Before I go any further, I want to confess that I am a French speaking person before all, so writing in English is quite a challenge. Consequently, I accept this challenge!
December 7th. As an introduction I want to share with you some reflections I had about the wall of death phenomenon in metal shows. I was watching, this afternoon, a video of this epic one at the Club Soda venue from the Alestorm, Trollfest and Gypsyhawk show (for the video, see my review on this gig here) and told myself that there must be something deep in the human mind that gives possibility for this kind of intense moment to happen. I think it may be of help to sublimate anger and rage concerning two amongst other things in life. First: a lot of people are dying from numerous preventable/curable conditions economically and healthily speaking as I am writing these lines. Second, we must all face death at some point. These two facts and a multiple other sources of sorrow are so hard to bear that we have to find some ways to overcome them. I seriously think that walls of death help in that way. Or maybe not. Who cares?
That said, I am now going to tell you what I have seen and heard this evening at the unveiling of the list of the bands admitted to compete for the En route vers Heavy Mtl 2014 contest. The winning band of this contest will get rewarded a spot as opener of the Heavy Mtl 2014 metal festival which is held on August 9th and 10th, 2014 at Parc Jean-Drapeau in Montreal. Other prizes include 1500$ cash and a Godin guitar of a value of 2000$. On another note, we must not forget that during tonight event, four bands are actually giving a performance: Warsenal, Kolony, Medusa, The Unconscious Mind.
Now entering the COOP Katacombes venue, I see as usual the thin path leading to the shady ticket selling place, a couple of steps before the main room in which stands a small stage with metallic and wooden music gear. On my left side, a bar and a waitress, on my right side, a sound/light engineer decks and stairs. There is a huge mezzanine from which we can pretty much see all interactions going down there in the pit and on the scene. I usually arrive soon to get the best seated place in that kind of venue because I know I would be tired standing up after a while. Maybe I get old; maybe I can just appreciate more the complexity of the whole artwork when I am tranquilly seated.
The ambiance is kind of weird. The people seem to be here for another reason than the show. I figured out that they are here to know if their band is admitted for the contest or not. That being said, Warsenal is the opening band for the night and I cannot say they killed it. I listened to their demo this afternoon and there was a considerable discrepancy between their record and their live performance. I do not want to point anyone out but… Well I play drums as an amateur and would guess that Warsenal’s drummer is not practicing with a metronome. I say that because I do not either and I have a hard time being tight. I recognized some mistakes he did that seemed linked with not using a metronome. Anyway, it’s thrash metal so it does not matter! Let’s just say it was OK. OK seems fair enough to describe the opener’s act for this evening.
After quite a while, Kolony finally stands on stage. I say “quite a while” because it seemed to take around half an hour before the gear change was completely done. They managed to make us forget this long wait by pulling out a pretty decent enactment. They literally rocked! Apart from being incarnation of an opposite metal genre, they are truly good at what they do. This band got a lot of talent and versatility and they exploit it very well. Melodic heavy metal would be a nice holistic description of their compositions. They also did a medley of covers well tightened taking same riffs from different known tunes to blend them up into a skillful whole song. Start slowly with a little bit of Pantera; after boiling, add rapidly some Iron Maiden and Metallica hits, end by pouring a truly blasting drum solo introduced by Rush and you have all the ingredients of a pretty efficient medley. Understand here the allusion to the new marketing campaign of Fleshgod Apocalypse; like their Facebook page and you will understand…
For my part, Kolony made me think about how metal can be so diverse. And I find it to be a nice element of metal music. Tonight there are four bands playing and they play really different kind of music but they are united by that special touch that we call metal.
Again, a pretty long wait time to change gear on stage. Obviously, the main purpose of tonight’s show is not to please the crowd in any way possible. I decided to take this loose time to engage a conversation with my colleague from Ondes Chocs about different matters ranging from the En route vers Heavy Mtl 2014 contest to which shows we will attend next.
Medusa now appear on stage with full of artificial smoke, maybe a little bit too much if I refer to the fan/mom of one of the musicians. She seemed pretty irritated by that wall of smoke (expressing it by whining silently but loudly enough so I can hear it) because she wanted to film the performance. Better luck next time!
At first, what grasp my attention from Medusa was their left-handed drummer, their red makeup faces and their purple & blue haired female singer. After being used to that, I began to get more into their stuff. Even if the drummer is not as talented as Kolony’s one, he sure knows the basic principles of putting out good accents and punches to make sure there is an interesting harmony over the songs. Good old school metal with a woman singing pretty well. Medusa has quite a lot of energy for an especially not cooperating crowd, anxious about their destiny, concerned with their acceptance or reject for the contest.
While the crowd was not cooperating, I could still appreciate very well the good vibes of Medusa’s compositions. They were very active on that unfortunately too-small stage. One last thing on that band: Kayla (the singer), kind of makes the name of the band in the way that she have an awesome frightening look that could turn any monster into stone.
You guessed it! We had to wait another 35 minutes or something before the last band was ready to kick off. But wait, again! For a good reason because… It is time to disclose the 44 bands admitted in the En route vers Heavy Mtl 2014 contest. For an extended list of the bands, click here. They did it short and sweet, thank god! Not that I was not interested in the announcement, but I was mainly there for the show to discover new bands.
Final performance is now on and The Unconscious Mind takes us into another world. Black metal melodies with keys, creating a much more darkened ambiance than the three preceding bands. I am more than pleased. I cannot imagine myself judging this band, Your Last Wish, Valfreya and Karkaos to find an absolute winner but still, this will be an epic fight on February 1st, here in the COOP Katacombes. Anyway, I will not be a judge so I will definitely appreciate this future gig. They link perfectly one song after another before a non-existent crowd; most of the people went away after the announcement was made. I was kind of feeling bad for them but at the same time their music made me a lot happier. It is funny how symphonic black metal makes me happy. I think this feeling is shared with a lot of metalheads, especially the ex or still RPG’s gamers ones.
Thanks to Dungeon Works Productions for that nice Sunday evening.
P.S.: The challenge was kind of hard and I apologize already for my mistakes. I have to admit to myself: I may be almost fluently bilingual orally speaking, but writing is definitely another step that I may not be ready to make. Cheers!
Dr Light
