Category: Review

Hatebreed – Glasgow Garage

Hatebreed - Glasgow 2
Hatebreed

[More pics in this Flickr set]

The weather sucked, but I still managed to make it along the M8 to Glasgow for the Hatebreed gig. The motorway was like driving on unsurfaced back streets. Only slippy. This country really can’t handle a cold snap.

Due to the low turnout – weather related – the gig was shifted downstairs from the Garage to G2. A smaller venue, but far better suited to a small crowd. It also means the beer was only £2.80 a pint, though that could be because I got there so early. Glad I did as well, as there was an early curfew and Hatebreed were due on stage at 8:30. I’d normally have expected a headliner on at 9:30!

The band kicked off with three songs off the current album which suits me. The self-titled Hatebreed is, in my opinion, their strongest overall album to date. Older albums have some individually great songs, but this one’s damn good from start to finish.

Over the hour-and-a-quarter, the band hammered out a ton of material with very few breaks to draw breath. Songs from the first EP were thrown in, as was a Slayer cover and load of classics.

It’s great to see original guitarist Wayne Lozinak back with the band. I spent the majority of the gig pressed against the barrier right in front of him. Courtesy of a stinking cold I really wasn’t up for the pit (though it didn’t stop me on a couple of occasions!). Hopefully I didn’t shower him in snot when I was headbanging. Regardless, I managed to catch one of his picks afterwards. I’m sure I already have one somewhere from a previous concert – I think the Machine Head support slot they did a few months ago.

As ever, it was a good crowd and as Jamey Jasta said – well done to those who made it for braving the roads. I’m sure there would have been a lot more people there if they could have made it. The hour-long drive from Edinburgh was nearer two hours so I doubt anyone much further afield would have stood a chance of making it there safely.

As ever, the security at the Garage were superb. It’s encouraging when you see one of the bouncers stood at the front of the stage, nodding his head along to the music! Barrowlands could learn a thing or two from the staff here. Like how not to be an absolute bunch of egotistical, steroid-dependant *******, for instance.

Definitely a band worth seeing if you like the hardcore side of metal. If I had to pick a band with the best lyrics going these days, they’d be at the top of the pile. I’d love to see them in a larger setting again, maybe a festival over summer. I can only hope!

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Airbourne – Glasgow Barrowlands

Airbourne - Glasgow Barrowlands 8
Airbourne – Glasgow

[Complete collection of photos in this Flickr set]

Airbourne are a band I’m familiar with and know a few songs by, but don’t know a lot about. One thing I can tell you after this gig is that they are one incredible live act!

They do often get compared to AC/DC for a variety of reasons and I would be tempted to go that direction. Their sound is similar and they focus on one key figure in the band. OK, kind of. Lead guitarist and singer Joel O’Keeffe is like Angus Young and Brian Johnson wrapped up together in one rock’n’roll shaped package.

Within three songs, Joel was walking around the crowd having walked off the side of the stage. No bouncers or security (more about those arseholes later), just a man and a guitar wandering around a sell-out crowd and jumping on a bar for a drink. He got carried around shoulder-high by a couple of fans for some time, making his way back to the stage.

Towards the end, Joel smashed a few cans of lager on his head, the crowd rocked and all was good with the world.

For me, a gig needs three things – a good band, good sound and a good crowd. Airbourne had these in spades. I’ve yet to be let down by a Glasgow crowd at a gig. Always up for it!

Someone needs to feed something down to the Showsec trolls at the front though. I had a run-in with one of these neanderthals twenty years ago when I was at Barrowlands to see Megadeth. I was dragged by the hair (I had some then) into a back room by some huge brute who threatened to break my legs and kick me out if I dared to crowdsurf again.

This time round, as Joel is telling the crowd to climb on each other’s shoulders, crowdsurf, slam – whatever – the “security” ******* were busy telling people to stop and threatening to throw them out if they didn’t obey.

So, basically, twenty years go by and Barrowlands still haven’t been able to find staff that have the slightest idea of what people having fun looks like. Quite how they’ve managed to stay in this black hole when nearby venues such as the Academy and the Garage cope perfectly well is beyond me.

