Concert Reviews | DCHeavyMetal.com

Review of Ozzy Osbourne gig at 1st Mariner Arena

So Monday the 29th of November 2010 started off pretty normally for me, normal routine of going to work and all. I’d just seen Psycroptic and Keep Of Kalessin play Jaxx the night before, so I had a review to work on (you can read that here) but otherwise it was a normal day. Then my girlfriend called me to tell me she’d gotten me an early Xmas present, a 10th row ticket to see Ozzy that night at Baltimore’s 1st Mariner Arena! Well the work day couldn’t go by fast enough at that point. The venue actually granted me a photo pass for Rob Halford‘s set (the opening act) but Ozzy’s people wouldn’t give me one. It didn’t really matter as I didn’t have my nice camera with me at work and I couldn’t make it to the venue early enough if I went home to get it. I did get to the venue around 8pm and I had been told Ozzy would hit the stage at 8:45 so instead of going through security to buy an expensive dinner, I hit up a little deli across the street. I got myself a pastrami sandwich, cheaper and better than anything inside the arena I’m sure, and headed into the venue. After sneaking my camera through security I headed to my seat. And again for the second time now at 1st Mariner Arena, the second I got to my seat I looked up at the stage and right then Ozzy came out to start the concert. Perfect timing again! The first time this happened was when I saw Slayer and Megadeth there in October and you can read my review of that here.

Since I completely missed Rob Halford’s set I won’t comment on that. I wasn’t too upset though since I’m not much of a Judas Priest fan anyways. I am, however, a huge Black Sabbath and Ozzy fan. The reason I’m such a huge metal head has a lot to do with Black Sabbath and the fact that I even run this website does too. That said, I know he’s past his prime, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t love every second of this concert. The last time I saw Ozzy was almost three years ago in January 2008 at the Verizon Center. That wasn’t the greatest show, he had been sick and it was a short set and they all seemed to be just going through the motions. This concert fully made up for it though! This was the first time I have gotten to see the new guitarist, Gus G, play live with Ozzy, and the band definitely seemed more energized than when I saw them in 2008. Gug G did a great job of playing songs by each of his four main predecessors, Tony Iommi, Randy Rhodes, Jake E. Lee and Zakk Wylde, and they played one of his own songs, Let Me Hear You Scream, too. I have video of him playing songs by each of these guys from this concert posted below so you can see how he handles them, so check them out at the end of the post. There was also a second guitarist on some songs, I think mostly the Black Sabbath songs really. This was actually the keyboardist Adam Wakeman, who also has played with Black Sabbath. He didn’t have any guitar solos and only played rhythm guitar and stayed out of the spotlight for most of the show. Ozzy’s voice started out a bit rough this show, but after his voiced dropped out a couple of times early on, he seemed to get it together and mostly stay on track for the rest of the show. He was entertaining as always, and he brought out his big foam-shooting hose several times throughout the night to spray the audience as well as himself. He really seemed to have a lot of energy up there, much more than the last time I saw him. There were a lot of loud booming fireworks and a sort of fire-rain pyrotechnics thing at the beginning of Mr. Crowley. All of this showed why after 40 years Ozzy is still headlining arenas, his shows are always over the top.

The setlist focused mostly on what are probably the two most popular albums of Ozzy’s career, Paranoid by Black Sabbath and Blizzard Of Ozz, his first solo record. The only Randy Rhodes era songs were from Blizzard, and they played the staples Mr. Crowley, Suicide Solution, Crazy Train and I Don’t Know. The only Black Sabbath songs played were all from Paranoid, and they of course played Iron Man, War Pigs, Paranoid as well as Fairies Wear Boots and they even incorporated the instrumental Rat Salad in the band solos. That was actually pretty damn awesome. They started it off as a sort of all band jam doing Rat Salad that morphed into a killer guitar solo by Gus G. He didn’t play with his teeth or behind his head like Zakk did the last time I saw Ozzy, but it was nice to hear a different style of guitarist up there shredding (and none of those pig squeal things Zakk does every fucking 5 seconds). They went back into a full band jam for a brief bit, before drummer Tommy Clufetos started on a pretty crazy drum solo of his own. They raised the platform the drums were on and his extended solo was pretty damn impressive, and included a bit of audience participation and fireworks too, which was all pretty cool. I had actually seen him do a big drum solo like this at the last Ozzy show I saw, but he was playing with the opener Rob Zombie then. The whole solo wrapped up as the band finally finished their rendition of Rat Salad. That was such a fresh take on that song, and was really one of the most fun solo/jam sessions I’ve seen at an Ozzy show since I saw Joe Holmes do a crazy guitar solo based around Symptom Of The Universe in the 90s. Hell, this might have been better than that actually. Anyways, I wasn’t missing Zakk Wylde at this point, and I’m not sure if he meant it that way or not, but Ozzy didn’t seem to be either when he stated between songs that the old material was the best! They did play a few Zakk songs, most notably the track Fire In The Sky from No Rest For The Wicked in 1988. The crowd seemed bewildered when he played this, I don’t think most people there knew this song at all. I got video of it though as I knew how rare this was for him to play, and you can see most people just sorta standing around like zombies. I don’t think that song has been in the live rotation for almost 20 years, so that was something pretty cool for the Ozzy die hard fans out there, instead of just playing all hits.

