Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Updates

It's been awhile since I blogged. I blame Facebook, which I never thought I'd get into, but I've reconnected with some old friends, so it's worked out okay.

Now on to important stuff:

Two concert reviews. The first is Lacuna Coil, the second Clutch. Consider it a study in juxtaposition.

My buddy, Stormwater Bob, and I saw LC with three opening bands--Dommin, Seventh Void, and Kill Hannah. Dommin and Kill Hannah were entertaining merely for their absurdity. Dommin has got to be the most "emo" thing I have ever seen in my life. Black clothes, hair in their faces, and roses tied to EVERYTHING. At least they knew their place in the food chain, when the singer stated "We're supposed to get you guys warmed up for Lacuna Coil." Their CDs were $4. Their posters were free.

Seventh void was the bright spot in this parade of self-loathing. They sounded like a cross between Soundgarden, Skid Row, and Corrosion of Conformity. And they looked like they could've (and happily would've) removed and devoured the still-beating hearts of the guys in Dommin.

Kill Hannah...not real sure what to say here. Lasers attached to the guitar, the lead singer in luminous pink eye make-up. Their last two songs were okay.

Finally, Lacuna Coil came on. I'm still not positive I'm a fan. Sure, Christina Scabbia's easy to look at, but for one thing, they were too polished for a heavy metal band, and for another, they had several technical problems--bad luck when you're the headliner. It's like hair metal took that final step and stopped just looking like women.

All in all, the whole show was a little too emo for me, as evidenced by the fact that the only two covers played all night were Depeche Mode songs. I'm sure everybody in the pit went home afterwards and cut themselves while writing sad, insipid poetry about how they'll never amount to being a part of anything as wonderful as Dommin.

As for the Clutch concert, I'm still wrestling with whether or not NIN was better live. Because, up until that point, Nine Inch Nails was the best concert I'd seen.

Let's start with the openers:

Lionize. They are one HELL of a reggae band, considering there's only one person in the band that could possibly be of obvious Jamaican descent. The others looked like they had previously worked in a food storage warehouse somewhere in Ohio. But Stormwater Bob and I rotated their CDs in the player in his car for the rest of the trip.

Next came Baroness. The only two words spoken by anybody in the band came at the end of their set when the singer announced, "We're Baroness," as they walked offstage. The rest of the time was spent in a kind of stream-of-consciousness instrumental of angry, guitar-driven, wall-of-sound state. Good music to hate to. Odd mix of musicians though. The guitarist and bassist looked like members of White Lion, the singer and drummer from Phish.

And then Clutch came on. I've never seen so much energy feeding the audience at a show. The highlight of the night was watching Shirtless Guy go down after taking an elbow to the neck in the pit. Oh, and they dropped a crowd surfer on his head. And this was with less than a thousand people (our local club is not a big venue.) Apparently, Clutch fans (of which I now enumerate myself one) are loyal. And rabid.