guys just sounded like a nasty wall of noise. I couldn't wait for it to be over. If you are at least curious you can listen to some tracks on myspace. (which actually aren't too bad)

Dragonforce I am not going to post a setlist, because, well who gives a fuck. I'm sure you could probably figure out what they played. I am curious as to what sort of crowd reaction these guys are getting in other places , because in Denver, people were going ape fucking shit. I had no idea what they would be like live, but they have a ton of stage presence. They get on stage, demand a response and don't take no for an answer. I don't think they would have been phased by anything. Before they came out a large banner was unveiled in the back of the stage, at which point everyone began chanting for the band to come out. Stage hands appeared to place beer in cup holders that were attached to all the microphone stands, and that sort of set the atmosphere for the show.

At the end of the first song ZP mentioned that he heard of some kids setting a new record of 24 hours of driving to get out to the show. They were from Atlanta, Georgia. They were at the very front and ZP pointed them out and asked for a round of applause for those who had "made some fucking effort." While that was the record it turned out that about half of those there had come from miles around from places like Seatle, St, Louis, and Pheonix. Altogether there was probably over a thousand miles traveled.
Some pictures of the band from that night and of the kids from Georgia can be found here.
http://forum.dragonforce.com/viewtopic.php?t=11927

I liked that they intereacted alot with the crowd and stoped and talked, instead of just playing a set and leaving. They did a good job of encouraging all the violence possible and alot of people were moshing and crowd surfing and singing along and going nuts in general. Towards the end for a song off the new album (which still isn't out in the states till June) ZP called for a "wall of death" and the crowd split in two halves, only to rush back into itself in a huge shoving match when the song kicked in. By the end of the night several articles of clothing had somehow ended up on stage along with a few women. At one point near the end ZP was thanking the crowd and this dorky looking guy who was probably about 15 or 16 hopped up on stage and, I shit you not, gave ZP a freaking hug!:shock: (and remember at this point the man has his shirt of and his soaking in his own sweat.) After the kid hopped back down he says,

"Yea, that pretty much sums up how I feel right now."

(I found the whole thing highly amusing (and I will probably have that image of that nerdy little guy looking for a hug, burned into my mind forever.)

Anyway, it was a great show, and I am glad I finally got out of the house to see a concert. GO SEE DRAGOFORCE. :mrgreen:

That's weird the Protest the Hero sucked, because when I saw them like a year ago or so they were awesome. I still want to see Dragonforce live because apparently they're great...

lawl double post

lawl tripple post

Protest the Hero were terrible when I saw them with Dragonforce... And they did get heckled off the stage here.

What did you think of the show overall Brahm? I had no idea what to expect, but I was pretty impressed altogether. I was amazed how many kids had traveled to go see them. Only about half of the audience were actually locals. What was the crowd reaction like where you were? I wasn't sure if DragonForce was the sort of band people moshed to, but sure enough there were two circles of people just going bananas, and the band seemed to love every minute of it. I was pretty amused by the built in beer holders as well, in fact, when the stage hands brought out a case on stage everyone was cheering.

Totman is a burn out.

I've been to three DragonForce gigs - one in 2004, one in mid/late 2005 and one at the start of this year. The difference between the crowds from the first one (shitty little club) and the other two (bigger club and second biggest rock venue in Glasgow, respectively) was astonishing.

I know you always get arseholes at gigs, but the sheer volume of the little H.I.M.-shirt wearing wanks was just unreal. And its not just that they look like stereotypical little mallgoth/emokids, but to have 65% of the crowd just acting the way you would totally expect them to do just sucks.

I mean stop trying to mosh during every fucking solo! Stop grabbing the person next to you and jumping up and down on the spot! Stop just being so fucking annoying! You little bastards! You didn't give a fuck about this band a year ago! You don't listen to any other Power Metal bands!

Every copy of Metal Hammer should come with a home suicide kit.

Not yet, but he's not going to last much longer. I'm amazed he makes so few mistakes (noticable ones anyway) onstage when he's so clearly out of his face.

I understand your contempt, but at the same time I really don't mind how people enjoy a concert either. Jump up and down, bang your head, mosh, play air guitar, what the fuck ever man. If your not completely exhausted by the end of a show then something is wrong I say. I don't care who shows up, metal heads, emo kids, mall goths, queers, drag queens, stoners, fuck offs, misfits, I don't give a shit. I would much rather be around the ones that are having a good time than those who are worried about what is true and what is not.

As far as Totman, its funny you should mention him, because I did notice right away that he did not appear as healthy as the others. He reminds me alot of Steven Tyler for some reason. He seemed energetic enough though.

Oh great signature by the way. That almost looks like something off of sixsixfive.com.

HAHAHA!! I never noticed that before.

The crowd was great. Basically everyone was in a power metal t-shirt (except for I, who stood out in my Sodom one), very few emo kids as you described in your review. There were actually a lot of people from out of town, but mainly from Quebec City, which is only 2-3 hours out of Montreal anyway (there were also a lot of people who came to see the local band Icewind, who were actually the second best band after Dragonforce).. The crowd reaction was great; the people there wanted power metal, and Dragonforce delivered. There was moshing, but not a lot; most people were just headbanging and singing along, which I am very happy to say. Ha, and those beer holders were awesome. All in all, it was an excellent show; the crowd was great, the band was perfect (though I do wish Herman Li had come to my side of the stage more often). I reccomend Dragonforce to all; even if you don't like them, there's something to be said for watching Herman Li and Sam Totman play fast as fuck.

I saw DragonForce on the 15th of May when they were in Australia. I wont talk about the gig cos i posted that in the "Recent Gigs You Went To" somewhere in the forums.

Talking about the crowd, we had a very good mix of true metal warriors (the older guys wearing leather jackets, some of them leather pants), the trash moshers (wearing old Metallica t-shirts, Kreator t-shirts, etc), the old skool metal heads (wearing Motorhead, Sabbath, etc, t-shirts), the normal metal lovers (Maiden t-shirts, Priest, etc t-shirts) and then a few nu or emo fans with H.I.M or Avenged Sevenfold t-shirts...and i could have counted the amount of females there with my fingers. One funny thing was one girl (18-19), was escorted to the gig by her parent, who also watched the gig, a brought plastic chairs

But the most important thing is, they were all there to see the same band, thats all that matters.

Dueling solos kick ass!



That's another thing I was curious about, because at the Denver show there was a suprising number of chicks. Like maybe a fourth of the crowd even. Course it was mostly these odd little emo wenches, but there were actually some good looking women there as well. In fact about three of them got up on the stage and dissapeared into the back. I dragged my wife along to the show, who isn't into metal at all, but was still a good sport about the whole thing.



agreed.

Hey what bands get played in between sets? I heard some other speed/power type bands that sounded kinda cool but I had no idea who they were.....