Basically, an awesome gig by a fantastic live act spoiled by a small number of complete cocks. Who were being paid to be there.

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Harry Potter 7(a) / The Warrior’s Way

A Friday night double-bill in Glasgow with Gillian. First up, the continuing adventures of some kid with a wand, followed by a rather weird kung-fu cowboy film.

Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 1

“The Ministry has fallen. The Minister of Magic is dead.”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Bad guy rises, bad people take over, bad things happen, good guys run away and hide.

The wizard-y juggernaut crashes towards a near-conclusion with part 1 of the largest novel making its way to the screen. And J.K.Rowling‘s bank balance going stratospherical with her first credit as Producer.

I’ll be honest – I wasn’t that keen on the final book. I thought it was far too slow, and blown out of all proportion which spoiled what had been a good series up until book 5. This film, then, is a good adaptation as it’s pretty much the same.

Now don’t get me wrong. It’s still pretty good. But it’s got a lot more character development and far too much time is spent fleshing out bits of the plot that were touched on earlier in the series. At over two hours, that’s a lot of fleshing. There isn’t any wasted time, though, as far as I could tell. It’s a long book, therefore it’s a long film.

The effects are, as ever, of the highest standard. The cast are magnificent. The script isn’t bad at all and has some good laughs in it. But despite some cracking set pieces, it’s just too damn slow. Also, beware of the rating – this is too scary for some younger kids. We didn’t take Gill’s daughter (aged 9) for this very reason. Friends had taken their kid and warned us that it would be best to wait for the DVD release for E to see it.

The highlight of the film, for me, was the explanation of what the Deathly Hallows are. A wonderful five minute animation as Hermione reads a fairy tale from a book. Beautifully done and it doesn’t intrude on the film at all.

I’ll still go and see the next one, but mainly just because I’ve watched the first seven. The film review on Radio 5 had a message in calling this one “Harry On Camping”. That’s about right. Most of the movie is like Tolkien‘s The Two Towers – it’s all just people moving around. It’s the calm before the storm.

Right now I’m waiting for the lightning to hit.

The Warrior’s Way

“Ninjas. Damn.” (NOTE: Not from the film, even though it’s in the trailer)

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Bad guy turns good guy and runs away from other bad guy, meets more good guys who are hounded by another bad guy and then all the bad guys meet up. With kung-fu and cowboys.

This is a very weird film. Possibly the weirdest western you’ll encounter until Cowboys and Aliens hits the screens. Actually, probably weirder because of how it’s filmed.

First of all, it’s definitely not to everyone’s taste. I thought it was wonderful. Not perfect, but definitely worth seeing. Gillian was impressed with the visual style and so forth, but found it otherwise rather vapid, preferring the Asian films it takes its style from to this offshoot.

The story is explained well in the trailer – a swordsman spends his life being trained to be the best in the world. His commander orders that he destroy every living member of their opposing clan, which he does… until he encounters the last one: a baby. He can’t bring himself to kill the child, so grabs it and scarpers to the Wild West. Of course, doing so marks him as a dead man as far as his old clan are concerned so they follow behind to deal out justice (i.e. kill him).

Yang (Dong-gun Jang) finds himself in the are end of nowhere, in a small town where a friend of his used to run a laundry. So no stereotypes there, then. The population are predominantly discarded circus folk, lending a rather stilted edge to the atmosphere as bearded ladies, clowns and midgets walk the streets.

There he encounters Lynne (Kate Bosworth), a dead ringer for Toy Story‘s Jessie, who had started knife training with the previous “yellow man”. She has her own unsettling history relating to a local bad guy known only as “Colonel” (Danny Huston).

What I liked about the film was the slow build. It starts with some nice action, but keeps the blood and gore down to some spurts and CGI clouds. As the film progresses, the violence becomes grander and more graphic. This is the opposite of Ninja Assassin which had the single best gory moment (head sliced in half) right in the opening sequence.