In all I had a great fucking time. The show was fantastic, 100 times better than the last really, and he played for the better part of 2 hours. Getting to see Ozzy is always a concert highlight of the year for me, and this was really one of the best shows I’ve seen him do in a very long time. I did like Zakk but I very much welcome the new guitarist, Gus G, to the fold and really I can’t wait to see them play again. Well, thanks for reading this whole thing. And don’t forget I’ve got a contest going on right now to give away a pair of tickets to see The Sword at the 9:30 Club on Monday, the 6th of December 2010. Go here to enter to win. You don’t have to sign up for anything to do it. Once you’re done with that check out the videos below that I shot from the floor, some of my best video footage yet (they even posted my video of Fairies Wear Boots to the official Ozzy Facebook and Twitter pages!). I’m really glad the venue wasn’t strict about using cameras down there. I recommend checking out my video for War Pigs as that should give you a good idea of my view at the concert. Enjoy!

December 1, 2010
Categories: 1st Mariner Arena, Classic Metal, Concert Reviews . Tags: 1st Mariner Arena, Baltimore Arena, Band, Concert, Concert Review, Concert Reviews, First Mariner Arena, Gig, Gus G, Heavy Metal, Metal, Music, Ozzy, Ozzy Osbourne . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: 4 Comments

Review of Psycroptic gig at Jaxx

While many people are returning home on the Sunday night following Thanksgiving, I found myself heading down to Jaxx again on the 28th of November 2010. Psycroptic and Keep Of Kalessin, the opening bands on Nile and Ex Deo‘s fall tour were playing a few extra shows without the headliners, and this was the date they came through the area. It wasn’t a long show, only four bands played, and it ended early at around 10pm. Pathology was supposed to be part of the touring line up, but they were involved in a major accident in November (more details here) that ended all touring plans for them. There wasn’t a huge crowd for this show, but that was sort of to be expected. It was still a lot of fun and I finally got to see Psycroptic play live.

The first band to play was local death metal act Orgy Of The Damned. I had seen them play before at the Blood And Fire Festival back in July. They’re still really young, most of the guys had black Xs on their hands. That’s fine though, as again their youthful excitement for the music comes through as a big plus in their set. They played Reanimator which was pretty fun to see live. It’s one of the songs they are giving away for free on my download page if you want to check it out. They also played a cover of the Cannibal Corpse classic Hammer Smashed Face that was pretty cool. In another cue taken from Cannibal Corpse, at the end of their set the vocalist, Jeff Wright, said he “lied” about them not playing Feces Fiend and they closed with that song. The next band up was another local act, Trihexyn. They’re pretty good, just not my kind of metal really. I knew what to expect since I’d seen them before at the State Theatre as part of the second Mandatory Metal night there. They rely heavily on using clean vocals which is something I generally am not a fan of (there are exceptions of course). They are pretty good and have well written songs that they play pretty well so don’t get me wrong here, I’m just not their target audience. They do switch to a more rough vocal style for some parts, and I do find that to be more enjoyable, but I seemed to be in the minority about a few things this evening anyways. Also, the bass player had pink hair, which was a bit weird too but hey metal isn’t supposed to be about fashion anyways (don’t tell that to Cradle Of Filth though!). I’ve got a video of them below so check them out, maybe you’ll like them more than I do.

