Episode 136: Lock, Schlock, and Two Non-Smoking Barrels

May the 4th Be With You!! Han and Chewie (you can decide who is who) guide you through four star destroyers, five tie fighters and through one trench run to bring an action-packed show. It’s gonna take a little more time than a Kessel Run but this hunk-of-junk podcast has it where it counts and we get you through safely.

SideShow.136

Reviews: Aborted – The Necrotic Manifesto (Century Media); Devil You Know – The Beauty of Destruction (Nuclear Blast); Floor – Oblation (Season of Mist); Insomnium – Shadows of the Dying Sun (Century Media)

First Impressions:
Misery Index – “The Killing Gods” from The Killing Gods out May 27th on Season of Mist
Tombs – “Edge of Darkness” from Savage Gold out June 10th on Relapse
Circle of Contempt – “Filth” from forthcoming album
Machine Head – “Killers & Kings (demo)” from forthcoming album on Nuclear Blast Entertainment
Slayer – “Implode” from forthcoming album on Nuclear Blast

Live Review: “Worldwide Plagues Tour” featuring ReVamp, Sabaton, and Iced Earth on April 18, 2014 at Best Buy Theater in New York, NY

Regarding Devil You Know, why not play the song you think is the best song on the album? So what if the best song is not representative of the rest of the album? If that is the song that you think your listeners might enjoy the most, then I say play that one. I can certainly see the other side of that argument and that you wouldn’t want to mislead anyone into thinking that a band sounded different than they actually do. Such as was the case with a certain former co-host who only ever listened to the first song on Watershed by Opeth and then thought they weren’t a metal band. But if you specify in your introduction to a song that this song you are about to play might not best represent how the band sounds on the rest of the album, I think most listeners will take that caveat into account.

It sounds like we pretty much agree about the ReVamp/Sabaton/Iced Earth show. Reagrding ReVamp, I really wasn’t impressed by their last album, Wild Cards, but as you said, ReVamp was quite good live. Then Sabaton came on an exceeded my high expectations. And I was amazed at how into it the crowd was for Sabaton. There were people there who knew the words to their new song for which the album isn’t even out yet. Then after that as Brian said, Iced Earth was indeed a bit of a let down even if they still were very good. They just got upstaged by Sabaton. When the end of the year rolls around and it is time to consider the live act of the year, Sabaton will be on the short list for me.

So you went from reviewing Floor Jansen in ReVamp to reviewing the band Floor in this episode. Was that on purpose?

That one part in the Aborted song you played reminded me of the song Explosia on L’Enfant Sauvage from Gojira.

When a single is released in advance of an album I know I am going to buy, I generally do not listen to that single. Case in point is the latest Machine Head song. I am 100% certain that I am going to buy their new album whenever it comes out. So I don’t feel the need to listen to a single out of context of an album. When I know I am going to buy and album and listen to it front to back, I prefer to take in all of it in the context of the full album, rather than separate out individual songs.

While I do agree with you guys in general about Slayer and with Nick about Kerry King as a guitar player, I disagree with you about certain old bands writing new songs. For me, it is a case by case basis. I do agree that Slayer and Judas Priest haven’t written a good song in 20 years. But I gladly welcome new material from Metallica and Iron Maiden. Didn’t you listen to Death Magnetic? That album was awesome! I’d love to hear more of that. And while Maiden’s last album wasn’t anything special, I feel their entire 21st century output is highly underrated and would still want to hear more.

So I have a live review of my own. And it’s not Billy Joel at the Garden (even though I did take my wife to that). I saw Cloudkicker/Intronaut/TesseracT this past week. I found out 2 things in advance of the show that prepared me for the show. First is that I had for some reason thought the show was at Gramercy Theater. This meant I thought I would be able to chill out in the seats in the back. Well, I’m not sure if I was mistaken or if the venue was changed. But it was at Irving Plaza. I’m glad I found out ahead of time, because I’d have been pissed if I showed up at Gramercy and then had to walk in the pouring rain over to Irving Plaza. But once I got there I was a bit surprised to see how packed it was and when Cloudkicker came on I was also pleasantly surprised to observe how into it the crowd was. Cloudkicker is a one man instrumental band who you may know was performing with Intronaut as his backing band. They played and sounded great. That ended up being the highlight of the night, as when Intronaut came on, they were not impressive at all. They seemed lackluster. Maybe they were tired from already playing a nearly hour set of Cloudkicker’s music? I thought that Intronaut played Cloudkicker’s music better than they played their own. Then the second thing I found out before the show was that the TesseracT vocalist Ashe O’Hara was sick and didn’t even perform the night before. The band had performed in Philadelphia without a singer and just played their stuff as instrumentals. Since this was the last night of the tour, Ashe gutted it out and sang as best he could for maybe an hour. He didn’t sing poorly, he just couldn’t hit those high notes. And I felt that the crowd for TesseracT was spoiled by one bad apple. There was one guy in the pit who was completely wasted and acting like an ass the whole time TesseracT was on. Other people recognized this fact and when he fell down by the side of the pit that I was standing, I was the only person who tried to pick him up. And I don’t blame those people around me for not wanting to pick him up. The bottom line was that unless you are a huge Cloudkicker fan, you didn’t miss anything by not seeing this show.

