| Soilwork |
| with Embodiment, Contrive |
| 12/9/2003, The Hi Fi Bar, Melbourne. |
|
Well, I'd been listening to this band for a few days coming up to the gig, and while some went over to the Athenaeum to "witness" Cat Power (one review I read said "...It wasn't the teary 'train-wreck' of a show that the sydney crowds witnessed, but it was still a mess. Sure, no-one got hurt, but then, it wasn't much fun, either..."), I headed on down to The Hi Fi to check out one of Sweden's finest... First off, what's the deal with Sweden? Opeth, Soilwork, Meshuggah, The Hives, Turbonegro, Refused, TSOOL, The Hellacopters... they're certainly been breeding clever songwriters there for the last 10 years or so... then again, I suppose they had to put up with ABBA for a while, so it all evens out in the end ;P So Paul (Cowling) and I headed down to The Hi-Fi, got there just after doors opened - about 8:45 or so. It was a complete contrast to the last time I was there - about a month ago to see AFI - no lineup to get in, and once we got in, the place wasn't at all full. I was a little worried actually - looked like it might be a pretty small crowd... but, it was early, and we were talking about metalheads here, so I bid my time to see what would unfold. Contrive So - Contrive, probably most well known for being Andrew Haug's band (from JJJ and RRR metal show fame), were OK. That's about it really - there were one or two sections of songs that I thought were quite good, but overall, it was a pretty average experience. Andrew Haug's drumming was pretty good, but his brother Paul's guitar playing limited their songs a little I think. Vocal wise it was OK, bass playing OK. Just really an "OK" metal 3-piece... Towards the end of Contrive we headed up and grabbed a seat upstairs - the place was starting to fill up a bit more, which was good. While we waited for Embodiment, we got a nice treat of Metallica's "Ride The Lightning" album. Excellent stuff... Embodiment Embodiment came on to some rather cool sounding keyboards. They were not too bad - kind of like an amateur Soilwork really, but if Soilwork's guitarists had only a few years of guitar-playing under their belts. Pretty much the same band structure as Soilwork - Vocalist, 2 guitarists, bass player, keyboardist, drummer - they sounded pretty good - but in the end were just a distraction on the path to what we came to hear... Again, the gods smiled on us, and we got G'n'R's "Appetite for Destruction" album after embodiment - until the CD started skipping towards the end of "Out Ta Get Me", then they swapped to something else - not sure, sounded like a watered down CoF or something... Oh, and I should say, as far as metal t-shirts went - wow. What an awesome display of t-shirts... I saw bands I loved, bands I hated, bands I'd completely forgotten about and bands I'd never heard of. By this stage of the night, the place was pretty much packed - damn slacker metalheads... Soilwork Soilwork came on to a roar of the crowd that, I must say, surprised me. The punters at this gig were pretty passionate about the band (and I know I'm one of them). They were an amazing unit live - one of the best "shows" I've seen in a while. They played to the crowd really well - to the point where at times you thought you really knew these guys and were just hanging out with them - at other times it felt like Speed (the vocalist) was the ringmaster and he had us all in the palm of his hand... Playing wise as well - they were spot on. The guitarists were just jaw-droppingly good. They played like Vai or Petrucci at times, and then would swap into just the heaviest, tightest rhythms. The drummer was really really solid (I think I was spoiled seeing Opeth's drummer). Speed's vocals were spot on - and if you've ever heard any of Soilworks stuff, you'll imagine that it's not that easy to swap from screams to death growls to melodic singing all over the place - but he did it without blinking an eye. I truly appreciated the talent of this band seeing them live (much like the Opeth gig in April) The band played a really great set as well. I've only got their last two albums (they have five albums), but here's the tunes I recognized: * Flameout - a great opener. (in no order at all) * Overload (the highlight of the night - so amazingly tight, and SUCH a groove) * Rejection Role * Figure Number Five * As We Speak * Follow The Hollow * The Bringer * Light The Torch * Cranking The Sirens * The Mindmaker * Distortion Sleep (another excellent live one) * and about 5 or so that I didn't know (off old albums I assume - some of the crowd knew them) In any case, they played most of the new album, and my three favourites from Natural Born Chaos - so I was pleased as punch. One final thing as well - the bass player was probably worth the price of the ticket alone. He was piss funny. Basically, you've got 5 out of 6 dudes on stage who look like they belong in a metal band, say, Soilwork for example. Then the bass player - he was maybe 6'6" and was the spitting image of Gaz from Supergrass, circa "I Should Coco". Massive muttonchops and all. It was really bizarre. And he ran around stage like a lunatic - not like "wow, he's so full of energy lunatic", I mean, like a mental patient lunatic. It was really quite quite funny. All in all, a fantastic show - I loved it... |