Hi everybody,
and Hi, Dr. Nick! Well, since December is packed with great bands and a lot to write, I spare you my usual jibber jabber and start right off with my first review.
12/06/2009 - Rockstar Taste Of Chaos Tour w/
Maylene and the Sons of Disaster,
Every Time I Die,
Heaven Shall Burn,
Killswitch Engage and
In Flames - Columbiahalle
For three years the Taste Of Chaos Tour hasn’t been in Berlin, but mainly because it wasn’t a real Tour in the last two years with no resp. one show in Germany. This year, as it seems, Kevin Lyman wanted to make up for this devious step and sent a killer Line-Up to destroy the German concert venues from within. But from the top.
It was a pretty cold and rainy night and my demands to enter the venue a.s.a.p. went unheard, since Jojo had to pick up some cash for cigarettes. What a waste of energy. When we returned to the Columbiahalle, the doors had been opened and people kept streaming in and so did we. It was still pretty empty, especially right in front of the stage, probably due to the small number of people who knew the first band and/or actually wanted to see them.
At 7.05 pm, so almost on time,
Maylene and the Sons of Disaster, were the first ones trying to entertain the heavily displeased audience. The potpourri of musicians and musical styles didn’t seem to fit in the metal-dominated crowd and evening and their performance, as well as the following band, was highly controversial. But for me MATSOD played a brilliant show and with Schuylar Croom from He Is Legend, they found a more than appropriate substitute for their diseased frontman Dallas Taylor. The awesome mixture of Metal, Southern Rock and heavy rhythms caused me to dance and sing along for the whole set. Shamefully I was one of the few who knew to appreciate this band, although I must admit the audience was pretty fair and started clapping every time the bassist turned his instrument and let the audience read his sticker with “Clap” on it. But still, most people were waiting for the “harder” stuff, but I didn’t let that ruin my mood. Their setlist reads like a best-off from II and III. It’s not in the right order and I miss at least one, but more likely two songs. But I guess it still gives you a hint of the quality of this show
Setlist (guessed order)
Darkest of Kin
Memories Of The Groove
Caution: Dangerous Curves Ahead
Waiting On My Deathbed
Wylie
Step Up (I’m On It)
If anyone can tell me which songs are missing, then go ahead. Also, the right order would be nice.
After 30 minutes of groovy Southern Metal with cool soli from the guitarist on the far left, a constant busy drum roadie and weird moves from Schuylar, the band left the stage and at least left me with the feeling that this was an awesome start of the evening.
Just 15 minutes later
Every Time I Die entered the stage tried to exceed the performance of MATSOD. Enforced on the drums after the “departure” of Ratboy Novak they played their style of chaotic HardCore with Punk, Metal and Southern Rock influences like no other band does. Even if the audience was a lot more active than during the previous set of MATSOD and a circle pit was formed during the second song, Keith and the rest of the band weren’t pleased with the behavior of the audience. I didn’t notice the indifference the majority of everyone present was feeling towards them, but mainly because I was watching the show instead of the surrounding people. Fatty3 told me that the front rows were packed with bored and talking people and since the Columbiahalle was more crowded than at the time Maylene And The Sons of Disaster played, the number of people being active must still have been virtually zero. That probably explains why the band wasn’t at the merch counter during the set of Killswitch Engage as promised, though it was rude towards the people who kept waiting anyway. But since anger is a positive element for HardCore music, their set was energetic and brilliant and they kept bombarding the audience with an amazing setlist. If only they crossed Roman Holiday out in favor of “Apocalypse now and then”, but you can’t have everything I guess. And they made up for that with a killer breakdown during floater. 30 minutes of pissed musicians playing chaotic tunes. Though the starting situation wasn't the best, the result was still awesome
The setlist (Thanks Fatty3, I probably would have forgotten one Song)
Roman Holiday
The Marvelous Slut
Ebolarama
Bored Stiff
No Son of Mine
Floater
Wanderlust
The New Black
We'rewolf
After another break of 20 minutes
Heaven Shall Burn were about to play their set. It wouldn’t be fair to review this band, because I missed most of the show even though I wanted to see them play live again. But it was hard to find the right place to stand since the sound was horrible near the merch counter and from the balcony, you couldn’t see a thing, though the sound was nice. So we ran around trying to decide where to stay. After probably 6 missed songs I went up again and found a nice place to watch the last three to four songs. I for one thought this show was weaker than the previous two and not as great as the one I saw from HSB at the Lido two and a half years ago. But they were headliner back then, had a better mixed sound and I was able to watch the entire show. I have no clue what the setlist looked like, so if anyone knows, feel free to tell me. I know that they played the following songs, but that’s it.
