My review of the Baltimore show:
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June 9 2005 - Sonar Lounge, Baltimore
The first band was Holy Hell, who was decent but a bit cliche. Female lead singer... The guitarist is trying too hard to look like Rob Halford... the Keyboardist reminds me of Booger from Revenge of the Nerds. The highlight of the set was Eric Adams making a cameo, presenting the Holy Hell singer with a rose and singing a duet with her (while rubbing up on her a little bit as well) The ended with a pretty good cover of Yngwie's Rising Force.
Rhapsody was the second act. They've been on my radar screen for years, but they've never intrigued me enough to actually but a cd... Their set did not help the cause. The double bass absolutely drowned out everything, except for the vocalist occasionally (who does look remarkably like Robert Plant). I could barely even hear the guitars, so I don't know if they've got any musical talent... I thought they played entirely too long (nearly an hour) and they bored the hell out of me. Since when do opening acts get to play an encore ??? (Maybe they were promoted to co-headliner... I dunno). So, I guess I'm not too impressed with Rhapsody.
Manowar finally made their appearance about 11:00 & played a kickass set. No surprises with the setlist, but it was delivered supurbly. The audience was fairly small (maybe 300 people... the crowd could easily hold twice as many), but everyone was chanting along to the classics... Hail & Kill, Sign of the Hammer, Kings of Metal, etc. Eric Adams was in a good mood, so we weren't privaleged to one of his tirades, even when the lighting was screwed up, or when a couple of kids ran across the stage and stage-dived.
Classic Joey Dimaio moment: At the encore break, Joey comes out on stage proclaiming death to rap, jazz, punk and any other non-true-metal band out there, and vowing to return to Baltimore, such that Manowar can blow the fucking roof off of the fucking joint. He then propositions a "young girl who drove all the way from North Carolina" in the audience, to "bring her to glory" on the stage in front of her mother (who was also in the crowd). He then chugs a Budweiser and throws the can in the crowd. Gotta love it!
Manowar is one band that really knows how to put on a live show, and are definately "kings of metal" in my book. The only dissapointment was that they only played for maybe 80 minutes or so... I bet that damn extended Rhapsody set caused Manowar to shorten their set!
I'm glad that a decent metal show finally came to Baltimore... which is a pretty rare occurance. (Maybe not as rare as Costa Rica, but still pretty friggin rare!
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