Legions of the Humid Dead

It's a The Gathering type of day: too hot for May, humid as a motherfucker, and I'm working at home without air conditioning, feeling like I've set up a satellite office in Costa Rica. Clearly the only possible recourse is to put on Testament's violently energetic late-90s classic cut and rock out through the oppressive heat.

Seth gave The Gathering a good write up back in January, but he didn't include a YouTube clip of today's featured selection, "Legions of the Dead." One of The Gathering's fastest songs, it's also one of the album's best examples of the thrash/death collision that Seth highlighted.

I'm Pretty Sure They're Trying to Kill Me

Last month, Megadeth announced that they'd be filling the time originally scheduled for the Canadian/American Carnage shows with a tour celebrating the 20th anniversary of Rust in Peace. At the same time, they roped in Testament (another victim of the Carnage Tour scheduling changes) to open playing The Legacy in its entirety. This announcement caused a great deal of consternation for us at Baroque Bleak Brutal, because a.) we love Rust in Peace, and b.) the closest NYC date was in Scranton, PA, two and a half hours away.

Then, a few weeks ago, following Tom Araya's successful back surgery, the bands rescheduled American Carnage for this summer and Megadeth seemed to indicate that they'd continue touring Rust in Peace. Slightly less consternation here in NYC...until we read that the show would still happen in New Jersey. New Jersey, you see, is difficult to get to on a weeknight, and the venue in question is a hockey rink that has (among other things) a history of idiocy when it comes to guiding visitors to the entrances. Not to mention that the show has now been on sale since late last year and the remaining tickets are two levels up in nosebleed territory.

Now Dave Ellefson announces he and Mustaine have patched up their second massive feud with a simple telephone conversation and he's returning to Megadeth. Fantastic news, but it doesn't open up any new tickets. Right now I think I'm living on the hope that his return spurs such an uptick in demand that they add a second show in NYC and I'll get to see one of my favorite albums performed in its entirety from somewhere closer than an overpriced nosebleed seat.

In! To! The! Pit!

After looking at Compare the Mosh Pit.com, a site that puts up pairs of photos of pits and asks you to pick the winners - think hotornot.com with wild flailing arms - it strikes me that what really defines a good pit (or at least a good pit photo) is when you have to look twice to tell if you're looking at a mosh pit or a riot. Limbs should be flailing, people should be packed like sardines and clinging to the edge of balance from the constant movement, and - of course - everyone should be having a pretty good time. In fact, we at Baroque Bleak Brutal celebrate the mosh pit in all of its majesty: that's why the photo of a pit - taken at this show - adorns the background of our blog's banner.

h/t: Reign in Blonde

As the Palaces Burned: Testament - The Gathering

On September 24, 1991 Nirvana released Nevermind. Nine years later, a reunited Iron Maiden played Madison Square Garden. The time in between was one of metal's bleaker periods, where the genre's mainstream face all but disappeared and it retreated not just underground, but underwater. To celebrate the rare gems of this dark time - and remember our fortune now that metal has ceased to be such a dirty word - we're launching As the Palaces Burned, a weekly series published every Wednesday that will cover metal albums of note released between 1991 and 2000.

Testament.......I labored over this band, and how to approach their AtPB entry. I mean where to begin? Skolnick's last album with the band, 1992's grungy The Ritual? Their experiments with Pantera-esque modernization on Low?

Well, Low is a great under-appreciated album, but I'm not going to go there. The Ritual has some very funny moments that need to be written about, but that will be in my upcoming series about Metal bands who released Grunge albums in the 90s.

No, we're going to cover Testament when they were in the same position Voivod was in my column last week. Having been dropped and relegated to the CMC International/Spitfire records purgatory, a brand new lineup of Testament decided the best approach would be to modernize and play more of that death metal the kids are always talking about. Now Chuck Billy and Eric Peterson were well set up for this, with the secret weapon Gene Hoglan on drums, and a great working knowledge of the underground. However despite some great moments 1997's Demonic is not a great album. The approach is a bit generic. Some songs are great are still played in concert, such as "The Burning Times". Here, have a quick listen. It's good!



But the whole record isn't great, and doesn't make the cut as a lost classic.

Plagued with yet more lineup changes, Chuck Billy and Eric Peterson "gathered" (get it?) all their friends together. Grabbing no less than two ex-members of Death (James Murphy and Steve DiGiorgio) plus Dave Lombardo from Slayer, Testament released one hell of a war cry with The Gathering in 1999. To me it is a unifying statement which best sums up everything the band had been trying to say since Low. The aggression level is even higher than Demonic without that album's generic riffing. The thrash is back in full force but with the added power of Billy's newfound growl. Topping the whole album off with a delicious satanic cherry was the production of Andy Sneap, now recognized as the gifted master of aggressive recording.

Anyone who returned to the band with The Formation of Damnation needs to go back and fall in love with The Gathering. Starting with "DNR", still a favorite in modern set lists, you are hearing a band at the height of their Metal powers. The way thrash and death metal are so seamlessly merged on this record may seem pretty textbook now, but this is the band and the album from which those textbooks were written. And not enough can be said about the subtle virtuosity, especially in DiGiorgio's smooth yet violent bass playing. If there was ever any recorded document that Testament never deserved their reputation as Metallica-lite this is the album.

