Metallica @ Manchester MEN Arena (Feb 26 2009)

FOREWORD - (I never intended to write this much about this gig. I have been to much better shows in the past year and never spent even a tenth as much time writing about them. Sorry Megadeth, sorry Maiden.)

I went along to see METALLICA on their current European tour last night, this was only the 2nd date of the current leg of the tour, so I didn't know (or want to know) the setlist before I showed up. I'll try to keep this as a positive review as much as possible; I could easily turn into an old school grouch over this show, as they played mainly new material that I am not familiar with. But I am trying to see it from the band's P.O.V. and it must be refreshing for them to not have to go through the same old back catalog of songs that they have been playing for the past 25 years again and again. So there as only a handful of Metallica "staples" played at this show. I think they played 1 song off each of the first 3 records, 2 off "And Justice" and 3 off "The Black Album".

One more thing before I kick off - And this is a kind of admission here I guess - I have not heard ANYTHING from the last Metallica album, "Death Magnetic". Nope, not one single song. Does that make this review kind of pointless? Probably. One thing that it does mean, I can't give you a proper setlist (not without copy/pasting it from somewhere else on the internet first) because I genuinely don't know the names of the stuff that they played!

Anyway, here's what I recall.

THE SUPPORT BANDS
First things first - I never arrived at the venue until after the 2 support bands had already been on stage. I never saw THE SWORD. I never saw MACHINE HEAD. My loss I guess, right? Oh well. I got into the arena just as Metallica's road crew where on stage setting their stuff up, as well as sound checking.

THE STAGE
I walked into the arena area to see that the stage was directly in the centre of the place - not at one end of the arena, as is the usual for these kinds of shows. So, if you had a "Standing area" ticket (like me), you could pretty much stand anywhere around the degree perimeter of the stage area. I guess that means the people at the MEN had to have extra stage security at hand. Also, there was a huge lighting rig directly above the stage. I mean HUGE as in RIDICULOUSLY HUGE! The rig was clearly custom built for this tour, with 4 coffin-shaped boxes incorporated in it, each bearing about 20 lights inside. Also, there were another 4 identical coffin light rigs in each corner of the arena. This is a huge tour, the money being spent on the road crew and the transport costs for the stage and rig must be enormous. So much for the economic meltdown huh!

More about the actual stage area - As the stage was in the center of the arena, this kind of makes it "frontless", or should I say, every side of the stage is surrounded by crowds.. so every side of the stage was the front at some time or another. Once they were on stage, the band had to run around quite a lot to cater to each side of the arena. More about that later. The stage had 8 microphone stands placed around the perimeter (1 in each corner and 2 more along each side). The drumkit is in the centre stage and turns around to face a different edge of the stage periodically. Also the lighting rig drops up and down... to begin with it was way up as high as 50 feet in the air, then at one point it was literally dropped down as close as 10 feet from the stage. (I haven't even told you about the lasers or the flamethrowers yet!)

THE SETLIST
Okay, this is where it gets difficult. As I said earlier, I don't know any of the newer Metallica stuff, that is to say, I don't know any of their new material since they became arena rock gods. It's kind of been intentional that I haven't bothered with the newer stuff. Sorry. But, that said, the songs that they played at this show were really fast and had their "trademark sound" to them, you could clearly tell it was in the Metallica mould. If I was to sit down and listen to their new record I am sure that there would be a few tunes there that I could really come to appreciate. However, that doesn't change the fact that I didn't know ANY of their new stuff played last night.

Okay, I just did a quick search online and found the complete setlist:

That Was Just Your Life

The End Of The Line

For Whom The Bell Tolls

Wherever I May Roam

One

Broken, Beat And Scarred

Cyanide

Sad But True

Turn The Page (Bob Seger cover)

The Judas Kiss

The Day That Never Comes

Master Of Puppets

Blackened

Nothing Else Matters

Enter Sandman

See what I mean about "all new songs?". They played a bunch of them. Granted, the band gets to play pretty much a whole new set (with a couple of exceptions) and so everything gets to sounds really fresh. But let's be honest, how many people go to see Metallica specifically to hear the classics? It's a double edged sword of sorts. But their performance cannot be faulted... more about that below.

The REAL gig, for me at least, began with the encore.

THE ENCORE
Okay, this got me joining in for the 1st time all night - Metallica came back on stage and played BLITZKRIEG. I have never heard them play this song live before.... man, do they EVER play Blitzkrieg live? Fucking awesome rendition of it too, every solo in place. They redeemed themselves hugely by playing this song. And if that made things all better, then the next song made this old hack even more of a believer...

