The Devil Wears Prada -
Zombie V Tour with Secrets, Born of Osiris, The Word Alive
Rochester Armory
Basement, Rochestern NY
Waiting
in line for this show I realize how much and how little metal has
changed over the years. The last major metal act I saw live was
Megadeth over 15 years ago. Fans at that point still tended to long
hair, denim and leather. Tonight's crowd features far more colorful
hair and parent-preferred lengths that I associate more with Rob
Halford than I do with the metalheads I grew up with. Once the
concert started this energetic crowd, mostly young certainly moshed,
thrashed and banged their heads like proper metal fans should, short
blue and pink hair or not.
Opening
act Secrets got the crowd going with some fun tunes and dual vocalist
delivery. As opening acts tend to do, the mosh pit stayed small and
needed encouragement. The music cranked out by the band certainly
kept the crowd entertained, and despite being new, they received very
favorable reactions from those who arrived on time. Given that my
experience with them comes from their recent acoustical release, I
was not exactly prepared for the tunes, but they did well, and
certainly deserve this spot on a national tour. Hopefully someday
they’ll move up the billing so as to not be the filler for the
ticket-taking time. The lighting in the Armory Basement sucks bad,
but the sound is crazy good. The stage is barely elevated and the
flat floor limits visibility to snatches between arms. This problem
would not get better throughout the night. I eventually managed to
get a security guy to let me to the side stage area for a few minutes
for the last two acts, a privilege I opted not to abuse. I still
can't get over the sound, it was pretty darn good for a room that
used to hold munitions and arms for the local arm of the National
Guard.
The
Word Alive got the concert proper off to a good start, bringing an
enthusiasm and attitude to the show that overcame the venue's
deficiencies. At one point they encouraged the pit to mosh around one
of the room's many support poles. I guess I'm old, but the first
thing I thought of was the potential for grievous injury. The music
managed to continue to be entertaining, and the enthusiasm of the
crowd grew as the band chugged out over half an hour of loud
obnoxious death metal.
As
a major label act, Born of Osiris knows how to get a crowd going,
playing a variety of their fans' favorites from most of their albums.
The crowd responded energetically, moshing with an enthusiasm they
had not displayed previously. Two guitarists and two vocalists means
a lot of noise, screaming and death metal incoherent singing. The
venue surprised all night with an audio quality that compensated
somewhat for the extraordinarily lousy lighting. The skill set
displayed by BoO's musicians impressed me greatly, relying less on
pure grind and crunch, and mixing that sternum-crushing element with
solos and more "musical" elements. The rare appearance of
the synthesizer served mainly as a respite and bridge between
heavy-duty eardrum ruination.
Headliners
The Devil Wears Prada demonstrated their live performance experience
with a lingering, anticipation-heightening long intro before
launching into a clinic on death metal and how it can bring several
hundred people together into a seething mass of arms, fists and
cellphones. The pit positively exploded as the band churned out a
bunch of their fans' favorites as well as a few new tunes. One of the
elements promoted by the band for the show and tour features the fact
that TDWP play the entire Zombie EP during the course of the concert.
The lights for these guys were somewhat better, but the venue design
meant that they were back-lit more than anything. As a photographer
this presented nearly as many issues as the underlit opening acts
did. Stage-diving continued nearly unabated during the show, although
the crowd-surfers tended to be the same few brave souls over and over
again. TDWP, by virtue of cranking up the volume to 12 (it was
already at 11 for the openers) managed to produce a worse sound
quality than their openers. The music and vocals were muddier and
less distinct than those of The Word Alive, Secrets and Born of
Osiris. After the cleanliness and quality of those bands, to have the
headliner sacrifice that quality for volume was a bit disappointing.
The
Zombie V Tour continues for these guys and hopefully the venues will
improve. The entertainment value for the average death metal fan
stayed quite high, and those prone to moshing and crowd-surfing and
stage diving (as I was once, when I was young) should find themselves
thoroughly satisfied with the show each band puts on. And hopefully
the sound guys resist the temptation to push the sound past the
quality mark for the sake of volume.
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