Endzeit
Counterweight
Voice Of The Voiceless
The Weapon They Fear
Black Tears
I apologize for my lack of knowledge of HSB songs. But I’m not too good on song titles, anyway.
After HSB finished, it took about 25 minutes until the funniest intro of the evening sounded through the speakers, letting everybody know that it was time for
Killswitch Engage. This time their crazy guitarist with the cape was also there and it was hard not to focus on him solely. By the way, the other guitarist reminded me of Tim from Protest The Hero, but that’s maybe because I watched the entire show from the balcony, from where the sound and view was pretty nice. They played a pretty entertaining show that featured constant mishaps and a pink plush bunny head, but overall their style of Melodic MetalCore isn’t my pair of shoes. For 45 minutes they probably put up the second best show after ETID, but what concerns the music they couldn’t convince me to listen to their albums more often once again. That being said, I admit that without their attendance I would have found the ticket price pretty inappropriate. So they were less a bonus than a band I truly wanted to see. And it was cool to watch three quarter of the Columbiahalle sing Holy Diver.
The setlist (taken from Setlist.fm)
My Curse
Never Again
A Bid Farewell
Reckoning
Fixation On The Darkness
Starting Over
Rose Of Sharyn
My Last Serenade
The End Of Heartache
Holy Diver (DIO cover)
After the longest break of 35 minutes
In Flames entered the stage. First just virtually on the LED lightwall, than real. I must admit that this band was the bonus, so I wasn’t too eager to watch the whole show. Their style of generic mainstream industrial Metal from Sweden didn’t blow me away and neither did their power and budget eating lightwall (without that tickets would have been 15 percent cheaper). I only gave their 2008 album a spin and so I wasn't familiar with most of the songs and therefore left after approximately 35 minutes. To avoid offended comments of In Flames fans, I will shut up now and just post their setlist.
Setlist in no particular order (according to Horsti1989)
Cloud Connected
Embody the Invisivble
The hive, The Quiet Place
Trigger
Artifacts of the Black Rain
Disconnected, Take This Life
Pinball Map
Only for the Weak
Leeches
Come Clarity
March to the Shore
Chosen Pessimist
Delight and Angers
Alias
The Mirrors Truth
My Sweet Shadow
So that was this year’s Taste Of Chaos Tour. No side stage acts to entertain the audience whilst the roadies were setting up the stage for the next band, shirt prices beyond the acceptable (but somehow you’ve got to notice that this is a Warped Tour Spin-Off) and a pretty close minded audience. But two great but short shows combined with one and a half nice ones and a very decadent one justified the ticket price. How on earth is the next year’s TOC going to keep up with that? Hard to tell.
12/11/2009 -
Frank Turner w/
Jaakko and Jay - Magnet
Friday evening. After half an hour of overtime (I’m not talking about sports) I was changing my suit for my concert outfit at work and leaving my coworkers under the impression, that it’s good that we don’t wear casual clothes at the office.
I headed straight for my girlfriends apartment to pick her up for our second not-Orange-Distortion-concert together (she’s not quite the concertgoer as I am) and from there we made our way to the Magnet early, since the shows there are known to start at least 20 minutes early. After a short break at the local Lidl market to shop for handkerchiefs (she was pretty sick that night) we went inside the very empty Magnet. I’m lucky the securities didn’t toss us or else they would have thought that we’re dealing with a new drug in orange packages of ten pieces reading “Floralys” on it. Okay, back to the topic.