THEE CLAW'S HIGHLIGHT OF THEE NIGHT
Next up Metallica played THE PRINCE!!! The fucking Prince! They could have played any old cover as an encore and I would have been happy... Breadfan... Stone Cold Crazy... Am I Evil... The Wait... Crash Course... any of those. But they chose The Prince?! How obscure can you get? Most Metallica fans at this gig will have walked away at the end of the show saying "Oh man, that was a great gig! They played Blitzkrieg and Blackened!". Which is a fair shout, by all accounts. And I would wager that the newer fans there will have been very happy to have got such a huge number of the newer tracks played live by Hetfield & co... but really, the highlight of this concert is that METALLICA played THE PRINCE. I wager that this song went way over the heads of most people at this show... they won't have appreciated that Metallica gave an airing to one of their least-played tracks here tonight.

THE STRANGEST FINALE
The last song of the night (as usual) was SEEK & DESTROY. Metallica often close by playing that one. Strangely they decided to play this one with the house lights turned up high, supposedly so that the band could check that the crowd was all joining in with the chorus (what?).

But then, in a bizarre development, about 1 minute into the song, about 100 massive inflatable balls of all of sizes were dropped down onto the crowd. Surreal and unnecessary, this ended up with the stage area being swamped with huge black inflatable balls - the band then proceeded to wade their way around the stage to finish the song, kicking balls back into the crowd as they went. This then descended into farce, as people in the crowd became "Souvenir hunters", fighting with each other to catch a ball, pin it to the ground and uncork it and deflate it to take home. What the fuck is all that about??? This stunt has got to be costing a lot of money, all for the sake of a spectacle at the end of a Metallica live show? A ball drop? I've seen it all now.

THE PERFORMANCE
Considering that this is a big tour and that each date of the tour is going to be a "big event", Metallica have a lot of work to do on each and every night from now until the last night of the tour (they won't be finished in Europe with "The World Magnetic Tour" now until August, that 6 months of shows!), so this is going to be an expensive and techincally extravagant show to keep on the road for such an extended period of time. I hope that they are paying their road crew well (ha, yeah right).

The set began with a prolonged beams of laser light, for the entirity of the 1st song the stage (and so the whole arena) was flooded with the most amazing light displays. It was like something from the circus rather than a heavy metal gig, it was almost TOO much. Later in the set (during "One" I do believe) we had our 1st taste of the flamethrowers that are lined across the centre spread of the stage (either side of Ulrich's drumkit). That's a lot of propane right there. The heat off the flames went right across the arena like a wave, watch out for those James lad! Laser beams and flame throwers... being at this gig was like being in a 2 hour long rock video, with sore knees as a result.

Once on stage the band had a lot of work to do, the 3 guitarists must have covered some ground up on that stage, running about from one side to the other, entertaining each face of the arena. Hetfield looked especially sweaty up there under those hot stage lights, running across to and fro like a sprinter at times. There was a lot of time when they were all facing in the opposite direction to where I was stood, but then 2 minutes later Hetfield or 1 of the other guys would run back across and play a solo to another corner of the arena to "wow the crowd". So I have got to applaud their effort in that department, they will be fitter than ever by the end of this tour. The same must go for other bands (Iron Maiden comes to mind) who hit the road with a massive and elaborate stage show.

One thing wrong with the central stage situation - There is no designated area that you could call a moshpit. The stage took up so much of the floor area that there wasn't much room between the seating area (up each side of the arena) and where the stage began... 5 to 10 metres of room in between, tops. So that area was being used to both watch the band and to make your way around the arena to get to the toilets and to the bar. It made thrashing out to The Prince nearly impossible.

Okay, I've had enough reviewing this gig for today. I won't go into a long diatribe about the people in THE CROWD, I would only end up sounding bitter and twisted. It was a good show, but FAR too many new songs in the setlist. That's pretty much all you need to know about this gig.

Sunn @ Corsica Studios, London (02/22/09)

1) DRONE
2) THEME
3) THEME 2
4) DRONE
5) JUIBLEX (R)
6) A DRONE
7) EARTH
8) FEEDBACK
9) EPIC RIFF (L)
10) ISENGARD
11) D DRONE
12) DRONE
13) BWYTCH
14) MUSTAINE
15) BW
16) ETC.

Many thanks to Stephen & Greg for photo accreditation.

CALL FOR THE PRIEST.....

PRIEST FEAST, Manchester Apollo, 17/2/09
Testament, Megadeth and Judas Priest.
by H...

This gig was originally supposed to be held at the much larger Manchester Evening News Arena but the word on the street is that they couldn't sell all the tickets so hence the move to the much smaller (and better!) Apollo Theater!!!!



