Lamb of God, Job for a Cowboy, August Burns Red, Between the Buried and Me @ Kulttuuritalo, Helsinki - Monday, 8th March
So, yesterday was this little event of modern American metal bands. Let me say a few words about the place, Kulttuuritalo (Helsinki Culture House), where this event was organized. It is a place designed, and thus, best suited for classical and acoustic music. Not for bands that play all the volume cranked up with massive, distorted guitar sounds. The acoustic properties of the place blur all the low frequencies into one, incomprehensible mush, and this little characteristic gets pronounced in the back of the hall, where the seating places are. And of course, we had our seats in the upper bout of the leftmost section. But the lucky thing was that there is no separation with seating places and the floor, and the security personnel really didn't care, so we took good use of this freedom, and spent some time on the floor level too.
We arrived at the culture house some five minutes before the warm-up act for the warm-up act for the warm-up act,
Between the Buried and Me started their set, and we didn't want to bother searching for our seats, so we stayed in the floor level. It was no real problem at all, since the majority of the audience weren't there yet - and once the band started playing, a portion of the audience who weren't impressed by the completely un-br00tal introduction to the first song left the floor to grab another beer. The band opened with
Fossil Genera - A Feed from Cloud Mountain, a pretty lengthy piece (album version clocking over twelve minutes) from their most recent LP,
The Great Misdirect. The unbalance in sounds was obvious from the beginning; the clean vocals were nigh from inaudible, and disregarding the low-end riffing, you could see the fingers of Paul Waggoner running up and down the guitar neck with laughable speed and accuracy, but you couldn't hear anything under the bass mush. And as this was how it sounded like on the floor, I don't want to imagine how it was in the upmost seats.
Apparently most of the opening song was used getting the sound mix ok, because once the song to close their set,
White Walls, began, the balance was pretty decent. The guitar leads were audible in addition to being visible, the vocals of Tommy Rogers were mostly audible too, though the only clean vocals of the song at around eight-minute mark were pretty drowned out by the wall of sound from the instruments. The only thing that was not obvious if you didn't know the band beforehand, or didn't happen to follow the bassist, Dan Briggs, was his basswork. There he was, one of the few bassists in the metalcore scene who doesn't fear to use the upper register of bass (or wear his bass the Beatles-way: REALLY high :D ), and the only evidence was there if you happened to watch what his hands were doing - you couldn't hear the treble parts of the bass guitar at all. Once the bass guitar lines rose above some specific pitch, they got completely drowned out by the low-end wall of sound.
But despite these few minor setbacks, and a pretty short setlist (yes, they had an opening song and a closing song, and nothing there in-between with 30 minutes time slot), they were really worth of seeing. They didn't really try to fish points from audience, bar some clap-alongs and such, and for example their stage speech between the two songs was "Thanks.", in all its lengthy majesty.
I had no previous listening experience of the second opening artist, christian metalcore act
August Burns Red. I must admit, that their vocalist, Jake Luhrs, did some pretty good job getting the audience warmed up. Unlike Between the Buried and Me, this band, and especially the vocalist, really tried to make some connection with the audience; letting members of the audience, who seemed to know the lyrics, shout parts of the lyrics to the microphone personnally; spinning the mic from its cord in the vein of rock 'n' roll superstars; giving speeches longer than one word or even a sentence between the songs, etc. Also the rest of the band were pulling entertaining gimmicks throughout the show; the bassist, Dustin Davidson, throwing his bass around his shoulders and him and their lead guitarist slapping high-fives when walking past each other.
The downside was that the band was utterly boring. The songs were a string of some of the most unoriginal *chugga-chugga* -breakdowns, which flowed more or less smoothly from one to each other. The guitar leads were scarce and I guess I once heard one actual guitar solo - in the ending of the final song. Sure, the songs seemed perfect for fourteen-year-old metalheads to bang their head along, and during the show there were a few pretty impressive circle pits. Unfortunately there was really nothing that helped me to distinguish this band from the cornucopia of metalcore bands. Wikipedia tells me that "The band is mostly known for their heavy breakdowns and odd-meter riffs", but not counting the few off beats, the music seemed to be in 4/4 time throughout the set. And sure, heavy breakdowns, oh yeah, that's original. FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, heavy breakdowns are the point of metalcore bands! Unfortunately August Burns Red have yet to realize that you can't compose song that are based only on breakdowns. Contrasted to the oddball of the metalcore scene, Between the Buried and Me, who had just left the stage, this band was really a big disappointment.
And the performance of the band. I don't really want to go there. But I guess I have to, for a quick rant.
I thought that that idiotic bouncing died with the nu-metal bands after their demise in the turn of the millennia. Well, I guess this is due to the crabcore scene boys and other equally awesome things. But the bassist really wanted to just shut my eyes. Along with his constant, retarded bouncing and that horrible gay emo fringe, his bass playing was simply put, horrible, in the eyes of a fellow bassist. After the incredible, accurate fingerstyle playing of Dan Briggs, this bass playing was lightyears from it. Dustin, the bassist, gripped his low-worn instrument like a baseball bat, and whipped away all the 4 strings at the same time with a pick. It may seem cool to a teenage girl to see a guy play like that, but in the eyes of somebody who knows anything about instruments, you look like a retard and you sound horrible.
