DragonForce at Irving Plaza

Ok, this review should be pretty easy: remember when I said I felt bad for Ensiferum for having to go on after Turisas? Turns out that wasn't a fluke: I felt just as bad for DragonForce on Tuesday night. Here's why, synthesized down to two simple statements:

Turisas. Turisas kicked my ass, almost literally. After their set, my throat was a strip of dried leather from screaming and yelling, my legs tottering from jumping up and down, my arms hanging weakly at my sides, shaking in exhaustion from the constant fist-in-the-air pumping. Two days later, my arms still hurt from the short, sweet workout Turisas gave me. I figure if they headline now, they'll just play all of The Varangian Way (not that I'd have a problem with that), but one more album, they should be leading their own tours. They are far beyond ready.
DragonForce. Subsconsciously I knew about this problem before I went, but DragonForce is not the sort of band you want to listen to for more than half an hour. God love 'em, they put on a good show - the wind blowing the hair back dramatically, the keyboard player doing calisthenics while he plays, Herman Li and his guitar solo faces of doom, the drummer who sings along to all of the words - but the music. doesn't. change. At all. One friend compared them to varieties of Chinese chicken: you can have sesame chicken, or orange chicken, or General Tsao's chicken, but in the end, you're basically getting the same thing: chicken with some sort of orange-flavored sauce. Have three courses of that stuff and you'll stop paying attention. Which I did, choosing to skim in and out of the show like a fish jumping in and out of the rapids. Enjoyable enough, I suspose, but not something that I'd want to repeat.

So, to sum up: DragonForce is ok in small doses, Turisas is always awesome and should be headlining their own tours.