After a quick drink with some good old mates of ours in the pub round the back of the apollo (can't remember the name of it) we headed into the Apollo and could hear Testaments opening intro tape just starting so we watched them from up by the sound/light desk on the slope near the rear of the crowd and had an excellent view, see Testaments full setlist as posted by SJW on the last post.
Testament had a better sound this time around, but never had the intensity of the liverpool show last week, they had a 45 minute set which could have done with more old songs but they've got a new album to plug to the masses I guess, a very good new album might I add and still a good setlist!





We got right the front for Megadeth, it had to be done. I've never seen Megadeth play a bad show and with Testament sounding really good, I really couldn't wait for Megadeth!!!!
Megadeth were tight as fuck, that's the only way I can describe it, they played for an hour but left me wanting a proper headlining set!

Megadeth's set was...
01. Sleepwalker
02. Wake Up Dead
03. Take No Prisoners
04. A Tout Le Monde
05. Washington Is Next
06. She Wolf
07. In My Darkest Hour
08. Hangar 18
09. Symphony of Destruction
10. Peace Sells
11. Mechanix
12. Holy Wars

I'm not a big fan of "She Wolf" or "A Tout Le Monde" but they worked well with the rest of the songs.
I can't pick a favourite song of this particular set but "Take No Prisoners" and "Mechanix" made me bang my head the hardest!!! Mechanix's intro of Dave Mustaine saying, "If there's one thing i want you to leave here tonight with, it's that this is NOT the Four Horsemen...this is MECHANIX!!" Fucking Awesome, I hope Mustaine keeps this line up for a while longer!!!!



Megadeth were always gonna be a hard act to follow, or so I thought...


I witnessed Judas Priest's Graspop performance in belgium last year, it was quite disappointing, there was no energy, no power, band members looked knackered and looked like they couldn't be arsed playing, the crowd were shit and fast classics seemed slower than usual.
Priest have ALWAYS been in my top 3 metal bands since I was a kid, after Graspop I felt like I couldn't be bothered with them anymore, I kept saying to myself "If they can't be arsed then why should I?" A few weeks later when I gave them another chance with an airing of their classic 1984 album "Defenders Of the Faith" it did exactly what it said on the case and that was Defend The Fucking Faith!!!! I couldn't stay mad at them any longer. It's an amazing album and some of the tunes from it have been dusted off for their current tour!!!!



Judas Priest fucking ruled at Priest Feast, the energy, the speed, the effort and showmanship was back, it looked like they were having a ball up there which made the crowd feel more involved!!!
The setlist was the same as the Graspop but played with lots more enthusiasm and they had more leather changes! Halford had a different leather jacket for every song!!!!

Priest's Setlist was....

Dawn Of Creation/Prophecy
Metal Gods
Eat Me Alive
Between The Hammer And The Anvil
Devil's Child
Breaking The Law
Hell Patrol
Death
Dissident Aggressor
Angel
The Hellion/Electric Eye
Rock Hard, Ride Free
Sinner
Painkiller (the best live version I've ever heard of it!!!)
Hell Bent For Leather
The Green Manalishi (with the two pronged crown!!!!)
You've Got Another Thing Coming

That setlist contains some obscure tracks which seems to me it's been picked for proper Priest fans, I just wished they'd added "Freewheel Burning" and "Victim Of Changes"!!!!



They intend to play their new album "Nostradamus" in its entirety at selected shows on the next leg of their next tour, apparently complete with costume changes and actors on stage like a proper theatrical play and I'm not sure what to make of that rumour but I think Priest might make an amazing job out of it!!!!

Priest Feast: Manchester, England

TESTAMENT
Stage Time: 18:15
Setlist:
For The Glory
Over The Wall
The New Order
More Than Meets The Eye
The Persecuted Don't Forget
DNR
Three Days
Practice What You Preach
The Formation Of Damnation

Testament - Liverpool O2 Academy, February 12th 2009

The 1st "big metal tour" to hit the UK this year has swung past our hometown, albeit only a third of it. FUCKING TESTAMENT!


Here is the set list from TESTAMENT's show in Liverpool tonight (February 12th 2009):

1) For The Glory of...
2) The Persecuted Won't Forget
3) Over The Wall
4) The New Order
5) First Strike Is Deadly
6) Dangers Of The Faithless
7) Into The Pit
8) Practice What You Preach
9) Alone In The Dark
10) D.N.R.
11) 3 Days In Darkness
12) The Formation Of Damnation
13) More Than Meets The Eye
14) Dog Faced Gods
15) Disciples

This was a TESTAMENT-only show in amongst the current PRIEST FEAST tour dates, so the Liverpool show had a much longer set than is being offered elsewhere.