And the sounds. Oh dear, no. With my earplugs, it was all just low-end *brooooooomble* static with occasional brakdown stops. This was partly due to the fact that we were sitting in the place that highlights low frequencies, but it was pretty much the same in the floor level.
But all in all, with the band's on-stage gimmicks (synchronised crabcore headbangings, aforementioned high-fives, instrument throwings, etc.), really unoriginal material and a few horrible emo fringes and trendy streetwear, this was, in my humble opinion, an Idols band playing something that could be regarded as metal by some idiots. They got the teenage boys (and a few older fellas too) heated up in the circle pit, but as for me: they left me cold and bored.
The third act was the band which must have one of the most idiotic band names of our time;
Job for a Cowboy. As with August Burns Red, I had no idea whatsoever about these guys either. But after the previous shite, I was honestly positively surprised. They didn't play trendy, breakdown-heavy mallcore, but more uncompromising and definitely more impressive form of metal, more in vein of traditional death metal. These guys didn't have what it seemed to be a well-planned choreography, like ABR, but instead they seemed to be just performing there, without gimmicks, just playing music, the way it really should be. The music is what should be entertaining the audience the most, not what the band members are doing onstage.
The vocalist managed to deliver pretty great low, guttural-y vocals, but unfortunately his high-pitched shreaks were completely out of the reach of the mix, and once he switched vocal registers, it just seemed that the vocals ended abruptly. But this was probably the only problem with the sounds. Otherwise the different frequencies were pretty well defined - a feat on its own considering the difficult acoustics of the culture house - and the dry, thin sound of the kick drum was excellent, because now you could hear it well, it left room for the bass lines, and it didn't deliver that massive onslaught of low frequencies that the previous bands had problems with. Even from the back row seats, where we were listening at first, the bass levels were pretty ok and the balance fine.
Though JfaC was really not my cup of tea, I was left honestly impressed and entertained, especially after the boring mallcore show of ABR. I was not bored for one minute and they really did some great warming-up for the headliner. But biggest points the band recieves from the moustache of the guitarist Bobby Thompson. Oh god they were awful and awesome. :D He was just like young Tony Iommi. They really made my day.
And then, finally,
Lamb of God.
The set began with playbacked
The Passing, after which
In Your Words kicked in. The band played about a little more than a half of the newest album
Wrath, it making up about a little less than a half of the show (which makes pretty much sense, as this was the tour to promote the album). Rest of the songs were from Ashes of the Wake and Sacrament, and one older song, that Randy tried to make a singalong;
Ruin (well, people actually remembered the lyrics finally during the second chorus).
The band seemed to be in good mood, especially the bassist John Campbell (who had gotten incredibly much older-looking from what I had seen from the pictures), who was grinning for most of the show, and bobbing head as if just jamming where the rest of the band were headbanging like crazy.
Also Randy Blythe's tall, hunched-back figure jogged through the stage for the whole show and showed no signs of exhaustion, but instead delivered great vocals throughout. And the problem with Job for a Cowboy - inaudible high shreaks - were no longer problematic. Both low growls and high shrieks by Blythe were easily heard over the heavy instrumentation. The only problems were the few times that the mic picked up some feedback, but it happened only like two, or three times, so no biggie there.
The biggest problem was that the usually dry and tight drum sound of Chris Adler was now massive, bass-heavy thumping of an average modern metal band, and the problems with sounds arose again. Though the sounds were much better than with ABR, they were no match for the very clear and well-defined sounds of Cowboy. All the instruments and the vocals were somehow audible, but occasionally it was pretty hard to make them up from each other.
Luckily the performance made up most of the problems with the sounds. The band seemed to enjoy playing there, Randy made the audience give a big hand for the opening acts, and even encouraged people to do a big-ass circle pit during the final songs of the show. Also a Lamb of God -concert must, a wall of death, was witnessed. And during the finale, Willie Adler managed to pull one special guest from the VIP-area to the stage;
Children of Bodom guitarist-vocalist
Alexi Laiho. I guess the band wanted him to play guitar for the closing song, but he was either completely clueless how the song went or just plain too drunk to play. Anyhow, it was pretty hard to believe that there was the main hailed as one of the greatest guitarists of our time in the world onstage, but at least they seemed to be having fun.
All in all; this was one of my few metal concerts for the past two years, and I must say, that even though it was refreshing to see both old geezers and teenage girls in their trendy clothes and bleached hair headbanging together, this concert was a bit too long for me. Four hours of almost constant metalcore / death metal pummeling by four bands is a bit too much to take in one sitting. The problem became even more pronounced as the concert went along, as the music of Lamb of God is pretty straightforward, with dynamics almost devoid. Though great songs on their own right, they are pretty similar to each other, and thus, the show became a bit dull, as the only dynamics that there were, were the occasional clean interludes and the one separate guitar solo, the rest of the show just all the same battering. The same thing with ABR and JfaC. On my opinion Between the Buried and Me could've done better if situated in the middle of the rest of the bands, as they are not afraid to use clean interludes, honestly really weird rhythms and time signatures, synths, and rarely even clean vocals, making the music shitloads more interesting in the long run. Now it seemed that the band most worthwhile to see were just rushed off the stage only after two songs just to make room for the following trio of atonality.
Well, luckily three out of four bands put up, despite some minor setbacks, really an entertaining show for me, and I must admit that it was 35e well spent. I have no stamina to go to concerts like these every two weeks or a month anymore, but it's great to see them every now and then.
Job for a Cowboy
