Concert Review - Slayer, Gojira, 4Arm - 11/19/13 at the Fillmore, Silver Spring, MD

So, everyone I knew was really excited about this concert. I was not, because going to this meant missing the Overkill/ Kreator/ A Sound of Thunder show on Friday, which had been on my calendar for months, and for which I had already promised to start a pit for ASOT's "Blood Vomit." So ever since realizing this conflict, I had been cursing "F**king Slayer" all over the place. Because I had never seen Slayer, and figured I needed to before my chance is gone.

Add to that the scheduling nightmare that is my three-job-single-parent life, and I was not a happy camper long before the day of the show.

Day of I actually started to feel better - the sheer excitement of just getting to leave normal life behind for a few hours and go to a show got me feeling a bit amped as I was driving from my second work shift of the day to the venue. But I had hardly gotten inside before my mood turned down again. The place was already packed and it was only the middle of 4Arm's set. With all my energy having been channeled into the two demanding intellectual projects that loom over the rest of my workload, I had nothing to offer anyone around me - I didn't want to see, hear or talk to anyone, not even people I knew. I just wanted to get my food from the bar, see Gojira's set and go take a nap.

I glanced at 4Arm as I waited to place an order for chicken in waffles (yes, that's what it was actually called, and yes, the chicken was literally in the waffle dough itself). 4Arm was fast, thundering thrash that made the bar shake, a pretty good distraction from hunger and from the annoyance of being surrounded by people.

After they stopped shaking the walls, I was able to place my order and then some obligatory hellos were said. S talked to people and I watched the sign that displays the numbers for food orders. I finally got my food...right as Gojira took the stage, of course. They were louder and heavier than I expected - perhaps a side effect of the place being tuned for thundering thrash metal that night - and also had a much stronger groove than you get from listening to their recordings. Their performance of "Flying Whales" turned out to be possibly the heaviest thing I've ever heard (and I'm comparing this to bands like Suicide Silence). To my disappointment, the weird guitaring at the beginning that sounds like whalesong wasn't audible, but in the bridge near the end, I could just pick them out, like a whale struggling in a net of riffs, and then something that I can only refer to as a bass drop flattened the place. It was the heaviest matter in the universe, for sure. Next or shortly thereafter they played "L'Enfant Sauvage," a song from their new album that gets a lot of radio play, but that I never really got into. Live it sounded pretty cool, though - the whimsical little melodies and the tribal rhythm of the drums definitely gave it the feeling of a "wild child" running free. Later on I heard someone talking about them and saying they had sounded better somewhere else, and that's probably true - at this venue, the subtleties of their music were drowned out in the loudness and heaviness. Still, having never seen them before, I enjoyed this taste of their live sound.

After their set, people started surging off the floor toward the bars and bathrooms, and my frayed nerves found the constant contact incredibly irritating, so I tried to stake out a spot by a pillar at the back where no would need to brush past me, but as the floor filled up again it started to be so crowded that even there people were pushing past me. By the time Slayer started, I was so fed up with I thought I might punch anyone (besides S) who spoke to or touched me. Perhaps I should have gone in the pit to vent my frustration - but I probably wouldn't have emerged in one piece, considering the number of football-player types at the show and the intensity of the music. Besides, as I've said before, it's not right to be angry in the pit.

Slayer finally started, and they were, from an objective standpoint, amazing. I don't listen to Slayer enough to really judge, but as far as I could tell they were spot on musically; they were loud and intense, and augmented the effect with blistering strobe light effects that might as well have been machine gun fire. I swear they played even faster than their recordings - amazing that after over 30 years they can still produce that kind of ferocity. The effect of the upside down crosses hanging at angle, which made it look as though they were diving toward the ground, was pretty cool, too. In a better mood, I might have had a great time. As it was, I bobbed my head to some particularly catchy moments, but mostly stood there waiting for it to be over. With the crowd and the lights and the moshing, it was like standing in a sauna. Finally I excused myself to the bathroom, and sat downstairs for most of the second half of the set. Then, I heard the opening chords of "Raining Blood," and S texted me about the same, and I knew I couldn't miss this - so I went upstairs and stood just back from the door - away from the crowd - and caught the last part of the song. I joined S on the floor for the encore - "South of Heaven" and "Angel of Death." I don't get "South of Heaven"; it sounds like the wimpy cousin of "Raining Blood." But "Angel of Death" was intense.

Even though I hated being there, I'm glad I went, and not just because now I can check seeing Slayer off my bucket list. They were phenomenal; of the three of the Big Four that I've seen (Megadeth and Anthrax being the others) they by far put on the most vicious and merciless show. I'm a little disappointed actually that my bad mood prevented me from enjoying them. But at least I enjoyed Gojira, so the evening wasn't a total downer.

Next show: Rob Zombie and Scar the Martyr on 11/27, I hope!