They played a great set, 15 songs in a row, no encores. They never played Trial By Fire, they never played Apocalyptic City... but hey, you can't have everything! I thought that the mix wasn't very clear, the vocals seemed a bit muffled. That aside, it was nice to see a proper old school thrash band playing in Liverpool. I put the performance up their next to MORBID ANGEL's show that we saw in Wolverhampton last summer. 25 years after they formed and TESTAMENT are still out their, still touring and giving a fucking great show. Well in lads!

Many thanks to the good people of Liverpool's O2 Academy for arranging photo accreditation for THEE CLAW.






Question: Do TESTAMENT always close their shows by playing a tape of "I Left My Heart In San Francisco" by Tony Bennett as they leave the stage? If so, nice touch!

Crawe / Dragged Into Sunlight / Bendal Interlude / Charger @ Korova, Liverpool

Thursday July 3rd, 2008.

Here's some words & photos from last night's gig in Liverpool city centre. This 4 band event was held at a place called Korova which is right in the centre of the city, surrounded by trendy nightclubs full of disco and pop lovers. Korova has a reputation for being expensive and "snobby" but I've been there a few times for gigs now and I love it as a venue.

It seemed like there was a good turn out for the show, but the concert space Korova is such a small area that is can't have been much more than 50 people in total. The people who did turn up seemed to have their favourite bands who they'd turned out to watch and so a lot of they decided to come and go between sets, which is a shame.

CRAWE
4 guys from Yorkshire who are good friends of ours. This is the 1st time that I've seen them play and they did a fine job too... very slow doom with piercing Anal Cunt style vocals. More of the same, please!

DRAGGED INTO SUNLIGHT
Atmospheric black metallers from Liverpool. They played in pitch darkness with lighting from candles and the occassional flash bulb from their crowd's cameras. None of the band wanted to turn and face the audience. Very grim. They were noticably louder than Crawe, but I think that was mainly because the sound engineer had put the board levels right up! I don't know if they just played one long song for their entire set, about half an hour or so of constant black metal riffing.

BENDAL INTERLUDE
Another Liverpool band on tonight's bill, they had Foxy from SSS performing vocals with them. A more rock-orientated sound than the 2 bands that preceded them, B.I. had a bigger crowd and shorter songs!

CHARGER
Stoke's favourite Sludge band played a great set in the tiny Korova venue. The crowd pushed right up to the stage for their set so it seemed like everyone was on top of one another.
Approximate setlist: The Pride Of Essex / Shake Baby Shake / Cult Verses Cunt / Ultra Violet Flyer / The Amputee / God Made Us In The Image Of His Ass / The Bereavment Dividend

As you can probably tell I am not one for reviews! Good gig though - 9 hours later and my ears are still ringing.

Suffocation @ Manchester Music Box, 24th April 2008

Last night's Suffocation gig in Manchester was total death metal heaven! What a show, well worth the trip. This was Thee Claw's 25th gig of 2008 and 9th gig in April alone.


I was most impressed by the energy of the band and the way that the crowd really got into the gig. Plenty of pits and stagediving! And I don't think I've seen such a constant crowd surge throughout a gig for a long time.

The setlist was something like:

1) Thrones Of Blood
2) Seeds Of The Suffering
3) Abomination Reborn
4) Catatonia
5) Liege Of Inveracity
6) Surgery Of Impalement
7) Bind Torture Kill
8) Infecting The Crypts
9) Brood of Hatred
10) Entrails Of You
11) Pierced From Within
12) Despise The Sun

I really should leave it to THE SKUM to give you a proper run-down of the gig since Suffocation is one of his favourite bands.


It was great being there with 4 men, 8 claws! Our old friend PETCH joined us for the gig, he is the original claw... and that man sure loves his death metal. Hail to THE PETCH!







SUFFOCATION is:

Frank Mullen - vocals
Terrance Hobbs - guitar
Guy Marchais - guitar
Derek Boyer - bass
Mike Smith - drums

Church Of Misery vs Hard Gay

Here's some pics of us with Japanese rockers Church Of Misery, taken @ Roadburn last weekend (20th April 2008).


I love these photos.

For the record, Church Of Misery is:

Hideki Fukasawa - vocals & synthesizers (2004-)
Tatsu Mikami - bass (1995-)
Junji Narita - drums (2003-)
Tom Sutton - guitars (2006-)

I've got plenty of great photos taken during their set at Roadburn last weekend... I would go as far as to say they played the gig of the festival (if you were lucky enough to be able to get into the room to see them play that is!).

