[Concert Review] Vader/ Berzekrer (Key Club; 11/25/02)

edwardgein

systematic.restart.
Apr 26, 2002
158
1
18
42
California
www.obscurehaven.com
Well I finally got back from the Berzerker/Rise/Vader/Immolation/Origin show (Key Club, Hollywood) and I what i saw was pretty shocking. Most of this review will be mostly rants due to the events that took place. I am also certain the agony and mosca will give their points of view to what happened tonight and further paint the picture of this would be unforgettable night.

Opening band (Didn't catch their name):
This was a good opening band that had energy and good music. The guitarist reminded me of King Buzzo but shorter and with blacker hair. So they open up the night at around 7:30pm and do a good 25 - 30 minute set. the guitarist was very good. He had some great riffs and with the combination of the singer, who had more of a grindcore style of singing (e.g. scretchy vocals), gave their music that energy an opening band needs when opening the "all metal" night with a sober audience. there really isn't much to say besides that i enjoyed the band and would see them again in the future. If anyone here went to that show hopefully they will mention their name.

Special Ed:
Now this band was pretty funny. They had a weird little sound and what made it more comedic was the actual members of the bands. Three members wore all white clothing (one of them being a pretty big guy) and the other two wore football jerseys (and one of them was a big, large dude as well. so the pound count should be around 600 pounds on stage lol. Anyways, they had a weird little death metal/black metal sound but also mixed in some ska and also some melody vocals. I just laughed my ass off at them for the whole set and made jokes about them with my friends. They were somewhat of a joke band but after the whole night ended it was decided that they had WAY TOO much stage time. I believe they had the longest set tonight. Strange for a no name band who's gimick is to look retarded on stage. Overall this band got a 4 from me.

Pro - Death:
Now this band had some major potential. I met some people from UCSB who run blackmetalradio.com and they called them "Berzerker wanna-bes" because they used a drum machine and had a grind style to them. In some ways that is true but they did have their own little thing going for them and I thought they were good. they had a little gimick where they would play horror/slasher films on all the television screens and at one point they actually played Skinny Puppy's"Worlock" and other slasher films. I laughed my ass off at the movie clip of this one girl grinding what looked like to be a knife on the tape. I could hear alot of people, mostly girls, screaming in disgust. Pro - Death had a very industrial sound to them but what turned me off a bit was the guitar. The distortion that was used was TOo high that made the guitar sound weird and off at times. Besides that they had some solid songs but with all those gore images going around you kinda forget to see the band and watch the death scenes being shown.

Rise
Now this is where the shit begins to hit the fan. Rise took about a good 25 minutes to set up because they started having some problems with Mics not working and the sound techs obviously didn't know jack shit because they had no clue what was being plugged. So it took Rise about 15 minutes into their set to finish and then started playing. They were great! they played some old songs "Shadow of Ruins" and "Sinning.. (Koszos Krisztus)." They also did "Release" and where going to do another song until..... security told them they went over their time limit. They only did about three or four songs. The technical difficulties ruined the set and it would also claim the following band. Even though Rise played a very short set they were great and i hope to see them play again.

THE BERZERKER:
Victim number 2. The stage sound difficulty transended unto the Berzerker's time for setting up. NOTHING was working properly and this made the band very frustrated. They couldn't get the mics to work, drums to sound, and the guitar had problems too. The guitarist of Rise had the same problem but they manage to fix it quickly but Berzerker wasn't too lucky. So it took Berzerker 30 fucking minutes to set up which caused them to play it SUPER SHORT. the songs they played were "Forever, No One Wins, Death Reveals, and Reality. that was all they could play. The technical problems claimed the set of one of the most brutal bands of that night. This proved to me that going to see Nile/Napalm/Berzerker/D.T. at the Key club in Jan. might be costly and might be avoided. So since the Berzerker merely gave me a tease i am going to go see them at the Galaxy Theatre in Santa Ana tonight (11/26). Hopefully their set isn't claimed like tonight.

Vader:
Well Vader took stage and it looked like there were no technical difficulties and everything went well. There was a huge pit and everyone was going nuts. Since I am new to Vader i am not to familiar with their songs but they did play "Wings" which cause more moshing. Their set was great and I am looking forward to seeing them tonight. Overall, Vader was one of the bands that the crowd didn't want to see leave. People kept "awwing" when the songer said it was time for their departure but they made the crowd happy by playing a very brutal song at the end.

Thus ends the night. Origin and Immolation were not to my interest and what still shocked me was the Berzerker set. It was the biggest victim of all the bands. Seeing them play for 8 minutes made me decide right then and there that I have to see them the following night. So this was the great show that wound up in disaster. I place blame in two areas: Sound techs and Special Ed. The sounds techs obviously did not know what to do and what to connect and Special Ed took WAY TOO LONG a set. they played longer than Vader for fuck's sake. The only cool thing was finding out about this one site www.blackmetalradio.com and also finding that the DJ there has ALL of the old Berzerker materials. So thus ends night one of the concert madness. i will return with another review of the Galaxy show later on tonight. I hope that there are technical difficulties there.

Overall amount:
\m/:D\m/ \m/:D\m/ \m/
(5 being best)