Concert Review - Lamb of God, Decapitated, The Acacia Strain - 6/19/13 at Ram's Head Live, Baltimore, MD

So, to make up for the kind of lame night of metalcore the week before last, here's a review of a solid night of killer metal (and metalcore). Although none of these are among my favorite bands, I knew that Lamb of God would put on an intense show, and both the openers had things going for them that made me curious to see them, so this promised to be a solid night.

I thought the Ram's Head website said Decapitated was going on first, so we were surprised to see The Acacia Strain come out out just a few minutes after we got to the venue (they started 15 minutes late, though). I had been hoping to see them live for some time, cause they are quite heavy and brutal (and that's pretty much all they are.) Their sound was very low and heavy, a churning maelstrom. The first song was basically like one long breakdown, slow, crushingly heavy, the vocals kind of in the background. The vocals were utterly incomprehensible anyway (which I don't mind; I read some of their song lyrics a year or two ago and then decided I didn't want to know what their songs are about). Every couple of songs, the singer would go on a half-intelligible rant, telling us things like, "Don't hate yourself; hate everyone else," and "There's too much positivity going on in music today." I thought they were good as an opener - a nice heavy start to the evening - but I don't think they would have held my interest for a headline-length set. I started to get bored of the plodding heavy parts where they weren't doing anything besides being really heavy. They had a very few different moments like a few seconds of melodic guitar (omg, a solo?!) or increased tempo, but mostly it was just constant breakdown (ironically, a guy near us in a shirt that said "No breakdowns...no karate..." etc was bobbing his head during the breakdowniness).

So Polish technical death metal band Decapitated had the second slot, of which I was glad - I would much rather hear more of them than TAS. My first introduction to Decapitated was hearing "404" on the radio about a year ago, and I did not dig it at all. But I mean, they're from Poland, the land of Behemoth and Unsun, so I figured I must be missing something, and got intrigued at the prospect of seeing them live. Turned out they were great. Their guitar work and drumming was very complex, but still groovy enough for headbanging. I am pretty picky about drumming, but I enjoyed the unpredictable drum rhythms in their songs (the thing I hate most in metal is nonstop banging on the same drum over and over). Even "404" sounded good (I didn't realize what song it was at first because the singer called it "Four hundred and four" and I didn't hear the last word clearly; I've always thought of it as "four-oh-four"). The strange rhythms and guitar squeals that I found so grating when I first heard it were not as prominent. Overall, their sound was a thick, nonstop barrage peppered with fast rhythms, so it was a good thing they paused every few songs and we got a breather. I didn't really notice any solos, except for one short one that was rather slow and atmospheric. The singer was stalking about the stage, throwing about his Chris Barnes-esque dreads, and sometimes doing a repeated cobra-like motion that made me think he was spitting on the crowd. Obviously, I never saw the original Decapitated live, so I can't say how they compare to that, but they certainly sounded heavy and technically capable. And since I've seen Lamb of God before, Decapitated was the gem of the night - the performance that really made it worth it.

After an "intermission" where decades-old movie theater commercials for popcorn and corn dogs were shown on screens on the stage, Lamb of God came out thundering. They also delivered a solid set - I realized that I actually know a lot of their songs, at least the popular ones. Their guitar riffs are aggressive yet accessible, like a cleaned up version of thrash riffs, and Randy's low vocals and the thundering bass bring a bit of death metal brutality. We got much closer this time than last time at the Fillmore - we were about five rows back, but off to the left, off the actual floor and nearer the bar. Which was fine - we could still see great, and didn't get caught in the meatgrinder that was the jam-packed floor (if the show wasn't sold out, it was pretty damn close - B market be damned). Randy called for moshing a couple times and seemed impressed by the crowd-surfing wheelchair guy, which cued us in that he wasn't the one behind the "No moshing" and "No crowdsurfing" signs at the venue. The venue didn't seem to intend on enforcing this policy either, because wheelchair guy crowdsurfed to the front no less than three times.

They put on an intense show, delivering a fine-tuned aggressive sound, with great energy - Randy was running around the stage - and with strong, roving lights and videos on the aforementioned screens adding to the effect. Some of the videos seemed familiar from last time, such as the animated one for "Ghost Walking," but some seemed new, such as the one for "Now You've got Something to Die For," which showed photos of their fans in the armed forces (of course they dedicated that song to servicemembers like usual). During the encore, the drummer from Decapitated (they called him "Polish Pauly" and kept flashing the image of his face on the screens in front of a Polish flag) played a song with them.

I think I enjoyed seeing them even more this time than last. The sound was better - we could hear the vocals more clearly - and being closer to the stage, we could see the band a lot better. S discovered later that they actually played the same setlist as in the fall, and we found out later that their tour last year hit the "A" markets, since they were not sure how long they would have Randy, and now that he's back they did a tour of the "B" markets. Nice to know that bands consider Washington, DC an important market - now if only tours like Helloween and Godflesh would hit it up!

Next show: Maybe Holy Grail on 7/1 or maybe Amaranthe on 7/18. We shall see.