The next band to play was Norway’s black metal band Keep Of Kalessin. I really didn’t like their newest album, Reptilian, and sadly (for me) their set was mostly made of material from it. It’s all about dragons which wouldn’t be so bad except there’s a lot of that clean vocal singing going on again. So yeah, I’ve become that fan of theirs, the guy who likes only the old stuff. I seemed to be in the minority about that because the audience was reacting well to their performance. And they did play Crown Of The Kings, which is one of their older songs that is totally awesome, but they didn’t play Come Damnation, which is my favorite song of theirs. Their set was only about 40 minutes or so, so I guess they were just doing the same basic set list of songs from their Nile tour, mostly just supporting their new album. I thought they would have played a bit longer, and while I figured they’d play a good amount of their newer material, I also thought they’d play some older stuff since they had the chance to play a longer set. They closed with Kolossus which is a solid song, so overall it wasn’t bad, just not my favorite material for most of the set.

The final band of the night was Psycroptic coming all the way from Tasmania. I’ve wanted to catch them for a long time, as they’re probably my favorite technical death metal band these days (Decrepit Birth is up there too though) and I’ve waited a few years now to catch them live. I didn’t see them earlier this year at Sonar with Nile because I knew this show was coming up and I’d rather go to the closer venue, for less money when they headline. They did play an awesome set, though again it was short. I enjoyed the show a lot and got so caught up with it that when it ended I was kinda mad I’d only shot video of two songs! For me the highlight of the evening was when they played (Ob)Servant, which is just a kick ass metal song. Really, all the songs they played are pretty damn sick. It was like they were putting on a tutorial how you do tech death! I was hoping that since they were headlining they’d play a longer set but they didn’t really. They didn’t play The Colour Of Sleep nor Alpha Breed, two of my favorite songs of theirs. Same as with Keep Of Kalessin, I really wished they’d taken advantage of the headlining slot to play a longer set and included more older material. Their vocalist was a temporary fill in on this tour while their normal singer was staying home to be with his newborn. He did a decent job, his stage presence wasn’t bad and he had a hell of a lot of energy up there, literally jumping around and helping to keep the audience excited. Really though, nobody goes to see Psycroptic because of the vocals, their guitar work is crazy and the drummer is pretty damn tight too. They didn’t have a huge crowd and Keep Of Kalessin seemed to have a larger audience when they played. That didn’t matter to me, I was there to finally see Psycroptic play, and other than the set being so damn short, they didn’t disappoint at all. And I’ve got the videos below to prove it, check em out:

December 1, 2010
Categories: Concert Reviews, Death Metal, Jaxx Nightclub, Melodic Black Metal, Norwegian Black Metal, Tech Death . Tags: Band, Black Metal, Concert, Concert Review, Concert Reviews, Death Metal, Gig, Heavy Metal, Jaxx, Keep Of Kalessin, Melodic Black Metal, Metal, Music, Orgy Of The Damned, Psycroptic, Tech Death, Technical Death Metal, Trihexyn . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: Leave a comment

Review of Cannibal Corpse gig at the Rock And Roll Hotel

This tour had, without a doubt, the best death metal line up of any North American tour this year. Devourment opening for Vital Remains, local favorites Dying Fetus and the kings of death metal themselves, Cannibal Corpse. On Sunday the 21st of November they all brought their combined brutality to the Rock And Roll Hotel in Washington, DC (you thought I was going to say Jaxx, didn’t you?) and aurally assaulted this venue like never before. Now I’ve seen a few metal shows at the Rock & Roll Hotel before, but they have not had any death metal, and what a great tour to bring in for their first extreme metal show at the venue! They didn’t have any local support, but luckily I’d just gone to see a great set of local death metal the night before at Jaxx, (my review of that show is here) so it was sort of like the openers played the night before.

When I first got to the venue, Devourment was already playing. I’m not sure how long they played but I saw them play four songs. There was already a good size crowd amassing so I stayed to the back of the room near the soundboard so that I wouldn’t damage my nice camera (they wouldn’t let me use it so I had to store it during the other bands’ sets). Because of all this I wasn’t in a great place to get video or still shots of these guys. They had the crowd already going though when I got there, and between every song I saw, and also in the middle of half of their songs, the lead singer, Mike Majewski, would instruct the crowd to mosh in a circle pit. The set seemed to focus on older material, I remember them playing “Choking On Bile” as well as closing with “Babykiller.” This was kind of odd though, since the band is hardly the band it used to be. “Choking On Bile” is from the band’s first full length, Molesting The Decapitated. That album totally rules, don’t get me wrong, and if you want to hear some of the best underground death metal there is, check that album out. But the band playing this night only had one member remaining from back then, the bass player, and he was now on vocals! This and the fact that Devourment will also be playing again in May at Maryland Deathfest (much more info about that on my calendar here) made me not so upset about missing some of their set this night. Also, their guitarist put on a white horse head mask for the final song, I have no idea why.