C.O.M. Setlist from Roadburn:

1 Killfornia
2 I, Motherfucker
3 Shotgun Boogie (New song)
4 Red Ripper Blues
5 Sick Of Living
6 Candy Man
7 El Padrino (New song)
8 War Is Our Destiny (Saint Vitus cover)
Encore:
9 Hurricane (Pentagram cover)

Boris @ Ruby Lounge, Manchester

I almost forgot to write a little something about the Boris gig that we went along to watch on Monday night. It was a strange little gig, held at a strip club in Manchester that is called The Ruby Lounge. This gig was memorable for being our 7th day of gigs in a row. But unfortunately it is also memorable for other reasons, not quite so positive.

You see, this gig seems to have been a little poorly thought out. No wait, let me rephrase that. The *venue* seems to have been a little poorly thought out. There was nothing wrong with the performance from Japanese rockers Boris, they played the same setlist as was used 2 days earlier at the gig in Tilburg at Roadburn. And also we have been to many gigs in Manchester over the past year that have been organised by Lamb & Wolf (the same promoters who arranged using the spectacular Zion Arts Centre for the recent Earth gig that was held there, they also arranged the amazing Boris gig at a small church in Manchester city centre in June 2007), so I know from personal experience that these are promoters of high quality. So I am sure that there must be some other factor involved.

Basically, it was nigh-on impossible to see the band on stage. The Ruby Lounge is used as a strip club (so I am lead to believe anyway) and as such it is set out quite differently than a regular concert venue. The area where Boris played at the Ruby Lounge was sort of in a corner of the venue in an area surrounded by pillars and posts. There is no stage area there meaning that the Japanese band could not be seen by anybody but those lucky enough to be at the front of the crowd or the tallest of people stood no more than 4 or 5 rows back. Everyone else had to be content with simply being there while the gig went on in front of them, yet out of sight. Very frustrating.

I used a sneaky photographer's trick to get close to the action, hoping to get to the stage and snap a few pictures of the band. However this didn't go down very well with the already vexed Mancunian crowd and I was ignored by a lot of them when I asked to be allowed through. I did manage to get way over to the side of the stage for a while, but I found myself stood with speaker cabs obscuring my view of the band. Not one to be put off by speakers, I put my camera out at arm's length - around the back of the amps - and snapped away towards the unseen band. Here's the one decent photo that I was able to get:


The guy in the picture is Michio Kurihara, who is acting as lead guitar for Boris during the current tour. He was their collaborator on the recent "Rainbow" LP, and he also was on stage with them at Roadburn.

By the way, this hasn't been meant as a swipe at the promoters in any way. As I already said, I've been to plenty of the shows that Dave & Selina have put on and they've always been great. I think that maybe they're trying out new venues or something. But, as a result of the strange "stage arrangement" for the show, this might have suited Boris quite well. They are a band who bring out stacks of releases all of the time, often bring out tour only vinyl and sometimes they'll release records that are limited to about 500 copies - ridiculous for a band as popular as they have become. And so I am guessing that playing a gig that no one can actually see would somehow be right up their street.

Current tour setlist:

Buzz-In
Laser Beam
Pink
Statement (complete with baby-laughing intro)
Floor Shaker
My Neighbor Satan
You Put Up Your Umbrella
Untitled
Rainbow
Farewell

King Diamond Joins Down!

Photo by the oh-so-awesome Kelly Lee:


Their version of The Family Ghost is a thing to behold!

The setlist that Down have been playing during their 2008 European tour is something along the lines of:

01 Underneath Everything
02 The Path
03 Lysergik Funeral Procession
04 Pillars Of Eternity
05 Three Suns And One Star
06 Lifer (complete with a dedication to Dimebag Darrell)
07 Swan Song
08 Mourn
09 Ghost Along The Mississippi
10 Learn From This Mistake
11 N.O.D.
12 Beneath The Tides
13 On March The Saints
14 Losing All
15 Eyes Of The South

Encore
16 Doob Interlude
17 New Orleans Is A Dying Whore
18 Stone The Crow
19 Jail
20 Bury Me In Smoke

Note:
At the end of Bury Me In Smoke other people (support bands, drum techs, roadies, etc) take to the stage and play the end of the song while the members of DOWN walk about thanking the crowd and waving their goodbyes. After the stage has cleared ANSELMO returns to the stage and sings the last lines of "Nothing in Return (Walk Away)" with the crowd joining in, signifying the end of the show.

Iron Maiden Setlist Spoiler

SJW sent me this photo earlier today from Tokyo; as maiden were playing in Makuhari Messe he wrote the setlist down on his claw to send home, how awesome is that.
I know that with this being a show containing a lot of Maiden favourites, some people will be avoiding the setlist, so click here if you want to see it.

