This show was at the Wiltern, which is a sucky venue for a show like this. It’s a bigger-sized theater. I prefer my metal at small all ages clubs where if you’re against the stage you’re in danger of having the band step on you or stupid drunk guys spitting beer on you. None of this sitting-in-a-balcony, watching-from-afar crap.
So yeah, I got balcony seats. When I got the tickets I thought Daniel might come and there’s no way he’d stand all night. Plus I’m short and wouldn’t be able to see anywhere on the floor at this venue unless I was right up front.
We got there just in time to find our seats before Baroness came on. I’ve seen them open for Converge and while I thought they were good, I didn’t think they were great. I thought they were better last night on a bigger stage. But I still ended up paying more attention to the guy in front of me texting on his cell phone than I did the band.
The venue has a big screen that comes down in between bands and people can text messages onto it, they scroll across the bottom. After Baroness someone posted the message “Baroness are like Mastodon with out the good parts.” I wouldn’t go that far, but it was funny, nonetheless. Someone else posted “That last band didn’t use enough star power.”
High on Fire were up next. One of my fave live bands, I think this was my 9th time seeing them. I loved their set but I think a lot of people didn’t. The Opeth crowd were there to see Opeth and the openers had a tough time winning anyone over. Matt Pike, singer for HoF, was in great form. He does this thing where he stands with his feet together, playing his guitar, then he’ll suddenly fling one foot out in front of him. It’s really kinda cute.
But he’s not a guy anyone would really describe as cute. The first time I saw him play, I was at the back of the venue, and I thought, “How cute, he has a smile on his face.” Next time I saw him play, I was up front, and realized it wasn’t a grin—it was a grimace. He looks like he’s been living in the same jeans for years on the road—which he has. The band does have some nice new equipment, though—gone are the Green amps, replaced with Marshalls. Drummer has a nice new drumset. Looks like their touring with Megadeth paid off.
From memory, they did:
Death is this Communion
Turk
Rumors of War
Devilution
And some more but I can’t remember exactly. I wish they would’ve tossed in an old classic, like “Hung, Drawn, and Quartered,” but nope.
Matt Pike kept trying to rile the crowd up but it mostly didn’t work. There were a few people on the floor who were really into it. I mentioned to Nathaniel after their set that there were like, five High on Fire fans there. He pointed at me, saying, “Yeah, you, and four other guys,” pointing at four random people down on the floor.
After High on Fire someone texted the message “High on Fire > Your Mom” onto the big screen. I told my son it wasn’t true for him. Cuz who had taken him to the show? That’s right.
Most of the text messages were stupid, but some were pretty funny. One asked who had driven the farthest to get to the show, so people were replying “I came from San Diego” etc. One person wrote “I flew from Stormwind on my griffin and now I’m all out of gold.” (World of Warcraft reference.)
Someone else posted the message, “To the dude up by the stage making out with your girlfriend: That’s not metal. Go home.” Anyway…
It’s kind of impossible for me to just say Opeth. It has to be OPETH.
Here’s a pic that basically sums them up (took it last time I saw them—had a photo pass for that show):
I love that man.
He mentioned that Opeth has been going for 18 years now. And it shows. The band actually just replaced their drummer and guitarist before this last album. But Mikael, the singer, is so comfortable on stage. He’s really funny and talkative in between songs—totally pokes fun at himself, the band, death metal, everything. (Unfortunately he curses up a storm, too.)
The last time we saw them, they did a special 3-hour career retrospective show, doing songs from every album. Now you might think 3 hours would cover a lot of songs, but many of their songs are over six minutes long, some 10 minutes or longer. He brought up that show, saying he’d been so nervous beforehand he almost peed himself. (They did that show without an intermission!) He said he was a little nervous again this time but nothing a little smack can’t fix. Uh huh.
He mentioned that they might come back and do another special show in LA soon.
They did one mellow song off of Damnation, which he introduced as a ballad, “Hope Leaves.” He talked about being a kid in Sweden listening to bands like the Scorpions and dancing with girls to their ballads. Then he said something about LA being the “cock rock mecca” and while their song might be hard to dance to, he wanted us to make it seem like we were in 1986. So people got out their lighters and waved them around. I got out a cell phone, which Elijah typed “666″ into, and he waved that around. The singer said, “Jon Bon Jovi is waiting in the wings.”
The singer was really funny all night. At one point the lights on the stage went off and he started quoting Metallica: “Darkness, imprisoning me…” He made fun of the hand motions he’d make (”when you’re in a death metal band you have to move your hands like this”). When he was about to start one song, he fidgeted around a tiny bit first, saying he had to get situated just right.
They did mostly newer stuff but a few older tunes. One he said was from an album that came out in 1996 (Morning Rise), when he was 22, and thought he was going to obliterate their competition and take over the world. (That makes him 4 years younger than me.) He said the album was called both the greatest album of all time and the worst. He has this thing of acting all full of himself, and then totally denigrating himself right after. It’s like he’s puffing himself up like a balloon, and promptly popping it. He does it all in a humorous way.
He said they probably did that song the last time they were in LA because it’s the only song they’ve bothered to learn from that album.
They did a track off Still Life, which was a song he claimed they didn’t really like, either playing it or listening to it (joking): “Serenity Painted Death.”
Have I mentioned how much I love this guy’s voice? IMO, he hands down has the best death metal growl. And on top of that, his normal singing voice (he switches back and forth often) is gorgeous.
He does goofy things, like when songs were over, the stage would go dark and he’d go back to the drum riser for a drink of water. The lights came back up once and he sort of pretend-jogged back up to his mic and then said, “Running back to you!”
The crowd was going nuts the whole night. He asked how we were doing and everyone went crazy screaming. He said his stomach was feeling a little unwell because he’d had a can of raviolli on the tour bus. “But there won’t be no accidents!” (I mentioned this guy is Swedish, right?)
When they got into some new material, he said they were quite happy with the new album, considering what happened to the band. (Members leaving, I’m assuming—the drummer and guitarist both.)
They did one encore (of course! their songs are at least 10 minutes long, kinda hard to do more than one encore) and then all bowed to the crowd together. I don’t know if that’s something they normally do, kinda hokey, but with this crowd it was almost necessary. No one wanted to see them go.
Here’s what the boys looked like after the show:
Pretty spent.