The next band to play was Vital Remains. No, Deicide‘s Glen Benton was not playing with them, though their bass player was wearing a Stench Of Redemption shirt. I’d put my DSLR away and had my point and shoot camera ready and was standing in the front by the time they took the stage. The vocalist, Scott Wily, had on these spiked Immortal-esque bracers and was again telling people to keep a circle pit going. Ok, really? I remember thinking how dumb it was watching hardcore kids do laps in circle pits, why are these death metal bands encouraging this instead of straight up brutal mosh pits? Whatever, it was all to my back for the most part anyways. They did play a great set made up mostly of material from their two most recent albums, Icons Of Evil and Dechristianize. That’s fine by me, even though I often want bands to play older songs I’ve always enjoyed their more recent material as I think they really refined and defined their sound. Plus it’s fucking faster than their old stuff, and trust me they don’t slow it down live. Most of the people near me seemed to know most of the words to “Dechristianize” and were screaming along with it, which goes to show the power of getting an iconic vocalist like Benton on those studio albums. Of course with their long songs, their set seemed to fly by and since there were still two more bands to play their set was shorter than I’d have liked. They also didn’t play the song “Shrapnel Embedded Flesh” (a personal favorite of mine) but other than those two minor gripes they really did a kick ass job of taking the brutality up a notch.

The next band set to play was Dying Fetus. Now, before I make my next statement here, let me first say that I haven’t seen them in quite a few years and that might have something to do with my opinion on the matter. That said, Dying Fetus fucking killed it this show and really, I think they showed up Cannibal Corpse. Their setlist was great from start to finish, and while their stage time was shorter they didn’t talk a lot between songs. For the most part they just played some brutal fucking death metal, of course with all those grind elements and breakdowns their sound is known for. Dying Fetus is from the DC suburbs of Maryland and I don’t know if that was the reason why, but they did play a lot of older material, including two songs off of the Killing On Adrenaline album, which was awesome. Some of these songs I hadn’t even listened to in years and I really enjoyed remembering them as they played songs from their entire back catalog. They even played the song “Eviscerated Offspring” from their 1994 demo! The mosh pit went crazy, combining brutal death metal with catchy breakdowns will do that, haha. There are a lot of bands who do that now of course, to the point it can get really annoying really quickly, but after seeing this gig there is no question in my mind that Dying Fetus are still the best at it. They opened with “Praise The Lord (Opium Of The Masses)” which really set the tone of the show from the start, and the intensity didn’t let up until they finished their set with “Kill Your Mother, Rape Your Dog.” In all, it was a great performance by one of the leaders in death metal.

Finally it was time for the headliner, Cannibal Corpse. They played the area not too long ago, when they came to Jaxx back in April (my review of that is here) and this concert wasn’t a whole lot different really. There are some things you can expect at a Cannibal Corpse show these days, brutal music is one of them of course. But you also know that when their vocalist, George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher says the next song goes out to all the women in the audience, they’re going to play “Preacher Of Sodom” (it used to be “Fucked With A Knife” but that song doesn’t seem to be part of their set list any more) and you know when he says Hammer Smashed Face is their last song of the night, after it’s done he’s going to say he lied about it being the final song as they start playing “Stripped, Raped And Strangled.” This show had all that of course, but there were a few surprises. For one, they played the song “Gutted” off of Butchered At Birth, and Corpsegrinder said that he grew up in Baltimore so the show was a sort of coming home and he reminisced about coming to see concerts at the 9:30 Club and the like and he said the Rock N Roll Hotel had a similar feeling to those places back then. He also challenged the audience to keep up with his extreme headbanging during the song “I Cum Blood,” and I’ve got video of that below you can watch. A few touches like those aside, the show was fairly typical for Cannibal Corpse, and while I’ve seen them play a hell of a lot of times, you could tell by all the X’s I saw on people’s hands that many of those in attendance probably hadn’t seen them before and the aspects of the show I see as becoming a pattern were all new to them. The venue was pretty packed and I saw the guy in the full body chicken suit in the mosh pit (hadn’t seen him around in a couple years!) as well as a guy in a V For Vendetta style Guy Fawkes mask. Yeah, Cannibal Corpse draws an odd crowd. Their set was intense and sweaty and brutal as always, and it was a lot of fun. And I know I’ve seen them play at least 10 times before, but I’ll never get tired of watching Cannibal Corpse play “Hammer Smashed Face” and “Stripped Raped And Strangled” back to back while standing two feet in front of me. Those are two of the most iconic death metal songs ever written and essentially define the band, if not the death metal genre itself.