Deviated Instinct, Bradford, 2nd Feb 08 (Patchie)

I've been into Deviated Instinct since I was about 11 or 12, when I first heard "Behind the Scaffold" on the Friday Rock Show on Radio One, a session they'd recorded for John Peel.
My rather tender age at the time coupled with the fact that I was a pure metalhead meant that by the time I started sneaking into Liverpool's Planet X club a couple of years later, Deviated Instinct were long gone, and I never got the chance to see them. When I heard earlier this year that they were playing in Bradford, only their second gig since they decided to get a wash in 1993, I was besides myself with excitement; what's more, support was to come from Extinction of Mankind, whose Northern Scum has had a lot of airtime in my house.

Warprayer were first up, total British hardcore/anarcho sound will keep my eye out for them, then Extinction of Mankind played a blistering set, Scoot's last gig before he goes off to Brazil or something. Then what everyone is waiting for, Deviated instinct come onstage, opening with Resurrection Encore. They sound amazing. Putrid Scum, Judas Cancer.... halfway through I have to hand my stuff and the camera over to SJW so I can get down the front for Slow Death Suck. I'd already seen the setlist (it was on the stage in front of us) so I knew there wouldn't be any Behind the Scaffold, but closing the set with a double whammy of Sacrecrow and Rock N Roll Conformity made me very happy. We cajoled them into staying onstage for one more song;
They had to do Putrid Scum again because they had only practised the songs on the setlist.

It didn't matter though, they sounded great and it was well worth the trip over to Bradford for.

"Why weren't you this good in 87?"
"Because we were always drunk".

that Deviated Instict setlist in full:
The Resurrection Encore
House of Cards
Putrid Scum
Despair
Judas Cancer
Slow Death Suck
Stormcrow
Beyond Pain
Conquest for Eternity
Scarecrow
Rock N Roll Conformity
Putrid Scum (again)

Links:
Warprayer
Extinction of Mankind
Deviated Instinct

Couple more photos here.

Dark Tranquility

Last Sunday night (3rd February 2008) we spent some cash to get into the Liverpool Barfly and took in a bit of melodic death metal in the form of Sweden's Dark Tranquility. They are currently on tour in the UK promoting their new album "Fiction", support from Finnish band Omnium Gathering, who I'd never heard of before (and it's difficult finding much info about them online). The night before we'd been to a crust punk gig in Bradford (see below) and then suddenly we're at a Scandinavian metal concert. The only connection is that both bands use guitars.




Dark Tranquility's set was something of a whistle-stop tour of their "greatest hits", performed in front of a surprisingly healthy-sized Liverpool crowd. Are there really that many D.T. fans in the north west of England? From the amount of audience participation that accompanied each song I can only guess that the answer is a resounding 'yes'. The band played hard and their Scouse fans joined in. It was quite a mixed crowd too, as is usually the case on Merseyside - young metallers and old enjoying seeing a band on their own doorstep, a (nowadays) rare Liverpool leg of a UK metal tour.

Starting the set with "Terminus" (track 3 on their latest album "Fiction", fact fans), Dark Tranquility showed class and belted out song after song, fitting in 16 or 17 tunes in an hour and a half. Singer Mikael Stanne (previously of Hammerfall) spent a lot of the set down on the blocks next to the crash barrier at the very foot of the stage, shaking hands with the masses in front of him. He also managed to stand on the house photographers a few times too (that's what you get for flashing lights in his face for over an hour eh!). Bassman Martin Henriksson also kept the cameramen busy with fits of dreadlocked headbanging. It seemed as though the band ran through the set quickly with only a short break towards the end before an encore ("Lethe" and "The New Build") and that was that.

Setlist:

Termimus, The Lesser Faith, The Treason Wall, The Wonders At Your Feet, Lost To Apathy, Hedon, Inside The Paticle Storm, The Endless Feed, Focus Shift, Misery's Crown, Punish My Heaven, Therin, Blind At Heart, My Negation, Final Resistance, Lethe, The New Build.

Check out Dark Tranquility if you are a fan of the musical stylings of bands like At The Gates, Arch Enemy and In Flames.

We're really hitting the gigs at the moment, 2 more at the end of this week and then Maiden the week after that.

Heaven & Hell @ M.E.N. Arena, Manchester

THEE CLAW went along to the M.E.N. in Manchester last night to see HEAVEN & HELL. As usual we got wrecked and had a ball. Sabbath with Dio on vocals was pretty sweet - we got pretty close to the front of the crowd when the main act came on, we were stood over on Tony Iommi's side of the stage, not 10 feet away from him. At the end of the gig he threw a handful of picks into the crowd, I got one. Go me!

