Paul Simon - 04/11/06

After the mayhem that was Slayer, I was expecting a nice quiet evening with Paul Simon.... I didn't get it as there was a lot of trouble at the show, yes, Paul Simon fans are bigger lunatics than Slayer fans! Can you believe it!


Basically, Paul said "why are you all sitting down at the front?" and then loads of people ran to the front of the stage and some people to the right got pissed off that they couldn't see, so loads of the MEN Yellow men turned up and a scuffle occured, I though one old geezer was going to get decked by this guy in front. It was very funny to watch!


It took the MEN Yellowmen ages to sort out the fracas at the front and I was taking far more notice of this event, than what was going on on stage!


What can we say about Paul then? Well, He was good, he played a couple of new songs of "Surprise" and the usual one off "Graceland" and a few Simon & Garfunkel numbers, but the best song was "Train In The Distance" from "Hearts And Bones", the best and most under-rated Paul Simon album..

After all the trouble though, I'll remember the gig for that and not the music. I think i'll stick to Metal shows in future, as they are much safer!

Unholy Alliance - 03/11/06

The Unholy Alliance is a tour featuring: Slayer, In Flames, Lamb Of God, Children Of Bodom and Thine Eyes Bleed..

Mr. Steven missed out on the most excellent metal mayhem by having to go to Paris on a business trip, so the ticket was passed on to Garry from work instead!

The poster for the event is shown below:


Thine Eyes Bleed were the first band on but they must have come on stage some time before 6pm as we totally missed them! The first band we saw was Children Of Bodom from Finland, who do songs in the melodic death metal style, they were ok but not particulary memorable, + I was especially looking forward to Lamb Of God who were up next:


Below are a couple of shots of Lamb Of God:


Lamb Of God are one mean muthaf@&kin' band from the "South" as in the American south, and they came with just one reason to "kick ass!" and they didn't dissapoint! The drum tech tested the kick drum before they came on and it was deafening, never mind thine eyes bleed, it was more like thine ears bleed!


Lamb Of God are Metal with a capital M.. albeit with extra southern style riffing, the best song was definately "Redneck" from new CD "Sacrament" unreal! I can't wait to see them do their own tour!

Anyway, In Flames (from Sweden!) were up next and after Lamb Of God, they were a bit underwhelming, but still quite good in a death metal meets Jonathan Davies from Korn kinda way! Their light show however didn't go down too well with my moby's camera, so no pics of them!

Next up of course were the mighty Slayer!!!!


Slayer are possibly the heaviest of all metal bands, a great influence to all the other acts on the bill I would think! This was the 6th time I'd seen then and it was probably the best yet, they totally ruled!


Slayer were at their Satanic best, with their Marshall speakers at either side of the stage set up like inverted crosses. They played 4 songs from the new "Christ Illusion" CD and all the songs you could ever want! ending with the skullcrushing "Angel Of Death" giving their usual 110% Amazing..11/10!!