At this concert I could tell the District is hungry for more metal and several people asked me about my site after seeing the logo on my shirt, all basically saying the city needed something like that. Even the manager of the venue told me he’d be interested in having a regular metal night there. I sure as hell would like to see something like that happen. Even though the bands were crammed on the stage, this was a great show to bring death metal back into the city with. I know a lot of the people there won’t head out to places in the suburbs like Jaxx for concerts a lot due to transportation and other issues. It was another good turn out, reinforcing the fact that heavy metal is on the rise in the entire area, not just the suburbs. It was also my second great death metal concert in a row, what more can you ask for? Now check out the videos I shot of the final three bands below.

November 25, 2010
Categories: Concert Reviews, Death Metal, Florida Death Metal, Rock And Roll Hotel, Washington DC / Maryland / Virginia Metal Scene . Tags: Band, Cannibal Corpse, Concert, Concert Review, Concert Reviews, Concerts, Death Metal, Devourment, Dying Fetus, Gig, Heavy Metal, Metal, Music, Vital Remains . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: Leave a comment

Review of Loculus gig at Jaxx

Ashburn, Virginia based Loculus headlined a local metal night with openers Above The Altar and Apothys at Jaxx on Saturday the 20th of November 2010 and it was pretty damn awesome. This was the release party show for Loculus’ new EP, Sinew, which they were giving away copies of for free to everyone in attendance. Not only that, but it was a great showing of the local death metal community. There was a great turn out for such a late show with no national headliner and hell, I’ve been to Jaxx plenty of times to see touring bands with far less people in attendance. I’d never been to one of these “late” shows at Jaxx before, where they have one concert going on earlier in the afternoon/evening and another later that night, and this one seemed a bit disorganized, though that was no fault of the bands involved. Apparently the earlier show got out late, and while the first band of the late show was supposed to go on at 10:30, they didn’t hit the stage until 11:30. I talked to a few members of the bands playing after I got there and they not only had no idea when their sets would start, they didn’t even know how long they would be allowed to play if at all! Though once the bands did start playing, the show really was worth the wait.

By the time Apothys hit the stage you could tell the crowd was starting to get restless. Originally the band Shotgun Surgery was supposed to play, but they had to cancel and were replaced on the bill by Apothys a week or two before the concert. Apothys always seems to put on a good show live and this time was no exception. They kept the crowd fired up the entire set and the band looked like they were having as much fun up there as anyone in attendance. I noticed that they didn’t play Of Writhing Eyes, a killer song which they have been closing shows with the last couple of times I have seen them. I wonder if that was due to time constraints because the show was running so late. I had just seen them the previous Monday at So Addictive (my review of that concert is here) and while that show was kind of cool for it’s lack of a stage so the band really mingled with the audience, it was nice to see them up on a proper stage with decent lighting again. Sadly the camera I shoot video with had its SD card take a shit and the video I took of them playing Terminus at this show has some error that makes the file unplayable. I didn’t know this until I got home that night and the card also lost one of the videos I shot of the headliner, Loculus. Sucks but what can ya do?

The next band to play, Above The Altar, is a death metal band from Loudon with a lot of thrashy elements and even a few breakdowns giving them a sort of ‘core element to their sound. I had never seen them play before, but they were a good addition to the night’s line up, putting a bit of variation (but not too much) between the two other more standard death metal bands in the line up. Their songs were pretty well put together though they didn’t really grab me too much. Maybe if I was familiar with some of their material beforehand I’d have been a bit more into it. Their lead singer, Toby Gomez, was pretty entertaining with his banter between songs and he helped to keep the mood light between the heavy songs. By the time they ended their set it was getting late though and I was wondering how much time the headliner would have to play.

The next band to hit the stage was Loclus and it was already after 1am when they started playing! They had a big, professional banner with their logo and some artwork up behind the stage that must have cost a bit of money to have made. It was pretty cool looking though. Their guitarist, Steve Miller, had given me their demo a few months back that I really enjoyed, but I still hadn’t had a chance to catch them live yet. I’m glad I made it to this one as they were really on fire. You can tell they had put a lot of work into getting this show together and when they hit the stage it really paid off! They took the stage and really played a no-nonsense very tight set. This was some fast, brutal death metal and Loculus really killed it on the stage here. They were well practiced and they executed their material very well (from what I could tell at least). The drums were pummeling, the guitars were furious and the vocals were out of control. They didn’t talk much between songs, I’d guess that was partially due to the fact that time was becoming an issue this night. However, they did pause at one point to tell everyone to pick up a free copy of the four song EP they were releasing. The mosh pit was going strong the whole set and I think everyone in the room could feel the intensity of their performance. The worst part was that it was so short, they only played five songs, though I think if it was any longer they’d have run out of time for the venue to be open.

