tomorrow:

MESHUGGAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hell. Fucking. Yeah. \m/

Enjoy

Booking now in the UK:

Testament. Megadeth. Judas Priest.

now there's a lineup

Ok friends, this will be the last of my reviews, hehe.
Well, the dream run of metal gigs is officially over. What a great couple of nights!!!
Tonight was the one and only Meshuggah. What can I say? They're fucking unbelievable. Possibly the best sounding gig I have ever been to. I'm pretty sure I have never heard a heavier sound in my life. And they're tight as hell. They make what they do look so easy. They almost look tranquil while they're playing, but any Meshuggah fan knows that they play some of the most complex music in metal, so it's hard to grasp how they do it so comfortably. These guys also have an incredible stage presence. They really know how to present themselves visually to an audience - complete with synchronised head-banging moments and unified front moments (i.e. all standing at the front of stage throwing horns at the audience). Lighting was even synchronised with certain musical moments. Jens is an amazing frontman - tons of energy and badass vibes, scary looks, and a very unique headbanging method: it's kind of robotic - up (hold), down (hold), left (hold), right (hold) followed by a killer stare at the audience, then back into screaming. Really interesting. Fredrik's solo's sounded incredible. He even used the reed-interface thing for the solo in 'Future Breed Machine', which they closed with. Highlight song of the night for me was probably 'Humiliative' (off the 'None' ep) - can't believe how incredible that one sounded live! Melbourne also turned on one of the craziest mosh pits I've seen in a while - really fucking violent this one. Too much for me I'm afraid, but it looked awesome from the safety of the edges, hehe. Meshuggah definitely attracted an element I haven't seen at metal gigs for a while too, if ever - skinheads. One dude even had the red braces going! It was a bit of a shock for me because I don't really see anything in Meshuggah's lyrics that would attract their type. The only thing I can think of is that they're a very white, male band, with highly aggressive music and a lead singer who shaves his head. Apart from that, I don't get it. Usually those guys gravitate to bands with racist lyrics etc., so it was a bit surprising.
The only downer of the evening was the length of Meshuggah's set. It was a measly 75 minutes, with no encore, and given that this was their first tour of Australia, I was hoping for something much more substantial. You could tell the audience was only getting warmed up by the time they closed with 'Future Breed Machine'. Oh well, maybe another time.
But apart from that, it was one of the best shows I've ever seen. I had to pick my jaw up off the ground a few times because they were just so amazing to watch as a band I'd forget that I was supposed to be moving! LOL.
Alchemist (the Australian support act) were fucking fantastic too. I've been a fan of theirs for many years, so that was a great treat for me to see them again.
So that's about it.
Songs that they played were (not in order):
- Opener was either Autonomy Lost (from Catch 33) or Perpetual Black Second (from 'Nothing') - if someone knows for sure please correct me!
- Stengah
- Rational Gaze
- Straws Pulled at Random
- Electric Red
- Bleed
- Pravus
- Humiliative
- Future Breed Machine (closer)
- Suffer in Truth
- The Mouth Licking what you've bled

And here's a quick snap I got of the boys during all the craziness - not a great shot, but it's something:


And this is a quick snap of the stage after the show when all the lights were on:


Metaaaaaaalllll!!!!

Damn, I wanna see Meshuggah too!! I'm so pissed off 'cause I missed their last gig here in Finland, hope they come back soon.

the melbourne gig was intense... fuck. Oh dude the opener was perpetual black second. I survived the pit. front row centre i could hardly breath for alot of the gig and i had about 20 guys try and push through me. i got kicked in the head like 10 times from all the crowd surfers too. amazing gig though. i was just proud of myself for surviving the shit . i was kinda ticked off at how much jens was doing that stupid face, it looks like hes taking a dump or something. maybe that was the point . also was kinda dissapointed that they were just using amp modelling rather than the real thing on stage. i think it could have sounded more forceful had they used acctual amps, oh well. Tomas Haake is just amazing to watch live by the way. he needs to be matched eventually . the security guards were handing out water after EVERY song. after the gig i was drenched in sweat, beer, body salts, and possibly urine and blood. i bought an obzen tour shirt that has the bloody meditator guy, which my mother and grandmother are gonna loooooove . at the moment my elbows are completely grazed down, my torso is bruised like crazy and my legs are overworked and sore... brilliance

Geez you go through a lot for such a lousy band.

also was kinda dissapointed that they were just using amp modelling rather than the real thing on stage.

Only PODs? Practical.

Hmm, interesting. I was standing about 8 metres back from the stage and from where I was I thought the sound was very forceful! Could it have been that if you were front and centre, a lot of the intended sound was being thrown out around you, but not at you?
And with the amp modelling - forgive me, I don't really know about these things - what do you mean? From where I was, I really thought they brought their unique sound perfectly to the stage. I would have thought that would require the right amps to make that happen. But if that's not the case, what were they using? Just curious
Btw, what's with this 'crispy duck' horseshit? Has someone hacked the forums so that every time we say f*ck in a post, it ends up reading as 'crispy duck'? I noticed this the other night and wasn't too happy about it.

Yeah I had that at an Oceansize gig, I was standing dead center upfront (like, looking right up the singer's nostrils) and couldn't hear anything because I was outside the range of the speakers.

Btw, what's with this 'crispy duck' horseshit? Has someone hacked the forums so that every time we say f*ck in a post, it ends up reading as 'crispy duck'? I noticed this the other night and wasn't too happy about it.

I dunno how that got back in there.
Sorted.

hehe, cheers. Obviously a little forum 'bug' I'm guessing. Glad it's gone though. It was a bit too 'family friendly' for my liking. Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that, but this is a forum for Devin Townsend - a man who is quite liberal with the word 'fuck' - so it seems only fitting that free bad language is permitted here

the melbourne gig was intense... fuck. Oh dude the opener was perpetual black second. I survived the pit. front row centre i could hardly breath for alot of the gig and i had about 20 guys try and push through me. i got kicked in the head like 10 times from all the crowd surfers too. amazing gig though. i was just proud of myself for surviving the shit . i was kinda ticked off at how much jens was doing that stupid face, it looks like hes taking a dump or something. maybe that was the point . also was kinda dissapointed that they were just using amp modelling rather than the real thing on stage. i think it could have sounded more forceful had they used acctual amps, oh well. Tomas Haake is just amazing to watch live by the way. he needs to be matched eventually . the security guards were handing out water after EVERY song. after the gig i was drenched in sweat, beer, body salts, and possibly urine and blood. i bought an obzen tour shirt that has the bloody meditator guy, which my mother and grandmother are gonna loooooove . at the moment my elbows are completely grazed down, my torso is bruised like crazy and my legs are overworked and sore... brilliance

Fun.
Visit a clinic to make sure you're not contagious.

Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck.
Funner!

hehe, cheers. Obviously a little forum 'bug' I'm guessing. Glad it's gone though. It was a bit too 'family friendly' for my liking. Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that, but this is a forum for Devin Townsend - a man who is quite liberal with the word 'fuck' - so it seems only fitting that free bad language is permitted here

Best bit of auto-censorship here was swapping every ocurrence of "nickelback" with "ultimate wankers". Good times.