some dragonforce.
So i went to see dragonforce last night with the lovely angelmenot810 go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRtlG5Bs1R0 if you've never heard of them. OMG it was metal. it was the most metal experience of my life. the openers (HORSE the band and All That Remains) were pretty bad .. horse because they're bad, and ATR because they were totally unorganized and scattered. Had the audience not been so impatient for Dragonforce and pissed off at horse, i bet they (atr) would have been recieved alot better. anyway, that was fucking awesome that concert. Imagine if you will ... All That Remains leaves the stage to scattered applause. House lights go up, roadies come out and replace ATR's drumset with a far superior drumset, and on the other end of the stage a stack of keyboards (including a keytar.) the roadies go for a while, checking mics, making wireless things work. they all leave, some smoke machines have been misting up the stage. Every light in the house goes black. Cheers erupt from the crowd. Silence. Then .. a timer, set to 3 minutes, lights up in the middle of the stage. A song begins on the speakers in the house. The crowd fuckingn erupts. the timer remains the only light on, save for a few low stage lights illuminating the swirling mist around it. The crowd headbangs and viciously moshes to the driving intro song. The frenzy increases as the timer ticks down, two minutes. one minute. thirty seconds. A general countdown breaks out among the crowd. "Five. Four. Three. Two. ONE." bam. 4 giant stage lights the band had carted with them crossed at a single point in the middle of the stage, and the light rig above the stage exploded into red, blue, and yellow. ZP Theart, Herman Li, Sam Totman and Frédéric Leclercq were at the nexus of the light, screaming and shredding our collective faces off, while Dave Mackintosh and Vadim Pruzhanov blasted our asses back a good four feet. fucking METAL. the whole show was at this little closed theater in NY, and it was all general admission and there was a big standing space riiiight infront of the stage wherein pits kept breaking out. we kept a fair distance but got our share of blindsides and threw our share of elbows. anyway. the fact that we were standing down there meant we were REALLY REALLY CLOSE to these guys. and they're fucking amazing. Li especially .. he really shreds that fast live. and there was some kind of fan, i think it might have been an AC vent, right in the front center of the stage. so when li went up for a solo, he would stand in the spotlight, melt our faces, and have his hair slowly lift up about him like a Hayo Miazaki-born metal god. this whole band is a different animal live. they're like, they've got such stage presence, and they drag the audience into it. it was such a scene for people who go to metal concerts. people got the shit beaten out of them, the lead singer stormed around the stage and everyone in the house was screaming most of the songs. so it was a really high-energy thing. After the first 4 songs or so, the really hardcore stayed and beat each other, and we receeded to the seats. which made a whole new experience, actually being able to see the whole stage at once. Tho we werent as close, the venue had a really nice view from the seats and seeing it all happen plus lights and still being very very close to the action was awesome in its own right. also, Pruzhanov took a few keytar solos, which i thought was amazing. the whole night save the openers was just a consistent blast of energy. i came out wiped and i loved it. and dragonforce themselves, you could tell they loved the crowd. i wish these guys had played in the eighties - had they, they'd be legends right now. but playing the powermetal they play in this day and age, they're not gonna get much further than appealing to the guys that would have remembered them. ah well, they still kick fucking ass.