It was a great show, and while it wasn’t the first for Loculus it had a sort of debut feeling to it. If you were there and didn’t get a copy of Sinew for some reason, the band has said you can bring your ticket stub to their next concert (date and venue still to be determined as of this post’s writing) and they’ll give you a copy. It was great to see so many people come crawling out of the woodwork to a late gig for local death metal acts. It sort of reminded me of that first State Theatre metal show (my review of that is here) back in August where it was also cool to see how many people came out in support. These kinds of concerts, plus the Blood & Fire Fest, various weekly and monthly metal gigs starting at venues around the area, and the willingness of more and more local venues to host metal concerts are showing this scene really start to come together! I’m glad so many people came out, and glad Loculus not only set this show up, but really killed it Saturday night when everyone was watching to show people this isn’t all just hype. Metal in the greater DC area is on the rise! Now check out the videos from the night that my SD card didn’t corrupt below, and be sure to check back later in the week for my review of Sunday night’s Dying Fetus and Cannibal Corpse as well as the re-opening (finally) of the Downloads page on the site that will have free mp3 downloads of over 20 different local metal bands of various sub-genres.

November 23, 2010
Categories: Concert Reviews, Death Metal, Jaxx Nightclub, Washington DC / Maryland / Virginia Metal Scene . Tags: Above The Altar, Apothys, Band, Concert, Concert Review, Concert Reviews, Concerts, Death Metal, Gig, Heavy Metal, Jaxx, Jaxx Nightclub, Loculus, Metal, Music . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: Leave a comment

Review of Priestess gig at the Red Palace

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve gotten out to a good metal show, so I was glad I could make it out to see Priestess, Naam and King Giant at the newly opened Red Palace in Washington DC on Tuesday the 9th of November 2010. This was a concert that almost didn’t happen because it had originally been booked at DC9. After the recent incident there, and subsequent cancellation of their entire upcoming concert schedule, many of those concerts were moved to the Rock & Roll Hotel, but this one wasn’t. Luckily the Red Palace had just passed all their code inspections and such and were opening the new upstairs stage area just in time to host this gig. And I’m glad they did because it was a lot of fun! Plus, being one of the first to check out a new venue is always fun.

The Red Palace is on H Street NE in the Atlas District and was formerly the venues The Red And The Black and the Palace Of Wonders. They have now combined to become the Red Palace, and by combined I mean they were knocking down walls. The entrance to the Palace Of Wonders has been completely shut off, and now the only way to enter is on the side of The Red And The Black. A bouncer outside was checking IDs and gave me a wristband. Once inside, it didn’t look too different, the bar on the right, the booths on the left. Once you make it past the booths though, there is a hole in the wall with a couple steps down that leads to the Palace Of Wonders side. There’s a small stage right in front of you, though I spoke with one of the bartenders and he said they’d be getting rid of that and the dressing rooms next to it at some point and the space would become the kitchen. Anyways, you have to go left once you step into that side, and there’s another bar on you left and a stairwell that leads to the upstairs on your right. They took the cover charge at the base of the stairs and stamped my hand and let me upstairs into the show space. Now, I’d never been inside the Palace Of Wonders before, but I had seen a few shows at The Red And The Black, and it was tiny, along the lines of the Velvet Lounge in floor space. The new set up greatly improves not only the space for the audience but also the stage is at least three times the size. A sign over the upstairs bar said the maximum occupancy was 106. Previously the stage had been set up so the band was facing away from the street, towards the back of the building, but now it’s been rotated 90 degrees so that the band performing will be facing the Palace Of Wonders side with the street to their left. There is a big seam on the floor that lets you know right where the wall had been knocked down, and a large I beam runs parallel above it. There’s a third bar at the top of the staircase, and the mixing board is set up above the lowest part of the stairwell. Aside from the space being much larger, the sound quality was great. An interesting little thing I noticed is that they placed a pair of subwoofers under the stage itself that face towards the crowd, which sounded really good. Well, enough about the new set up, lets get on to the bands…

The first band of the night was one of my favorite local bands, King Giant. The kings of southern darkness played a short but fun set. Their staples Solace and 13 To 1 kicked off the set and really got the show started with a bang. Their southern rock/stoner/sludge sound with it’s well thought out song structures and just downright catchy riffs really got people into the concert from the start. The biggest problem I had was that the set was short, but then, this was the first time I’d seen them open for a show and that just comes with the territory. Also of note, their bass player, Floyd Walters III, had an eye patch on his right eye, though it wasn’t too noticeable under his sunglasses. Hopefully he heals up quick, eye injuries suck.

