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Photo by Bridget Christian |
Invisible Oranges reader Roger C recently attended the Calgary date of North America’s biggest fall metal tour: High on Fire, Converge, Mastodon, and Dethklok. He recounts his experience below.
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As soon as I remembered that Matt Pike had been in Sleep, my excitement increased tenfold. During the sound check, several excited fans shouted “Jerusalem!” at him, to which he laughed and responded something along the lines of “It’s been ages since I played that one.” His technical prowess was immediately apparent during the sound check as he noodled a bit with some very Van Halen-esque arpeggios and ludicrously speedy but tightly controlled tapping. My big complaint about their performance would have to be the mixing. Pike’s guitar was just barely discernible, even during the solos, over Jeff Matz’ overdriven bass, and the vocals were nigh impossible to hear. About halfway through the 30-minute set, Pike managed to get his guitar turned up some, which helped a bit.
Pike’s and Matz’ stage presences were excellent. Pike, shirtless, slight beer gut glistening with sweat, made that legs-together-picking-arm-outstretched-flashing-toothless-grin pose more than a couple times, and it looked like he was really feeling the music. Matz rocked out on the other half of the stage, without running around a whole lot. Overall, fun to watch without being over the top.
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At first glance, I thought Kurt Ballou was a stage tech, dressed in ordinary brown t-shirt and blue jeans. I remember thinking at the time he looked a little bit like he just came from the high school chess club. As he opened the set with a shrevident riff, making frantic, almost involuntary full-body twitches, my opinion of him was set: this guy can fuckin’ play. As Jacob Bannon careened onstage wearing faded and torn jeans and a cheap-looking windbreaker, the show evolved into 30 minutes of pure energy, accentuated by Ben Koller’s controlled power on the drums, and punctuated by Bannon’s frenetic bouncing. He reminds me of a pinball.
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I was a little disappointed with Mastodon’s performance, for a few reasons: the first 30-45 minutes of their set was composed of Crack the Skye in its entirety, and they had next to no band-crowd connection. Troy Sanders once made the universal circle pit gesture, and pounded his chest a few times while mouthing something indistinguishable, and gave a thumbs-up with raised eyebrows, as if asking for our approval of the new record. Not one word was spoken to the audience. Never having seen them perform before, I’m not sure if this is usual fare for a Mastodon show, but it did seem to accentuate that sort of untouchable, godlike aspect of the group.
Seeing the new album performed live gave me a new depth of feeling for it, a raw, emotional thing that I can’t really describe. Something to do with seeing Sanders and Brent Hinds sing and play with a lot of feeling, pouring themselves into the music. Their composure onstage was more what I would expect from this type of progressive, technical group; no frantic running around, nothing uncontrolled. As the set went on, Hinds slowly got more and more into it, his flawlessly timed headbangs coming more and more frequently.
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Unbelievably tight performance. They managed to sound almost exactly like the recordings. I didn’t expect any less from Brendon Small and Gene Hoglan. Stage presence was virtually nil, but I expected that as well, and the audience had the animated music videos from Metalocalypse to watch instead. I have less to say about this act, mostly because I spent a large portion of it doing a passable sardine impression.
Overall, if you or anyone you know is planning to go or thinking about going, it’s absolutely worth the cash.
This tour continues until November 21. For dates, see here. Note that New York City and Los Angeles have added second dates.
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I'm going, but I'm leaving before Dethklok.
So sorry to hear about Mastadon, Crack the Skye is awesome, but top to bottom for a new album is hard.
Dethklok sounding like their recording is a bad thing for me, I prefer the rough edge of a live performance, I went to see the real deal, not hear the cd.
Sweet. Seeing that show this Saturday. Forgot about HoF & Converge. I'll be staying for Dethklok though, but then I'm clearly an uncool false-metal poser.
Sounds great and I'm looking forward to all the bands. It's funny to me when people complain about Dethklok being a cartoon band – all metal bands are cartoon bands, just Dethklok has a TV show
I love me some cartoons! Taking my son to this on the 31st in DC.
I saw Small play the Dethklok songs with the School of Rock kids, and the songs totally held up live. Small is quite the shredder. I can imagine that the stage show would be even better with Metalocalypse as the visuals – which would necessitate ultra-tight playing to ensure band/visuals synchronicity.
I'll be staying for Dethklok though, but then I'm clearly an uncool false-metal poser.
It's not you, it's me – I don't find Metalocalypse funny, and the albums thus far have done nothing for me.