DIO rules. What a guy he is. His vocals are sharp, crystal sharp. After the show we went along to a rock night in JILLYS in Manchester city centre and the DJ played the song "Heaven & Hell" for us... the whole room of 100 or so people must have been along to the show to see Sabbath play because when it came to the chorus everybody joined in with the singing.

ICED EARTH and LAMB OF GOD were support acts for H&H on this tour. I enjoyed the Iced Earth set, Ripper Holmes' sounded great. I wasn't too taken with the Lamb Of God singer, he kept asking the Manchester crowd to start circle pits and stuff like that. Sorry my friend, it doesn't work like that around these parts. Plus the crowd was mainly made up of people's dads who had come out to see Sabbath, I don't think that many 50-year-old men have much interest in circle pitting.

Heaven & Hell setlist (guessing):

1. "E5150"
2. "The Mob Rules"
3. "Children of the Sea"
4. "Lady Evil"
5. "The Sign Of the Southern Cross"
6. "Voodoo"
7. "The Devil Cried"
8. "Computer God"
9. "Falling Off the Edge of the World"
10. "Shadow of the Wind"
11. "Die Young"
12. "Heaven and Hell"
13. "Neon Knights"

Dunno if we'll ever get another chance to see these guys together as a group again but it was so good to be able to grab this opportunity to go along and watch them while we could! A five star performance, this was definitely one of my gigs of thee year.

Metalliclaw

Another day, another gig... this time we got to visit Wembley Stadium in London to see some band called METALLICA.


So we went to Wembley stadium yesterday morning, set off from Liverpool at about 8am and arrived in London for about half 11. Not bad timing. The Metallica gig was great, excellent weather throughout the day a good line-up too, and as a bonus we got to see the new Wembley Stadium as well. What a place that is.


Support on this day was from HIM, Machine Head and Mastodon. I wasn't there to see any of them so I didn't pay that much attention, sorry. I took a look at MASTODON though, they were pretty good. They played a set at Donington earlier this year (when me and PATCHIE sneaked in there without tickets) but we turned up late and only caught the back end of their set. So it was good to finally see them properly. I used to be into MACHINE HEAD when I was a lad, but I guess my musical tastes have changed somewhat in the meantime. I am not a big fan of American frontmen shouting "LET ME HEAR YA!" every 5 minutes during a gig, so Rob Flinn definitely wasn't my cup of tea.

Metallica's setlist (at a guess):

Creeping Death
For Whom The Bell Tolls
Kirk Solo #1
Sad But True
Disposable Heroes
Kirk Solo #2
The Unforgiven
And Justice for All
The Memory Remains
The Four Horsemen
Rob Solo
Orion - Whoa!!!!
Fade To Black
Master Of Puppets
Kirk Solo #3
Battery
No Leaf Clover
Nothing Else Matters
One
Enter Sandman
Whiplash
Seek and Destroy

Apologies to PATCHIE and SKUM for nearly falling asleep at the wheel and killing us all on the M6 during the drive home. I don't mind doing that kind of stuff when I am driving on my own because at least then it's only me and my life that gets disrupted. It's a different matter when there's other people in the car and I start tripping balls from lack of sleep. Sorry guys.

Boris @ Sacred Trinity Church, Manchester, 26th June 2007

Tue 26 Jun – BORIS
Tonight's gig - Japanese rockers Boris playing in a small church in Manchester.

Very unusual gig! Well, unusual compared with most other concerts I guess; I have heard of, and seen, church gigs before, this wasn't unique by a long shot. But it was still very interesting watching a band like Boris playing in such a tiny venue. After all, they play at Festivals for thousands of people at one time, so a small venue of just over 100 people is a bit like a break from the norm.

The show was good, nice enough venue, as far as churches go this one seemed quite liberal. A liberal church! You heard it here first. There's a strange piece of artwork on the wall in there of what appears to be a vampire biting a girl's neck, a big old piece of canvas art with fangs and blood and all that. In a church. Underneath it there's a small quote from the bible, something about wives honouring their husbands, next to it was a £250 price tag to buy the artwork. So, churches are also being used as vampiric art house these days. I wonder if the Vatican knows about all this?

Let's get to the Boris gig and their set. We saw the support band, Day for Airstrikes, we watched for a good while from the back of the room through a crowd at least, they sounded fine to me. After they were finished on the stage, the area was taken over with guys acting as roadies for the Boris performance. Then 2 of the band came down to the stage area (the altar) - it was Takeshi & Wata, who play the guitars. They started the set soon after, just the 2 of them. But no drummer... where was he? Then my gig buddy tapped me on the shoulder and I turned just in time to see Atsuo leap over a pew and past us, marched to his kit and away they went.

