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Dawn of Ashes + Vicious Alliance + Carfax Abbey
+ a ton more
6-08-07
Allentown, PA
*Note: The venue was split into two separate rooms
and I only saw half of the bands and therefore can only review those
bands. The rest were local goth rock though so I’m sure no one reading
this will mind.*
Bands I did see from opener to headliners:
Dyksick
The first opening act was a band from philly called Dyskick.
Although his page claims he has opened up for tons of signed bands, I
can't imagine why. The live performance was quite lacking. The show
consisted of a girl behind a laptop (no controllers, no keyboards, etc)
and a guy standing in a rather stationary position talking into the mic.
The vocal effects sounded very cheap and thin. I don’t remember the
songs much honesty, they sounded very jumbled and random. There were no
tangible structure or melodies, only random noises thrown together
haphazardly. There really isn’t more for me to say because, well,
nothing else happened. Each track consisted of: girl looking at laptop
confused wondering what she is supposed to be doing and guy standing
very stiffly, looking nervous and talking…er I mean ‘singing’…with
little emotion or conviction. Luckily, as I said above there were two
rooms so I ducked out after a couple of songs…
End of an Era
Something of a goth/metal style band. This style is not my thing at
all, but these guys were alright. The music didn’t do anything for me
personally, but it seemed to be written well for that type of music. I
didn’t not enjoy it. The one thing that really got me though was the
vocals. This guy can legitimately sing, and sing well. The vocals in
this band were amazing and for that reason I remembered these guys. If
you’re into that style you should definitely check them out.
Farewell to Autumn
Another goth/metal style band. To me it sounded
like they really should have been progressive metal , but all the songs
failed to build or go anywhere and cut off way too early at around 3 or
4 minutes. I don’t remember much else; the performance was pretty
boring, but then again it’s goth rock so I can’t really imagine them all
jumping around and being crazy. Not terrible, just not my thing.
Vicious Alliance|
Vicious Alliance is a local terror ebm/futurepop band from Philly
who has been quickly gaining recognition over the last year or so. I did
a review of their demo Humanity Bleeds which showed me that they
definitely have potential to be a big name in terror ebm, so the next
question would be: does their live show say the same? The answer is:
absolutely.
Unfortunately, most terror ebm bands do not play shows and even fewer go
on tour, so in the unlikely event that you DO get to see a terror show,
even if the band sucks you’re probably going to view it as a positive
experience. But I can honestly say that if you see a Vicious Alliance
show, you will not be disappointed in the slightest. From the very
initial moments during the opening of the show you know immediately
that, to put it bluntly, some intense shit is about to follow. The show
opened up with a militant intro track accompanied by fog machines
deploying mustard gas…er I mean fog. After a minute or so the entire
band comes out in full military/SWAT regalia (the male singer in full
WW2 general outfit brandishing a sword, the keyboardists in SWAT-esque
riot gear). At this point they go into their track Disease of Rotten
Minds. This is apparently a favorite with the crowd, because as soon as
the first note played the floor went crazy. Everyone got really into
this band right off the bat, no bullshit. Vicious Alliance displays a
great and almost overwhelming amount of energy on stage. The live band
consists of 5 members, male and female vocalists, two keyboardists and a
drummer. For just about the entire show every member had a ton of
energy; you could tell they were all really ‘feeling’ the music. Each
subsequent track played was a complete hit. All the songs were amazing
and upbeat, and they all sounded great live. The crowd ate this band up
and appeared to love every second of the show. A couple of tracks later
the male singer came down into the audience and everyone ran over to try
to sing or to grab on to him or whatever crazy fantasy they wanted to
live out at that moment. Needless to say, this band really knew how to
get the crowd involved. During of the later songs one of the
keyboardists came out into the crowd and a pit broke out, which was
amazing. For their final track (which was rather short), they invited
the audience up on stage with them to thrash about and go crazy. This
was of course very popular and just about ever patron of the club rushed
the stage to be with their heroes. Overall it was a very entertaining
show, and even though the songs were played exactly the way you would
hear them on a CD, the live show involved such an intensity that would
never be able to be experienced from merely listening to the CD. I also
respect this band a good deal because they profusely thanked everyone
involved in making the show happen and the crowd and so forth. My only
qualm with vicious alliance live is that the male vocalists voice is
pitch shifted down too much and it is quite difficult to understand it
when he talks in between songs. It usually sounds like he is saying
something worthwhile and it is unfortunate that I will never know what
it is…
Dawn of Ashes
Dawn of
Ashes is another band that has been getting a lot of hype recently, but
I felt like they lived up to it as well. Even though this was a one off
show and they flew all the way from CA, their stage show didn’t suffer
at all. They still came out in full blood spattered costumes, with a few
props and a severed head on one of the keyboard stands. The singer had a
ton of energy and was constantly moving around and knew how to work the
crowd. They played some of their well known tracks such as Abyss,
Flatline and Naildriven to which the crowd went absolutely crazy. No
matter how cheesy or ridiculous samples like “what the fuck’s inside me”
are, crowds fucking love it. The singer even called Elijah (male vox)
from Vicious Alliance to come on stage during Naildriven to sing and
thrash along. GET THIS THING OFF ME…All in all it was a very fun and
exciting show. Unfortunately though, the majority of the songs they
played were from their new album which isn’t due to be released until
September, so no one knew the tracks at all. To their credit, the new
tracks all sounded good and were performed well. I enjoyed how the
singer constantly told me to “dance with anger”, along with “I want to
feel your hate” and “start a circle pit” (don’t worry, I did). The
downside to their show was that, like every other terror ebm band, they
really don’t play that much of the music live. The male keyboardist
appeared to be hitting the same key over and over and over ad nauseam
during every track (it appeared the lowest C & D notes on the keyboard
too which was a bit odd) and the female keyboardist just seemed to sway
back and forth most of the time. Sure they looked evil and angry, but it
was still a bit of a let down. Even so, the bottom line is that I don’t
think you can be too disappointed when you can yell “get this thing off
of me” as loud and just about as often as you want at a show.
-[.d4n
b4rr3tt.] |