As it turned out, the support act didn’t start their show until 8.15 pm, but this was lucky for us so we were able to find a fine place right (or in this case left) in front of the stage with a good view for the both of us. Unfortunately, there were already two very drunk and very emotional girls constantly weeping, who didn’t pay attention for most of the time with all their hugging and writing emails on their mobile an iPhones (man, did that get annoying). Jeez, I’m keep straying from what I want to write. Concert, yeah right.
As mentioned, the support act
Jaakko & Jay started their show around 8.15 pm and man, was I lucky haven’t decided to watch their set. At first, I was bummed when I found out that Digger Barnes had canceled his tour with Frank Turner. But after half an hour of these two crazy talking finish guys (I only know two other finish dude and these are Kimi Räikkönen and Heikki Kovalainen, both are not quite the talkers) but these two knew how to entertain an audience. I don’t know how much stage practice these two have, but since their first CD-R EP is from 2007, I guess not that much. And as if that wasn’t enough, they played a cool style of folk punkish minimalistic tunes in the manor of the Against Me! Acoustic EP or whatnot. Okay, the drumming was pretty loud, but the voice of the singer was pretty cool and catchy and he felt no desire to stay on stage too long (probably because he was annoyed by the blinding lights which give every band at the magnet to play for an audience of ten to twenty people). As I promised Jaakko after the show that I will attend their next show here in Berlin, he gave me a promotional copy of their s/t EP, so that I could properly prepare myself for the next concert of the best support band I haven’t heard before a concert, that I’ve seen in the last couple of years. And not only me, major parts of the audience felt the same way as they started dancing and screaming louder, as their show went on. This band is definitely one worth to keep an eye on.
The setlist (at least what I can decypher, what's in brackets reads so on the setlist)
??? (Keeppari)
Moneyfest (Manifest)
Lack Of Communication
Burning
Better Than (Betteri)
??? (IP)
Keep In Touch
Walls & Bars (Walz)
??? ("Kezä")
Wife & Dog
Festival
Man, there you go and take the setlist and you can't tell the whole set after all. I apologize for that. If you know more than me, please feel free to tell me and everyone else.
After a break of about 30 minutes (pretty long, if you consider that almost everything was prepared for this set already)
Frank Turner and his band entered the stage. It was amazing that this young guy was able to play a whole tour with sold out shows throughout Germany, especially with only two real albums and if you consider, that the last time he played here in Berlin with The Gaslight Anthem in February, about 40 people knew him and only 20 liked him. Amazing. I was pleased that he decided to bring the whole band since most of his songs are arranged for a whole band setup. From the first to the last song the atmosphere was filled with excitement for the concert, the moment and the fact that Frank was playing most of everyone’s favorite songs. The Magnet was meanwhile packed with people, but we still had a great view and the sound was almost okay for Magnet circumstances, maybe a little too much bass. The rest of the band tried their best to keep up with Frank, but I must say they failed. They acted too much like Rock’n’Rollers and they couldn’t emit the same charm as Frank did. The harmonica-solo of a volunteer from the audience seemed a little bit arranged but if it wasn’t, it was pretty awesome.
Setlist ("Today's Biscuit Is The Hob Nob")
Live Fast, Die Old
Reasons To Be An Idiot
Long Live The Queen
Substitute
Try This At Home
Dan's Song
Real Damage
Poetry Of The Dead
Isabel
Love, Ire and Song
Sons Of Liberty
I Knew Prufrock Before He Got Famous
The Road
- Encore -
Freiheit (abridgement)
Ballad Of Me And All My Friends
Photosynthesis
For a little bit more than an hour the band and Frank played fine tunes and entertained the audience in a nonchalant way. But after a 2 (resp. 3) song encore, the lights went on and the background music started playing again and everyone was streaming outside the Magnet. Where to, I had no idea. We went home, that I can tell you. With the deep desire to see both bands again as soon as possible. Let’s hope for the best.