But enough tell, here's some show:

Sewn Shut Eyes!



DNR (Do Not Resuscitate)



Eyes of Wrath



And the song which should have been the "hit," True Believer. I think this was on the soundtrack to one of the Saw movies.......

Children of Bodom at the Hammerstein Ballroom

I'm starting to wonder if I should impose two year gaps between Bodom viewings...or that the theory I've heard about the band's inability to really rock a headlining spot has a ring of truth to it. Either way, I left this show feeling less pumped up than I had when Bodom played Gigantour earlier this year.

I suspect the problem might have been my own head space more than anything else: Bodom was the last night in a long string of late nights with no sleep, I had been rocked by GWAR while drinking heavily the night before, and frankly I couldn't bang my head with my usual alacrity as a result. I had also developed a morbid fear of accidentally smashing my head into someone's shoulder, which almost happened the night before. For me, the live experience is all about feeding off the energy and submitting to barely-controlled animalistic instincts for a little while; when I can't do that, or can't do it without letting go of the stream of conciousness of my ego, I don't enjoy myself as much.

So that was the bad. The good was in little things:

1. The show was twice as long as I had expected in a good way: having not done any prep work, I missed the inclusion of both The Black Dahlia Murder and Between the Buried and Me.
2. I hadn't heard Between the Buried and Me before that night and their performance proved to be an excellent introduction to their work. I didn't think "progressive deathcore" was possible as a genre, but clearly I'm not giving the deathcore guys enough credit. The recorded material I've heard so far seems pretty consistent with what I was hearing through my surprised shock, so Between the Buried and Me may have garnered themselves another fan.
3. I spent the last two sets up in front, hoping to tap into a bit more of the life coming from the stage (makes me sound like a vampire, doesn't it?). At some point during Testament's set, the three small pits in the very front opened up into one long pit that ran like a wound parallel to the stage for about 40 feet. At one point, a guy who had to be a bit under six feet and well over 200 pounds decided it would be an excellent idea to run the length of the pit and plow into an unsuspecting group of concertgoers clustered at the end. Unfortunately for them, he made it. I'm surprised they didn't knife him afterwards for being such a douche.
   

The Metal Masters at PNC Bank Arts Center

MetalSucks pretty much nails the main takeaway of this show in their review: Judas Priest was very good, but Heaven and Hell were so hella awesome they blew Priest off the stage. I'm pretty sure the roof of PNC's big concrete shell was shaking when Dio and crew left the stage and the energy in the room was palpable: openers or no, we all wanted Heaven and Hell to come back out and finish the night with "Neon Knights." If the band doesn't use this groundswell to write a new album, they're soft in the head. The public is ready for much more Dio-fronted Sabbath. A few other notes:

• Testament started out strong, but their sound fell apart during "The Formation of Damnation" about halfway through their set. Their selection of material wasn't what I would have picked - I was looking forward to hearing "Henchmen Ride" after seeing a troop of guys on motorcycles on the way in - but sound problems aside, I have no real complaints.
• Motorhead was completely incomprehensible and sounded like they were playing a 200 person club, not a 17,000 person concert shed. I'm guessing that's a part of their "everything louder than everything else" mentality (I've never seen them live before), but I spent most of their set shirt watching.
• Speaking of shirts (and the rules of appropriate concert t-shirt wear), the winner of Best T-Shirt for this show goes to the guy rocking the vintage Rainbow shirt (because I'm a fairly optimistic person, I'm assuming the shirt was a vintage item and not a "relic" constructed through with the aid of a washing machine full of pebbles), who gets five points out of a possible five and a spot in the Concert T-Shirt Hall of Fame. The bar's been set for the rest of you concert goers.
  
• Metalheads are, sad to say, pretty ugly people (yours truly excluded, of course. I'm no model, but I felt pretty good comparing myself to my metal peers). People from the more rural areas of New Jersey are, sad to say, pretty ugly people. Combining the two makes for a whole mass of really fugly people. If a bomb had gone off, the gene pool would have been grateful.
  

Testament at B.B. King's

It's incredible how a good band can get past the limitations of a terrible venue and play a great show. It's also incredible how much I've come to dislike seeing shows at B.B. King's, and yet I still continue to subject myself to the occasional appearance because I'm willing to sacrifice things like sonic quality to see a band. It's a common enough problem for any concert goer I'm sure, and I should probably consider myself fortunate that the three shows I've seen there - Emperor in 2006, Symphony X in 2007, and now Testament in 2008 - were all excellent despite the venue. I'll go into that more in a minute, but first: Testament and their awesomeness.

