Riddle me this

Actually I had been looking forward to post a review of last night´s concert in Jäähalli.
By the time I left the venue though my enthusiasm had already vanished in a puff of smoke. How can I possibly review something that I fail to understand without calling it complete and utter bullshit in every second sentence?

That mistake has been made countless times by "music critics".
Would I want, let´s say, a Britney Spears fan to review my music? NO WAY!
Well, I´m no Britney Spears fan and the allegory is maybe a bit exaggerated.
I am by no means a music critic either but a musician and devoted fan of (mostly) heavy music, be it punk, hardcore or metal. So what you´re reading here isn´t cast in stone, it´s my opinion only and you know what Dirty Harry said about opinions:


Opinions are like assholes

What I came to see were Ghost, who stood out like a sore thumb and played a set way too short, comprised of only five or six songs. Still their show was awesome and I´m happy that I finally got to see them! Hopefully the next time will be a club gig, where they can play more songs. Unfortunately, both Ghost and me were misplaced in that big ice rink (=jäähalli) last night and the "crowd", filling maybe 2/5 of the venue, reflected that.

About the rest of the package...hmm...well, first off, I missed Insense, who had to start the festival at 5.15pm, so I can´t say anything about them. And now for the tricky part.
To use yet another metaphor, with my taste in music I felt most of the time like a compass needle pointing in exactly the opposite direction. Not knowing most of the other bands at all I went to the event with a slight premonition of things to come but was still surprised when it hit me: tagged metalcore (Rise to Remain, Trivium) and melodic death metal (In Flames), the genres sounded interesting. I had no concept of metalcore and had somehow figured that metal + (hard)core = metalcore must be cool, mais au contraire, chéri!
It proved to be a bunch of unlistenable bullshit. There - I said it!

Thanks to Rise to Remain and Trivium, metalcore equals for me from now on good musicianship and very bad music that tries to be everybody´s darling. In Flames were a riddle to me as well. When I finally left Jäähalli they were still playing for their audience, which almost filled up the venue by then. The crowd loved them and there´s nothing wrong with that. It was their territory after all, they had come to see their heroes and it was me who somehow had stepped through a wrong door into a parallel universe I don´t belong.
If that´s the future of metal and/or hardcore, they can have it.
I don´t want it.

To end this post on a conciliary note, I´d like to mention at least something positive about the bands:

- Rise to Remain features Bruce Dickinson´s son on vocals
(see Iron Maiden: "Dickinson of a Dickinson")

- Trivium´s guitar players were quite impressive

- In Flames had a nice light show

Make sure to form your own opinion here:

Insense
Rise to Remain
Ghost
Trivium
In Flames

SONG FOR TODAY:

Minor Threat - I don´t wanna hear it