12/20/2009 -
Strike Anywhere w/
Dead to Me and
RENTOKILL - Magnet
To say it with the words of the recently deceased King of Pop, Michael Jackson: “This is it”. The last one. The final stroke of 2009. The Omega. The closing concert of this year. Luckily it was a good show, one I was looking forward to, even if the support band tempted me more than the headliner. The weather was already in a Christmassy mood and it was snowing and freezing cold and we were lucky to find a parking spot right in front of the Magnet so we just had to fall out of the car and right into the club. Before doing so we had to sell a spare ticket, which I thought would take a lot longer since the show wasn’t sold out, but it went delightfully fast.
When we went in,
RENTOKILL were already playing. Since it was only 8.45 pm we came to the conclusion, that the Magnet had once more started the show at least 15 minutes early to what the homepage and even the ticket said. Not the worst thing for us, since we didn’t feel the need to check out their show once more this year and so we went into the disco room and sat on the couch. Through the speakers, we could still hear their show and that was much more bearable. They played a rather short set because they left the stage around 9.05 pm and made room for the band everyone (or at least the two of us) came.
After a pretty short break,
Dead to Me started their set at 9.20 pm. Reduced to a trio again, they opened their show with a track from the “Little Brother EP” and everyone was just standing and nodding around, although I got the feeling that some of them would like to dance. During the second song however, some guy ran to the front and nudged the people there and therewith started a nice and for the rest of the show ongoing Pogo. Oh yeah, that guy was me by the way. Since I’ve been to many shows with spoiled and lame audiences, I couldn’t let that happen once more at a show of one of my favorite bands. And I was glad as more and more people joined the dancing. The band meanwhile was playing an exquisite show with a guest appearance of the Strike Anywhere guitarist (so it kind of WAS a show of the Dead To Me / Strike Anywhere conglomerate band “Bad Friends” of the song with the same name) and the setlist was a nice mixture of old and new, fast and slow songs. From time to time they threw in some clever announcements or rhapsodized about how much they loved their tour in Germany. Chicken and Nate alternated with the singing and to my surprise, I liked Nate’s song much better live than on CD. After approximately 40 minutes (10 minutes more than I expected) they left the stage under lackadaisical chants for more songs and me wet to my undies and thirsty as hell. I already was looking forward to attending their next shows in Germany next year, even if I’ve just seen them (hopefully again with “Visiting Day”)
The setlist:
Arrhythmic Palpitations
Splendid Isolation
Nuthin’ Runnin’ Thru’ My Brain
Something New
Cruel World
Liebe Liese
Cause Of My Anger
X
Bad Friends
Don't Lie
Three Chord Strut
A Day Without A War
By The Throat
No 20 minutes after Dead To Me finished their set, the highly anticipated headliner,
Strike Anywhere, entered the stage. The venue was now pretty crowded and it wasn’t easy to find a nice place to stand. So the sight wasn’t too good, but the sound was surprisingly good, maybe the Magnet finally fired their lousy sound guy. He wasn’t a part of the playing bands, that’s for sure, since both bands kept complementing the sound. I’m not the biggest Strike Anywhere fan so my review won’t be too full of excitement, but I like that this band has kept a unique sound and style and maintained realistic and still love to play small venues. For only 55 minutes, so rather short for a headliner gig, they played their hymns and gave everyone the opportunity to raise their fists and shout at the top of their lungs. It was a fairly nice show and with an ending time around 11.30 pm it was very obliging to the “working people” like me.
The setlist (incomplete and not in the right order - Thanks to thesadhotdog):
Sunset on 32nd street
Instinct
Prisoner echoes
Laughter in a police state
Sedition
Amplify
Blaze
Infrared
I'm your opposite number
Two thousand voices
To the world
Postcards from home
If there is anything to add, please feel free to do so.
So, as I said. This is it. One year of live shows and concerts, one was bad, some were okay, many were pretty sweet and some of them were just insanely awesome. I had fun writing these reports and I hope you enjoyed reading them and that they guided you in a way or gave you an impression of what may wait for you at another show on another concert of the reviewed bands. I hope you’ll read my journal on the best records of 2009 which will also feature a ranking of the 5 best live shows this year and that you check out my upcoming reviews for the concerts next year.
So, I guess there’s nothing more to say than Merry Christmas everyone, happy holidays, lots and lots of big presents and a Happy New Year.
Stay well
Oliver
Killswitch Engage
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