Not ten months after I said Testament refuses to tour anywhere near New York City they very kindly made me a liar, and came to headline B.B. King's at the head of another group of local acts I had no desire to see. Once again, my reactions bordered on hero worship: Chuck Billy is larger than life and should take up air guitar competitions as a side gig, Alex Skolnick is a shredding demon who's still the man even though he bounces around on stage like a teenybopper, and the set list (see below) was quality. Seth had teased me with reports of inclusions of "Demonic Refusal" in earlier gigs, but it seems like either New York wasn't Satanic enough to warrant the inclusion, or Testament still hasn't quite come to terms with their past.

To be honest, I'd love to know why they don't play more from that album: is it musically too far outside of where they want to be? Too demanding on the voice? They gave us "Low" instead, which kinda jives with the heavy groove thing they're putting into the new record, but it's not like Demonic was bad album - give us more of it! Maybe they'll bring back some more when they open for Priest/Heaven and Hell this summer. I think three appearances in the same area in less than a year warrants some set list experimentations.

Anyway, B.B. King's: I don't like the place because unless you're right up front, taking the risk of having someone's boot planted in your face as they go crowd surfing by, it's difficult to see, as your view will doubtless be blocked by one of the room's odd architectural features (like the thick columns spaced a third of the way out from either side of the room's walls), and if you're shorter than six feet, you'll be looking at the stage through gaps in shoulders. Then there's the sound problem: sound must get trapped in weird corners of the room and die, because it's not making it to the back. I took my earplugs out during the second song to see if that gave me more of an impact, but that only lead to my discovering what everyone else in the club was enjoying: highs so shrill they'll cut your head off. Good stuff. Like I said above: I've yet to see a bad show at B.B. King's, but I get the feeling I'm never going to enjoy it there.

Set List

1. Over The Wall
2. Into The Pit
3. Apocalyptic City
4. Practice What You Preach
5. The New Order
6. Electric Crown
7. More Than Meets The Eye
8. Low
9. A Trail Of Tears
10. Henchmen Ride
11. Souls Of Black
12. Evil Has Landed
13. The Preacher

----------------

1. DNR
2. 3 Days In Darkness
3. Alone In The Dark
4. Disciples Of The Watch

Review: Testament - The Chance Theater, Poughkeepsie, NY - 7/13/07

I don't usually drive two hours out of my way to see a show, but Testament and I have a little history: I was supposed to see them at the exact same theater almost two years ago, prompted by one of the opening bands - I knew the drummer - and ended up not going because the band in question broke up before the show. Stupid reason, I know, but thus are stories made. However, since Testament refuses to tour anywhere closer to New York City and I gotta have me some Chuck Billy and Alex Skolnick, off I went.

The Chance is a charming relic. A remnant of an earlier age - it was originally a movie theater in the 1920s - it's preserved its faded glory character and soldiers on unrestored and with dingy grace as a rock venue. In appearance it reminds me of The Palladium in Worcester, MA and Irving Plaza in NYC, although it has one unique quirk: all of The Chance's useful sitting space sits high above the entrance, accessible through doorways and stairwells hidden by large crowds. Walk in after a show has started, as I did that Friday night and low ceilings, the overhang of the balcony, the blocky shapes of the bar and the soundboard all confront, pushing you inexorably towards the front, towards the built-in pit.

I found myself on the right side of the stage, the stairs to the pit - I know, how civilized - yawning towards me like temptation in wood-and-steel form. 'Come down,' they called to me. 'You don't have your camera, nothing to break - you'll be fine!' With the restraint of saint - and the experience of a man who knows the pit far too well - I shrugged the idea off.

Testament arrived late, taking the stage a good fifteen minutes past their announced starting time of 11:15, but when that blessed moment finally came, everything - the long drive, getting lost in the spread of Poughkeepsie, waiting through Merauder (real NYHC, which seemed to consist of not playing quite fast enough, coupled with a singer who was way too drunk/messed up in general to be on stage) - was worth the wait. Chuck Billy could fill a room with his mere presence alone. Always front and center, striding around the stage that suddenly seemed too small to contain him, Chuck Billy and his microphone stand, a three foot voice-amplifying baton that he carried at all times, were the centerpieces of much of the show. When Chuck Billy wasn't singing into the mic, he was air guitaring the solos on it. When he wasn't recreating the solos, he was using it to conduct, or to pull vocal contributions from the sweaty, eager crowd.

Alex Skolnick, meanwhile, held his own. The band didn't switch positions much, so I didn't get to see Skolnick's fretwork up close, but the sound was more than enough to satisfy as he and the rest of the band tore through a set list that drew mainly from the first three albums. In addition, a treat: "The Afterlife," the first new Testament song in six years, which seemed a worth addition to the catalog and a tantalizing reminder of the new album scheduled to come out next year.

There were some problems, of course: the mix on the first three songs was wretched, as if someone gave the volume knobs on the board an uncorrected spin, pushing the drums over the top and simultaneously alerting me to the previously unknown difficulty of trying to head bang without a guitar rhythm. I don't recommend it. Testament promised us an "eighteen or nineteen song set," a warm up for an upcoming festival appearance in Germany, but either the late start or some sort curfew ended the night, without encore, a few songs early. On the balance though, Testament put on an excellent show more than worth the travel and price of admission.