PROTEST THE HERO, Tesseract, The Safety Fire, Intervals @O2 Academy 2 Birmingham 2/2/14

One of those nights with a tricky choice, and the rock and metal gig going public in the West Midlands are being rather spoilt. Just a mile or so away Thrash legends Sepultura are playing, with RTM faves Primitai in support, while over in the Black Country, The Quireboys are halfway thorough their no doubt tremendous fun acoustic tour.

It is however at the Academy that we find ourselves. Largely because Protest The Hero, who are headlining this large and impressive cast, make really interesting music and we have never seen them live, whereas we've bellowed, "oh it's seven o'clock, time for a party, with Spike and the boys for 20 odd years.

The headliners are a long way off, though and it falls to Ontario's Intervals to kick off the evening. Things have rather changed in their camp recently, and a band that started off as purely instrumental now is most definitely not. Former bassist Mike Semestry is performing vocal duties since December, while the group have Anup Sastry behind the kit. Sastry is technically incredible, performing live drums for Jeff Loomis so the group are predictably technically  superb, and make an extremely agreeable noise. Think a more accessible Periphery with slightly more prog metal overtones about them and you wouldn't be far out. There is enough here to hint that their debut album, which is due to land next month, could be a bit special. 

Last time we saw The Safety Fire was opening for the aforementioned Periphery and Between The Buried And Me. Except we didn't. Transport difficulties meant only guitarist Dez made the gig. Happily they are at full strength tonight, and cement their reputation as ones to watch. 

Still young, but now well into the touring cycle for their second album in as many years, "Mouth Of Swords" the Londoners have made giant leaps forwards. On the road for the last couple of years, they are now far more honed, polished and - dare we say it - mature. The title track of their last album is excellent and closing song "Old Souls" shows they have much more to come. Indeed The Safety Fire have everything, superb riffs, a tight rhythm section, huge chrouses, and a singer in Sean McWeeney (surely the best name in metal), that they need to suceed. 

It's actually not that long since RTM last saw Tesseract. Just a couple of months have passed since they opened for Karnivool, round the corner from here. There is not much we can add that we didn't say that night. 

The band are one of Britain's most innovative, and they construct huge songs that are played marvelously. A group such as this needs a crystal clear sound, and pleasingly they are not subject to the sort of problems that beset Iced Earth in this very venue a few weeks ago. At that Karnivool show back in November, singer Ashe O'Hara (with whom they seem to have put their issues with vocalists finally to bed) was struggling with his voice. He - and the rest of the band - are in top form tonight as they play a collection of songs primarily from last years "Altered State" album. Tesseract really are a band who just keeps getting better. 

Since forming in the early part of the last decade Protest The Hero are four albums into a career that seems to be virtually impossible to pin down. Few metal bands write songs as genuinely odd as the Canadians and remain so accessible. Which is probably why the Academy 2 is so busy tonight despite the competition.

The band almost apologetically shambles on to no fanfare whatsoever and proceeds for the next 75 minutes  to knock our collective socks off. Album number four, "Violation" has provided more fantastic moments, and gives us tonight's opener, "Underbite," which is typical of the band. The riffs are big, the song is tuneful, yet heavy and the lyrics cleverer than you might think.

You see, PTH are a band, like Clutch (with whom they have very little else in common except beards) who's songs contain lines that would look good on a tshirt, so second track "Hair-Trigger" gives us the idea that they've "wrote a goddamn love song, to everything I hate" while "Bloodmeat" which comes later, is just an outstanding song.

As you might expect, the band give you, well, the unexpected. Of all the things you thought might happen tonight, it wasn't that the Hunk Of The Day would be crowned, but this is exactly what happened halfway through, and nor did we expect singer Rody Walker to rival fellow Canadian Sebastian Bach in the motormouth stakes. During in the course of the evening we find out that Walker isn't a beer snob, doesn't have an international phone plan, doesn't believe in ghosts, and plans to take up hip-hop dancing to improve his live performance. So far, so good. Unfortunately we also find that he used to tell people to kill themselves in internet chatrooms, he mocks depression and his routine about Ian Watkins is a little unnecessary.

When he concentrates on singing, Walker is fantastic, and he is backed up superbly by the band, who rather stay in the shadows. New drummer Mike Ieradi - Lamb of God sticks man Chris Adler filled in their original drummer left last year - has slotted in seamlessly, and level of playing here is outstanding.

A career-spanning set includes three heads down tracks from their debut album "Kezia," now 10 years old, and 2008s "Fortress" - from which a brilliant "Sex Tapes" comes - as well as more modern material , is enough to keep everyone happy, and some stage patter that is a little awkward notwithstanding, Protest The Hero are a superb end to a superb gig.

"I hope you had a good night," says Walker. "And I hope you have a better one tomorrow." Highly doubtful, because given the gigs we could have gone to tonight we definitely made the right choice.

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….

GOJIRA, The Safety Fire, Frantic Empire @Academy 2 26/6/12

It’s hot in the Academy 2 tonight. Very hot in fact. And it’s packed. The show is all but sold out, but it makes for a decent atmosphere. Also rather than the usual turn-up-just-the-main-band attitude, the crowd are here early.

Wolverhampton thrashers Frantic Empire find themselves are the main beneficiaries of this and are able, this evening, to strut their stuff to hundreds of people.

Actually, calling them thrashers is a little simplistic, given that they are not ever going to part of the thrash revival as such, but rather they take thrash as a starting point and add something a little more contemporary, so that they are almost a trad-metal take on groove metal. “Lords Lie” ticks the right boxes and they are very much worth checking out.

The Safety Fire have been garnering rave reviews recently for their debut full-length effort “Grind The Ocean” and its easy to see why the metal press is liking them so much. Billing themselves as Prog Metal, they are definitely from the Periphery/Djent end of the genre rather than the Dream Theater/Symphony X one.

The fantastically named Sean McWeeney on vocals is the bands star turn, while the twin guitar-guitar duo Dez Nagle and Joaquin Ardiles come to the fore on tracks like “Circassian Beauties.” The band end their brief half hour set with catchy single “Huge Hammers” and appear set fair to be headlining venues like this themselves in the near future.

French titans Gojira’s rise to doing just that has been largely due to the fact they have excellent songs rather being part of a “scene”. Perhaps the world was slow to catch on at first – and lets be honest France hardly trips off the tongue when thinking of metal hotbeds -   but that is definitely not the case any longer.

If the 2008 album “The Way of All Flesh” was good, then “L’Enfant Savauge” – released this very week - is even better and the band are rising fast. Indeed they arrive on stage and rip through “Space Time” from their first album as Gojira, "Terra Incognita", as if they eager to captailise on their new found fame.

The 70-minute set is pretty much evenly divided from the aforementioned “…Incognita” and “….”Flesh” records, as well as three songs from the new album and a trio from the monstrously heavy “From Mars To Sirius” CD and showcases the bands prodigious abilities both as songwriters and musicians.

Led by the Duplantier brothers – Joe on vocals and Mario on drums – the band is riding on the crest of a creative wave right now. New tracks “Explosia” and “The Axe” are fine affairs sitting easily alongside set closer “Vacuity” one of the stand out moments on “The Way of All Flesh.” They are soon back for an encore with puts together “Toxic Garbage Island” together with current single and new albums title track.

The band, who are greeted like heroes throughout, seem genuinely touched at the reception and promise to be back before Christmas to play more new songs.

When they do, if its anything like as good as this it will be one of the gigs of the year, because tonight Gojira were truly remarkable.