His eyes are wild with excitement, hands trembling. You here for the gig? He enquires, after asking whether my gloves are snowboarding gloves. Do you snowboard? No. His eyes are wide, I wonder how much speed he's actually taken, or whether he really is this excited. I'm pretty excited myself to be honest, but I'm far too grown up to let it show. Miserable git. I love snowboarding. Are you here for the gig?
We are sitting in Scruffy Murphies, a cool metal pub just round the corner from the Birmingham Academy and they are hammering out Judas Priest and Arch Enemy and all sorts of other delights to the heavy metal crowd. As usual they manage to pull out some songs by the bands we are about to see, I look around and watch excited goth faces lighting up, seeing how many people are going to the gig too. I'll see you in the mosh pit! Our new friend says excitedly, making the sign of the devil.
We catch the tail end of Hatesphere, fast shouty metal with crunchy riffs and widdly guitars. There is a big open space, a circle of death if you will, in the middle of the audience. This is where the carnage happens, but it is starkly empty. I wonder why it's even there, if no-one if actually moshing.
When Dark Tranquillity take the stage, you can tell that most of these metal kiddies have no idea who they are. They have that air of determination about them that they won't like this band, however good they are. The sullen faces in the front few rows hardly move during the gig but behind them, we are headbanging like crazy. It is a glorious performance, fast - loud - beautiful - quiet - SHOUTING - fast - furious - angry - lovely epic metal. There are devil signs all over the place and despite one guitarist looking bored to tears and jealous that the other guy gets all the solos they pull out all the stops. There is a pretty poor song in the middle where the singer stops shouting and actually sings, but they play some of my favourite tunes, Monochromatic Stains, The Treason Wall, Damage Done amongst others. I sustain light damage from the crazies when we move towards the middle because the audience are so dead around the edges.
The main band tonight are Chimaira, a fact that becomes drummed into our brains as the crowd chant the name. They are an American hardcore metal band who do fast chugging hammer at your brain noise with shouting. A bit too much shouting if you ask me. For some reason, although the crowd is going more wild than any of the other bands the empty space reserved for moshing has closed as the crowd surfing gets under way. There is carnage at this gig, we get bashed around quite a bit, for most of the gig though, I have this guy next to me who is protecting his woman by punching the headbangers in a deterrent sort of a way, and thus protecting me. The toilets are sprayed with blood from a bust nose or something, the kiddies love this band. I don't know why, they're pretty rubbish. Chug chug chug shout chug shout chug shout chug shout... Oh but the best thing was everyone grinning like idiots and chanting together I hate you all. This is heavy metal alright! Plus I get to do the climbing over everyone just to shake the singer's hand at the end thing... Rock and/or roll.
There are an astonishing number of shoelaces on the broken plastic-strewn floor when everyone has left, along with the odd torn out piercing and loose change. At the door we meet our nutter from the pub, he is jabbering excitedly at the doorman and doesn't recognise us when we pass, even when I pat him on the back. Wicked gig, hey? I say. The bus on the way home is covered in graffiti and my ears are ringing so much I lose my hat somewhere along the line.
- - My photos can be seen HERE
- - (Pretty much all the photos in this review are of Dark Tranquillity, except for that last, green one)