2 comments

Pingback: Episode 137: Sweet Mother of Metal | The SIDESHOW Podcast
bobsala says:

05/04/2014 at 12:32 pm

Regarding Devil You Know, why not play the song you think is the best song on the album? So what if the best song is not representative of the rest of the album? If that is the song that you think your listeners might enjoy the most, then I say play that one. I can certainly see the other side of that argument and that you wouldn’t want to mislead anyone into thinking that a band sounded different than they actually do. Such as was the case with a certain former co-host who only ever listened to the first song on Watershed by Opeth and then thought they weren’t a metal band. But if you specify in your introduction to a song that this song you are about to play might not best represent how the band sounds on the rest of the album, I think most listeners will take that caveat into account.

It sounds like we pretty much agree about the ReVamp/Sabaton/Iced Earth show. Reagrding ReVamp, I really wasn’t impressed by their last album, Wild Cards, but as you said, ReVamp was quite good live. Then Sabaton came on an exceeded my high expectations. And I was amazed at how into it the crowd was for Sabaton. There were people there who knew the words to their new song for which the album isn’t even out yet. Then after that as Brian said, Iced Earth was indeed a bit of a let down even if they still were very good. They just got upstaged by Sabaton. When the end of the year rolls around and it is time to consider the live act of the year, Sabaton will be on the short list for me.

So you went from reviewing Floor Jansen in ReVamp to reviewing the band Floor in this episode. Was that on purpose?

That one part in the Aborted song you played reminded me of the song Explosia on L’Enfant Sauvage from Gojira.

When a single is released in advance of an album I know I am going to buy, I generally do not listen to that single. Case in point is the latest Machine Head song. I am 100% certain that I am going to buy their new album whenever it comes out. So I don’t feel the need to listen to a single out of context of an album. When I know I am going to buy and album and listen to it front to back, I prefer to take in all of it in the context of the full album, rather than separate out individual songs.

While I do agree with you guys in general about Slayer and with Nick about Kerry King as a guitar player, I disagree with you about certain old bands writing new songs. For me, it is a case by case basis. I do agree that Slayer and Judas Priest haven’t written a good song in 20 years. But I gladly welcome new material from Metallica and Iron Maiden. Didn’t you listen to Death Magnetic? That album was awesome! I’d love to hear more of that. And while Maiden’s last album wasn’t anything special, I feel their entire 21st century output is highly underrated and would still want to hear more.

So I have a live review of my own. And it’s not Billy Joel at the Garden (even though I did take my wife to that). I saw Cloudkicker/Intronaut/TesseracT this past week. I found out 2 things in advance of the show that prepared me for the show. First is that I had for some reason thought the show was at Gramercy Theater. This meant I thought I would be able to chill out in the seats in the back. Well, I’m not sure if I was mistaken or if the venue was changed. But it was at Irving Plaza. I’m glad I found out ahead of time, because I’d have been pissed if I showed up at Gramercy and then had to walk in the pouring rain over to Irving Plaza. But once I got there I was a bit surprised to see how packed it was and when Cloudkicker came on I was also pleasantly surprised to observe how into it the crowd was. Cloudkicker is a one man instrumental band who you may know was performing with Intronaut as his backing band. They played and sounded great. That ended up being the highlight of the night, as when Intronaut came on, they were not impressive at all. They seemed lackluster. Maybe they were tired from already playing a nearly hour set of Cloudkicker’s music? I thought that Intronaut played Cloudkicker’s music better than they played their own. Then the second thing I found out before the show was that the TesseracT vocalist Ashe O’Hara was sick and didn’t even perform the night before. The band had performed in Philadelphia without a singer and just played their stuff as instrumentals. Since this was the last night of the tour, Ashe gutted it out and sang as best he could for maybe an hour. He didn’t sing poorly, he just couldn’t hit those high notes. And I felt that the crowd for TesseracT was spoiled by one bad apple. There was one guy in the pit who was completely wasted and acting like an ass the whole time TesseracT was on. Other people recognized this fact and when he fell down by the side of the pit that I was standing, I was the only person who tried to pick him up. And I don’t blame those people around me for not wanting to pick him up. The bottom line was that unless you are a huge Cloudkicker fan, you didn’t miss anything by not seeing this show.