Guest Reviewer: Lord Konrad Chaos
Band(s): Seether and Contra
Venue: Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms, UK
Date: 09 June 2008
Website: seether.com
MySpace: myspace.com/seether
Label: Wind-Up
Featured on: Loucifer Speaks Guest Reviewer Exclusive
Right, when I heard about this, I decided immediatley that I was going to go, Seether are awesome, simple as, and I know their good live, I've seen them before. But this time, two years on, I know more songs, so It'll be even better! And then I was told of the support, Finger Eleven!
F11 are the band that stopped be becoming a chav, and I've waited 8 years to see them live, finnaly! They are coming to the UK! But no, literally a week before the date, they had to cancell because Scott Anderson (vocals for F11) sprained his neck, so had to cancel a few dates, including Download, and the one I was going to.
So, severely disappointed, I still went, I mean, I was originaly going to go for Seether, and still will, but I knew that they would struggle to find a support band with a weeks notice. But they did! Never heard of them, mind, Contra, I think they were.
Well, I'll start with them. Boring. Done! Now I know that they only had a weeks notice, but surely Seether could have found a better support than Contra? It started off so well, then the 'singing' started, which sounded like Navajo Code, or Gallows, yeah, that bad. I'll give it to them that they seemed to really get into their performance, pity that nobody else did. At all. In fact, after they finished, before Seether came on, Halo by Soil was being played, that got more of a reaction than Contra did. And I mistook their bassist for the sound tech guy. And after the gig, when everyone crowded round Seether, they were sat by the door, alone.
But, the most boring half hour I've spent at a gig behind me, Seether! They were simply awesome. The entire crowd got into each and every song, from Burrito, to Rise Above This, from Needles to the Alice In Chains cover Nutshell, from Remedy to Broken. Now, I've said this before, Shaun Morgan isn't a guy who move around alot, he isn't totally static, but he doesn't move around the stage as say, Matt Heafy (Trivium) or Claudio Sanchez (Coheed & Cambria). Not that this made anything worse, because the crowd was active enough anyway.
After the best hearing of Remedy I've heard, we waited outside the venue after the gig. Since the Wedgewood Rooms only has the one entrance... They had to meet us! Now Troy, Dale and John (guitarist, bassist and drummer respectivley) were there, almost lapping up the attention, and they were kick ass guys to boot (by the way, no band can resist defacing their own poster...). But everyone was looking for Mr. Morgan. Nobody knew where he was, untill a guy slowly crept out from behind the tour bus, head down, hood up, hat on, quickly realising it was Shaun, he got swamped. From what I heard beforehand, Shaun has a problem talking to random strangers, don't blame him myself, and it really showed. Considering he was on stage bearely half hour before, he spoke so quietley, he looked so nervous, I felt sorry for the guy after a while, after someone started asking for his hat, then his hoody, then even his shoes... Although I noticed after the crowd diminished to about three or four people, he started smiling and laughing alot more, which was good to see.
Overall, the gig was seriously one of the best I've been to, at the moment, it beats even Apocalyptica, and the only way it could have been better was if Contra didn't play, and instead Finger Eleven did.
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