[More photos of this gig on my Flickr feed]
I wasn’t 100% certain about this gig, partly as it was on a Thursday night. This is awkward for me as I live and work just outside Edinburgh and my other half lives in Glasgow. Basically this means driving to Glasgow on a Thursday evening, seeing a gig, driving back to Edinburgh… then heading back to Glasgow on the Friday after work.
Well, Gill bought me the ticket for my birthday which kind of made my mind up for me!
Due to traffic congestion I missed the opening back (Defiled?) but was in good time to catch Black Veil Brides who I was looking forward to. Their current album’s not that bad and their live show matches up musically.
They certainly had a decent fan base a few rows deep at the front, though the screaming sounded a little too much like a crowd baying for the latest boy band to come on. The band themselves are of the “look how filthy and covered in scars drawn on in mascara I am” ilk, and their repartee was limited to “we don’t care if you don’t like us – we like us” which is fair enough.
For an opening act, they put on a decent show with a fair bit of variety in the songs. Nicely silly, good music – good luck to them.
The Murderdolls came on at 20:30 precisely and played a great 90 minute set with a balance of old and new material. Towards the end “Welcome to the Strange” was dedicated to the recently deceased Paul Gray of Slipknot fame, which earned a lengthy chant of the former masked metaller’s name by the crowd.
Wednesday 13 is a great front man. Despite the language, the attitude and the subject matter you can’t help but feel he’s just a guy having fun who’d be awesome to share a drink and a laugh with. The whole band looked like they were having the time of their lives and the audience didn’t calm down for the entire set – barring a small unscheduled interval when someone went down the in the pit and didn’t get up again. Security quickly spotted this and help was rushed in. Hope they’re OK.
As I said right at the start, the Murderdolls aren’t a band I’m massively into though I enjoy them. On this showing, I’d definitely recommend them as a good live act. They absolutely don’t take themselves seriously and the music was top notch.
This was my first visit to the O2 ABC, at least as a concert venue. There’s every possibility I was there to see a film back when it was a cinema and I was tiny. After the support and into the headline act, the one thing I’ll say is – great sound. There was no problem making out the vocals to either act, the drums were thumping and the guitars clear as a bell.
The security staff were also from the same stable as those used at the O2 Arena down the road. In other words, they were great.
Definitely a venue I’ll look forward to visiting again.