The next band up was Naam from Brooklyn, New York. They’re a three piece doom metal/stoner rock band that I was pretty unfamiliar with going into the show. They were pretty entertaining, a bit on the atmospheric side at times but they had some really fun parts where they’d build up and just jam out some metal for a bit. Their heavily reverbed vocals, from both the guitarist and the bass player, was a rather haunting touch to their sound. After the first song they had the board op bathe the stage in red lighting for the rest of their set. They didn’t play a whole lot of songs, though some were rather long such as their closing song which was over 10 minutes. They weren’t bad and a good choice to be in the middle slot for this show.

Finally it was time for the headliner, Priestess, from Montreal. Sadly, as they started there weren’t many people still there for the show and the lead singer, Mikey Heppner, started off by saying jokingly thank you to “the five of you who stayed.” Once they began playing people started appearing from the stair case though. I can see that being an issue with this venue, as the upstairs bar is the smallest and also in the most cramped space, so when a band ends and there’s a rush to the bar, I’m sure many people head to the bigger downstairs bars and probably stayed there for a while. Anyways, it seemed most of them did return to the stage area upstairs, and it’s a good thing they did! Priestess slayed with their thrashy version of sludge metal and the entire show was exciting. At the beginning of the song Lady Killer one of the strings broke on Mikey’s guitar, but he didn’t miss a beat and even managed to adjust for the missing string rather well even getting through the solo decently. I had missed Priestess last time they came around, when they played at the Black Cat back in April, even though I caught the headliner High On Fire (my review of that show is here). I’m glad I finally got a chance to see them, it was great! The songs were fast paced and catchy and their drummer was insanely good. He really was the star of the show and he was punching it all night. He even did lead vocals on the song Lunar. I’m not familiar enough with them to know if he does that on the album or not, but it was still impressive to see him throw those tight drum fills in between verses. The show was a lot of fun and I’m glad I stuck around for the headliner as they really entertained with an action packed setlist that totally made me forget how late it was on a Tuesday night (though the beer helped with that a bit too). Overall it was a great show with one of the best local acts to open, a new band to check out, and a killer headliner. You can check out the videos I shot there below, some might be a bit dark but as usual the audio quality is good if nothing else.

November 10, 2010
Categories: Concert Reviews, Red Palace, Sludge Metal, Thrash Metal, Washington DC / Maryland / Virginia Metal Scene . Tags: Band, Concert, Concert Review, Concert Reviews, Gig, Heavy Metal, King Giant, Metal, Music, Naam, Priestess, Red Palace, The Red Palace . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: Leave a comment

Review of Alice Cooper gig at Merriweather Post Pavilion

So Sunday the 17th of October 2010 I drove up to Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland for the Halloween Hootenanny concert. I had won a pair of lawn tickets from MPP’s Twitter account a couple weeks before otherwise I probably wouldn’t have paid to go. There were a lot of bands playing that day, 2Cents, the Murderdolls, Children Of Bodom, Clutch, Alice Cooper, Black Label Society and Rob Zombie. This was because there were two tours that combined for this final show of the season at Merriweather. Since the set times weren’t revealed I got there too late to see a few and honestly I really just wanted to see Alice Cooper the most. They also had midget wrestling going on at some point, but again I was too late for that. I’d have liked to have seen Children Of Bodom again but since they played so damn early I missed them. I did catch a bit of Clutch and Zakk Wylde with BLS, but I didn’t stick around for Rob Zombie’s show as I’ve seen it a few times and really, I’m not that into techno. Those bands I’ve all seen before anyways, so it wasn’t a big deal, but I hadn’t seen Alice Cooper before and of course I’d heard a lot about his live show. I guess my point is, he’s one of those guys I wanted to see live at least once, though after that show I’d probably go see him again and pay for better seats too. Still, I can’t complain with free tickets.

