BETWEEN THE BURIED AND ME, Periphery, The Safety Fire @Slade Rooms, Wolverhampton 2/10/12

In more than two decades of gig going RTM has seen some odd things. Nothing ever like the sight that greeted us upon entry to the Slade Rooms tonight, though.

We walk through the door of the bar and can hear The Safety Fire have started their set already. However, when getting to the room where the gig is taking place it becomes clear that not all of them are there. In fact, lets be blunt about this, only Dez, one of their guitarists,  is onstage and he appears to be playing along to the record.

It turns out the bands van had broken down en route to Wolverhampton but the intrepid Dez had hitch-hiked up to play the show. Fair play to him.

The luck of the night doesn’t appear to be changing much when Periphery drummer Matt Halpern marches onto the stage with his arm in a sling. He injured himself, it transpires, just a couple of days before. However, with the frontier spirit raging tonight, the band have recruited Monuments sticksman Mike Maylan at 24 hours notice and he has learnt enough songs to enable the Washington DC men to play half an hour.

Here at RTM towers we have a lot of time for Periphery, a band who have had more of a kicking than many of the so-called “djent” (and what does that even mean?) movement. To us their sound is modern Progressive Metal and like we said when they supported Dream Theater in Feb, the band do it very well. “Have A Blast” from this year’s “This Time Its Personal” record, sits superbly with “Icarus Lives” from the debut and with lead guitar man Misha Mansoor looking every inch the guitar hero he is being cast as, these boys are no mere bandwagon jumpers.

Thankfully North Carolina’s Between The Buried And Me are all present and correct and they are as good as ever. Simply put, no one else does these sprawling epics like BTBAM. Prog, Metalcore, Thrash and Death metal all combine to make amongst the most interesting and challenging noise in metal today.

They begin with White Walls, with its almost Maiden-esque guitar sound, before launching into two songs from new album Parallex II – The Future Sequence. “Astral Bodies” in particular is superb.

Supremely talented musicians but never flashy, BTBAM leave us after an hour with Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” playing over the tannoy. Assuming a fantastic evening was over some of the crowd drift off. Those of us that stay are treated to the sight of singer Tommy Giles Rodgers coming back on to give us his best Freddie Mercury mime, before the band plug in and join from the “So you think you can love me…” part.

Normal service is resumed though and before long they are locking into “Mordecai.” At its conclusion things really are all over, but it has a truly remarkable evening.

The word “unique” is bandied about rather too much in these days when nearly everything has been done before. That said, Between The Buried And Me have managed to create something that is totally unlike anything out there.

They must have been good – we even forgave them a Queen cover….

DREAM THEATER, Periphery @Wembley Arena 10/2/12

It’s a tough gig opening for a band like Dream Theater in the UK. Rather like Iron Maiden, Motorhead or Slayer, the fans are there only to see the headliners and you had better be damn good if you want a response.

If Washington six-piece Periphery didn’t know this before the start of this tour, they probably do now. They try – and hard – during their 40-minute slot, but a largely disinterested sea of faces greets them.

Periphery do have the advantage of public endorsements from DT men Labrie and Petrucci, and they are far from awful – indeed songs like “Icarus Lives” and epic set closer “Caravan” hint at immense talent, but the big stages aren’t quite for them at this point in their career.

The same is not true of the world’s biggest – and best – Prog Metallers. Dream Theater. They recovered from the shock loss of drummer and founder member, Mike Portnoy, in rather stunning fashion. First they recruited sticksman extraordinaire Mike Mangini and then unleashed their “A Dramatic Turn of Events” record last autumn. And in case you thought Portnoy might be just too big a void to fill, their show at Wolves Civic Hall last July was one of the great gigs of the 21^st century and if tonight’s festivities don’t quite measure up to that then you have to say its pretty close.

Kicking off with “Bridges in the Sky,” one of six songs aired from their new opus, the New York are on stage for over two hours of nigh on flawless metal.

Rather like last year it is (almost) a career spanning set, but as if to emphasise the quality and depth of their material, it features only one track (“On The Backs Of Angels”) that was played on the last jaunt.

Particular highlights are many, but “6.00” from 1994’s “Awake” album, “The Root of All Evil,” and “Outcry” sounded superb. However, it was perhaps “War Inside My Head” and “The Test Stumped Them All” that showcased the peculiar talents of the group best of all. Both these tracks originally featured as part of the 45-minute title track to “Six Shades Of Inner Turbulence” but here, separated and used as stand alone songs, they are phenomenal.

It hardly needs saying that the band are technically flawless musicians, but aside from Mangini’s jaw dropping drum solo and Petrucci’s blues licks to usher in a triumphant “The Spirit Carries On” they are content to allow the songs speak for themselves.

Frontman James LaBrie flexes his pipes during the short acoustic section, while keyboard wizard Jordan Rudess, perhaps the most extrovert of the group, performs his mad-conductor’s role with some aplomb – and of course bassist John Myung keeps his head down throughout and just gets on with the job.

The evening climax’s with “Pull Me Under” – the bands one big US hit – and whilst you can, if you like, have some minor quibbles – nothing from the “Black Clouds and Silver Linings” album is played and it could have been a touch louder, one thing cannot be argued about: Dream Theater are the best in the world at what they do, and tonight they were all but perfect.