2007年 Sep 3日 Monday, 15:56

Into The Woods have put in some work since their debut gig a few weeks ago at the same venue. Natalia looked a lot more confident and the band looked a lot more 'together'. Not so keen on their sound (which resembles recent Lacuna Coil output) and rather swamps Natalia's voice. The final song Eclipse (also on their myspace page) sounded the best, but that impression may be tainted by the fact that I've heard it a few more times than the other tunes. Quite why they needed all the additional amplification I don't know …

I hadn't heard any of the Blind Ego material before the show and I'm not all that familiar with RPWL either - so I must admit that I was tempted along primarilly by the promise of seeing John Mitchell on stage. I was therefore somewhat surprised when the band started playing and John was still standing by the bar … drinking … red bull (apparently). Mr Jowitt was there, rather somberly dressed by his outrageous standards, along with 3 others later introduced as (the drummer) and Kalle (guitar) and Yogi (keyboards) from RPWL when on wandered the rather dishelved loooking (in comparison) Paul Wrightson … who I last heard singing on The Visitor by Arena.

The first few songs were OK without really being memorable. Wrightson's vocals made me think of Arena more than once and in some regards, so did some of Kalle's guitar playing, particularly on Mirror. Nevertheless the set didn't really get going until Wrightson left the stage for the instrumental number Moorland, which was the first number to really interest me. When that was finished John Mitchell jumped up on stage and everything went up another level - the band seemed more cohesive and the songs and playing seemed much more enjoyable. Of the 3 songs that John handled the lead vocals for, the RPWL number Roses was the one that really stood out for me. I was a little disappointed that John was taking a backseat, guitar wise, but Kalle's solos seemed to get better as the set progressed too.

Then Mr Wrightson reappeared and for once the intro to the next song sounded familiar. It took rather longer than it should have for me to recognise this as the Queensryche song Breaking The Silence but the band and Mr Wrightson delivered a fantastic version which was probably the highlight of the whole evening for me. After thanking the organisers for making the gig happen, the band finished off the set with Moon and Sun from the album and then swiftly reappeared for a finale of Deep Purple's Perfect Strangers with John Mitchell back on stage but just playing guitar this time. It was a pretty decent version and rounded off another cool evening at The Peel.

Blind Ego Setlist:
1. ??
2. Mirror
3. Disturbed
4. Sugar For The Ape (RPWL)
5. Moorland (instru)
6. ??
7. Break You
8. Roses (RPWL)
9. Breaking The Silence (Queensryche)
10. Moon and Sun
===
11. Perfect Strangers (Deep Purple)

6,7,8 John Mitchell on vocals
1-4, 9-11 Paul Wrightson on vocals