I got there early enough to get a decent spot in the center of the lawn about as close as I could get without being too underneath the large monitor above. It’s been a few years since I’ve headed up to Merriweather and I’d never seen a second stage set up there. It was sort of awkwardly placed on the lawn on the side of the main entrance to the venue. Not the end of the world, but the farther back you were the more downhill you’d be. It was nice being able to hear Clutch play from my spot on the lawn while I was waiting for Alice Cooper to hit the stage. It was dark by the time he did start playing which really helped the setting. Right away he went into School’s Out followed by No More Mr Nice Guy, which sort of seemed odd since I kind of assumed he’d close with one of them. I think maybe he knew he had to play them and just wanted to get them out of the way. He then went into I’m Eighteen, which is one of the songs I had hoped he’d play. It was his first hit and really the song that got him noticed and it was nice to see he still played it. The set was a decent retrospective of his career. He played old classics like Billion Dollar Babies and Poison, and also had a few newer songs in the mix like Vengeance Is Mine and Dirty Diamonds. I didn’t recognize some of that newer material, and some of the songs they played I hadn’t heard since I was a kid. So that was kind of cool, he didn’t play Hey Stoopid or Bed Of Nails, which I guess I wanted to see since I at least remembered those songs. However, he did play the song Feed My Frankenstein, which of course was made famous by that scene in Wayne’s World. It’s a pretty damn goofy song, full of even more overt horror metaphor as sexual innuendo than your typical Cooper song, but it was damn entertaining. Hell, the giant cyclops monster thing that came out on stage to fight him during that song was pretty cool too. And that’s the thing about this show, when Alice Cooper is on the stage he’s always entertaining. He’s constantly doing SOMETHING! Maybe just walking around flipping his cane around like a baton or getting the audience to join in on some of the chorus lines. And then there’s the props. He did the classic guillotine decapitation, which is something I had always heard about but never seen, so that was awesome to see. He also had some thing where he was put into a box and had swords run through him. He did a song sitting in a chair in a straight jacket as well as having other characters come out in costumes to interact with him on stage for various songs. In one case he had Nurse Rozetta come out and inject him with some neon green fluid in a giant syringe (it sort of reminded me of Re-animator). However, he did not do the famous gallows noose hanging, which I was hoping he’d do (he refused to do it for several years after an accident happened performing the stunt once). One cool thing was he sort of had storylines going from song to song, for instance in one he’d commit a murder, then in the next song he’d be executed for it, then in the next he’d be waking up in hell. As I said before, the entire time he was on stage was pretty damn entertaining, whether I knew the songs or not. But that’s the one problem with the show, he wasn’t always on the stage, most notably during a long instrumental segment that involved a drum solo and several guitar solos. This went on for entirely too long! Now I was kind of expecting Alice to come back on stage with some crazy costume or something that obviously required several minutes to put together, but he didn’t really have anything that crazy on when he came back for Vengeance Is Mine (I have video of it below). I know he’s not the youngest performer around, so maybe he just needed a break but damn that jam session went on forever and was certainly the low point of the show for me. Not that the guys in the band weren’t talented musicians, but it just seemed to go on and on and on to the point that we were making jokes about them being a hippie jam band. Regardless, the show was certainly worth seeing and I’m glad I got to see Alice Cooper at least once, though I could have done with a few less crotch shots on the jumbo trons.

Aside from all the bands performing, the Halloween Hootenanny had some other things too, midget wrestling (which I missed) as well as at least one ride that I went on and a haunted house as well. I went to the show kind of expecting all that to cost money, but was surprised to find they were all free. I went on that spinning ride that makes ya stick to the walls and then rotates up into the air. It was ok I guess, the view of the bathrooms was exquisite from the the top. The haunted house was much more fun though. They made you wear these 3D glasses and had painted things so they’d glow in a black light. Spinning rooms, the ground painted to look like steps that weren’t there, and people jumping out that really did blend in perfectly with the backgrounds when you had the glasses on, and other illusions were all part of it. There was a confusing part with checkered sheets you sort of had to fumble your way through. That was more confusing than scary. Overall it was pretty entertaining and was certainly worth the wait in line. After that I caught a bit of Zakk Wylde’s Black Label Society and then we decided to head out early to beat traffic. In all it was a great concert experience, especially since we got tickets, posters, buttons and rides all for free! I really wouldn’t mind seeing Alice Cooper again, though hopefully next time he’ll get to play a longer set and it’ll be a bit closer to home for me. Now below you’ll find the videos I shot there. Keep in mind I was on the lawn so they are by no means the best videos I’ve ever posted.