After they played Pink Takeshi beckoned everyone to come close to the band, everyone piled forward and stood about 2 metres away from the stage for the rest of the show.

Boring sidenote: I kneeled in 'seiza' (the formal japanese kneeling position) under the pulpit for the whole set from there on in, this was because it was the only space I could find to get a good view of the band because space was so cramped. It was very ironic to be watching a Japanese band while kneeling in seiza. I got some great photos from that point of view.

The set list, all you doom geeks out there, went something like:

1. Farewell
2. Rainbow
3. Pink
4. (song with Japanese title)
5. Ibistu
6. Sun Flower Rain
7. Just Abandoned My-Self
8. over 30 minutes of Flood



The above vid is a clip that I took of the last song - a song which was about half an hour long - this is the intro of the second part of "Flood", you can see from that we were quite close to the stage area, about 2 or 3 meters away from Wata and her Les Paul. I took a few more vids and a pile of photos too (mainly of Wata). What can I say: I'm a Wataphile.

Anyway, great show. I enjoyed it a lot anyway. Kudos to the promoters. You don't get many doom metal gigs in churches, especially in Northwest England, so when they come around you should go to em if you can. I look forward to the next one. The merchandise at Boris shows is always very good too, I got myself a new double vinyl record by them called "Doomriders vs Boris", which will probably be played once and put away on my shelf with the rest of my Boris records, and I got a nice tshirt as well. The white one.

We've got tickets to see Boris again next Monday when they play in London - I dunno right now if I can make it along because of work commitments, I also dunno whether it's going be be such a good idea traveling to London for a 3rd time in 2 weeks! But I do like Boris a lot, and it would looked good on my "Gigs attended in 2007" list, so perhaps I will make it along after all. Who knows! If not, well, I have 4 tickets spare for the London show that will inevitably go to waste.

Trouble, Leeds Rio's - Tue 29 May

Went to see Trouble play in Leeds last night. What a show, possibly my best of 2007 so far (and that's saying something!). Loud as hell too - as I write this it's a full 24 hours later and my ears are still ringing.

The setlist included a couple of tracks of the new album, and each time they were about to play one of the new numbers Eric Wagner would stop for a second and tell the crowd "You all won't know this one yet". Sorry Eric but I kinda already have heard it... several times! And it's awesome! But don't worry though, I will be buying a copy of the CD when it finally gets released ok dude.

The setlist for the show was something like:

R.I.P.
The Sleeper
Touch The Sky
Plastic Green Head
Assassin
Pray For The Dead / Endtime
Mindbender
Goin' Home
End of My Daze
Memories Garden
All Is Forgiven
Revelation (Life and Death)
Psychotic Reaction

Encore #1:
Bastards Will Pay

Encore #2:
???

They came back on stage for the second encore and said that they don't usually do a 2nd one, this was the first second encore of the tour. I dunno what they played though haha, little help? The song of the gig though (for me at least) was Mindbender.

All through the show Eric was smoking & drinking and occasionally disappearing off stage and then reappearing after about 30 seconds. Also he kept stopping between songs to grab hold of girls in the audience. White metal you say? Sure, whatever! Whatever you want to call it though, this gig is one of the best I have ever been to.

Melvins @ Manchester Academy, 13th December 2006

I am a bit delicate right now, so this will be a short post today. Melvins last night was great stuff, me and Patchie got absolutely hammered on Guinness and we managed to get right to the front at the gig and leaned on the stage with slack jaws watching 2 drummers keeping it together and performing some excellent tunes. King Buzzo kicked me at one point for grabbing at his feet like a drunken fool.

They had been playing with 3 other bands on the night - PORN (The Men Of), Flipper and Big Business. I remember seeing a bit of the Flipper set (we showed up to the venue really late, blind drunk) to see Krist Novoselic (ex-Nirvana) jumping up and down on stage with people from the audience up there on stage surrounding him.

Earlier on in the evening we sat listening to Darkthrone in the Grand Central pub in Manchester. They have got the country's best pub jukebox. Oh and we borrowed a bike and I got a mogger down Oxford Road. Scousers on tour.

God my head is sore today, and I can't hear either. I think that I dropped my phone in the back of the car on the ride home. I hope I did anyway otherwise its gone forever.


Melvins setlist for this gig:

1. The Talking Horse
2. The Bloated Pope
3. Civilised Worm
4. Oven
5. Set Me Straight
6. D.C.H.
7. Sky Pup
8. Blood Witch
9. Let It All Be
10. A History Of Drunks
11. Rat Faced Granny
12. The Hawk
13. You've Never Been Right
14. A History Of Bad Men
15. Revolve
16. Hooch
17. The Bit
18. Lovely Butterfly