Defenders Of The Faith - 25/04/08

Comedy day out this! After an afternoon of swilling pints in various Manchester hostelries, we got into the Manchester Academy at about 6:50, things went wrong instantly, JB's current favourites 3 Inches Of Blood, had come on immensely early, and we only saw the last two songs, which were very good! This pissed JB off immediately!

The next band up was Devildriver, who were alright, but not brilliant! Honk seemed to like them, but after an incident with a plastic sword, he decided enough was enough and lobbed his pint and pissed off! We were now one down....


The next band up was Opeth which were the band I was most looking forward to, and they were, well disappointing to say the least, they didn't get good until half way through the second to last song. They sounded constantly out of tune and frontman Mikael Akerfeldt appeared to have had several pints too many before the show! At this point JB decided that they were shit and that he was off outside for a fag. Unfortunately they would let him back in...

The final band was Arch Enemy, and there was just myself and Junior left to watch them. After a disappointing night, Arch Enemy saved the day! They fu@kin' ruled, they were tight fast and aggressive! Front woman, Angela Gossow had incredible stage presence and insanely evil voice, think the demon voice from The Exorcist!!! Brilliant!

The next gig is this coming Friday at Leeds Rios! 3 Inches Of Blood's own headlining show. More after.

Nightwish - 04/04/08

The first proper gig of the year! Also the first blog entry of 2008, and its been a while coming hasn't it! So onto Nightwish at the Manchester Apollo. I was very much looking forward to this one as it was the first gig of theirs that i had seen with the new singer - Anette Olzon, who has a totally different presence and voice than their old singer Tarja Turunen.


So not suprisingly given the differing range of Anette's voice, the band stuck mainly to songs from last years "Dark Passion Play" album, with a smattering of old tunes thrown in for good measure.


Unfortunately the soundman should be shot, as the sound was terrible to begin with and not very loud at all throughout the whole show! However the bands performance was very good! Luckily Nightwish are the main headliners at this years 3 day Bloodstock Open Air Metal Festival, where I can re-evalue them. It was still a lot of fun though!


Next up in the world of metal is the "Metal Hammer - Defenders Of The Faith Tour" that will thunder through Manchester Academy next Friday (25/04/08) which will be reported on soon after! See you then!