First up are Tacoma
newbies Stealing Axion. We have a lot of time for their “Moments” album, with
its Periphery-esque grooves, and happily they translate the songs well in a
live setting. “Mirage of Hope” and their heaviest moment “47 Days Later” are
particularly impressive.
Next up are Vildhjarta,
and if the Swedes and if the Swedes are hiding their Meshuggah fixation they
don’t bother to do it well. However, they do have two vocalists and thus offer
a different take on things. Modern progressive metal needs technical excellence
and they have that in abundance, they also have more synchronized stage moves
than Status Quo. There are plenty of good songs in their set too, “Dagger” and
the new, unnamed song (the band tell the crowd to give their merch guy
suggested monikers) are heavy and sprawling, but “All These Feelings” was the
obvious highlight.
London’s Monuments provide
the British interest, their set mostly being culled from the recently released
“Gnosis” record. They do this stuff with a rather English twist, adding
elements of hardcore to their mix. After entering to some truly awful dance
music, they rip into “Doxa” like they really mean it – a feeling that
“Regenerate” does little to diminish. “Denial” becomes a duet with Vildjharta
and “Memoirs,” a song they have released to raise money for an ill friend is a
fine song. Monuments are a band, you feel, that like Tesseract, are going to
become the UK standard bearers for this type of metal.
Jeff Loomis is widely
recognised as being one of the finest guitarists of his generation. His new
album “Plains of Oblivion” is superb. We had been promised earlier in the
evening, by Stealing Axion’s Dan Forbrich, that the former Nevermore man was
going to “shred our faces off” so his arrival onstage was eagerly anticipated.
Loomis sets about living
up to that promise during opener “Jato Unit” but as if eager not to rest on his
laurels – and also to show off his new band – two recently recorded songs, “A
Liars Chain” and “Speak of Nothing” are aired. These both have lyrics and take
things into an almost black metal direction, which is rather unexpected.
“Shouting Fire At A Funeral” puts us back on familiar ground.
Loomis chooses not to say
a word throughout the hour-long set, preferring instead to let fellow
guitarist, and nominal frontman, Joe Nurre, do any talking that needs to be
done, and whilst Loomis’ fretwork could never be questioned, he perhaps lacks
the charisma of some of his contemporaries.
The end of the evening rather neatly
encapsulates this point. Nurre offers a “thanks Birmingham, you’ve been
fantastic,” the house lights go up, and there is no encore. Which offers the
rather incongruous thought that for one of the world’s most flashy metal
guitarists, Jeff Loomis is a rather solid and unspectacular individual.
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