The plot-related scenes are simply gorgeous. I just loved the feel of the whole film. For an idea of how it looks and how the story is rolled along, refer yourself to the TV series Pushing Daisies with it’s strong colours and rather off-kilter feel. You could probably delve deeper and start spotting metaphors (like the flower garden), but I simply didn’t feel the need and just wallowed in the sheer loveliness of it.

It won’t appeal to everyone. However, it did really appeal to me. Gillian said she was glad to have seen it, but wouldn’t recommend it. I guess that would be one thumb up and one thumb down.

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The American (and a second dose of trains)

Courtesy of being a numpty and checking the times for Cineworld Glasgow instead of Edinburgh, I made my way to the cinema for 10:30 to find that the showing of Machete I wanted to see didn’t exist.

Arse.

I’d seen everything else due to start before half twelve (except Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest and I’ve not seen, or want to see, the one before it) so I opted to watch Unstoppable again. I missed the first 10 minutes when I caught it last week, so at least some of it would be new. It was still enjoyable the second time around, though not as good as the first screening.

Next up:

The American

“You cannot deny the existence of hell. You live in it. It is a place without love.”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Mysterious American hitman/spy/something ends up in a peaceful Italian town with some dodgy Swedish people on his tail.

Based on Martin Booth‘s novel A Very Private Gentleman, the film finds “Jack” (George Clooney) fleeing to Italy to escape Swedish assassins, while preparing one final job. It’s never 100% clear what he does, though this final work seems to involve supplying a gun to another assassin rather than doing the deed himself.

It’s definitely a rather arty film, not the action spectacle you might expect. There are many scenes that just seem to be crammed together and often you’re left thinking “what’s going on? Why did he just do that?” – but at least it’s a film that makes you think rather than spoon-feeding the audience.

What I can say about the movie is that it is absolutely beautifully shot (director Anton Corbijn should take a bow), most of it in a small Italian town called Castel del Monte. If the Italian government were looking for a 105 minute tourism advert showing how gorgeous and historic parts of their country are, then they’d not go far wrong using this.

The rest of the cast are as good as can be expected, though I have to simply say: Violante Placido… *drool*. If I was allowed a “five famous people” list she’d be on it. Wow.

As I said, don’t expect huge explosions, spectacular car crashes and Bay-esque set pieces. This is a film about Clooney’s character rather than the events around him. The thing is, he’s such a private gentleman that it doesn’t make for a very interesting tale. Everything coasts along well enough, and there are little moments as the film builds to a decent near-ending… and a fairly weak final scene.

There are better films out at the moment, but if you want to see Italy at its most jaw-dropping then there’s nothing else to rival this one.

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All That Remains / Soilwork – Glasgow Garage

Soilwork
Soilwork

Another quickie review. I think there were actually five bands on the bill, though my ticket “only” lists four. I missed Bleed From Within, but caught the last 3-4 songs by Caliban. They were OK, nothing special, but the last song was ace. Shame I have no idea what it was!

Soilwork

Possibly the only Swedish band I’ve ever seen live (possibly not, as well) and the second time I’ve caught them. Last time was 4-5 years ago at my first Graspop festival in Belgium when they were touring in support of their Stabbing The Drama album.

They put in a solid performance and had the crowd bouncing. The best tracks of the night – and the most welcomed – did seem to be from the aforementioned album, though. This was their breakthrough release and is certainly the one I know the best.

Good set, nice guys and it certainly had me wanting to go home and re-listen to their stuff.

All That Remains
All That Remains

All That Remains

“Apparently there’s some problems with snow. We’re from Massachusetts. That’s a ******* sprinkle out there!”

And thus began a very impressive headlining set indeed. Due to technical problems (I think) and the number of bands playing, All That Remains didn’t get a particularly long show which is a shame. I’ve not seen them before, but what I did see impressed me.

Philip Labonte is a great frontman. All posing, great rapport with the crowd and a fantastic vocal range. Standout, though was Oli Herbert. This is a man who was obviously constrained by the small stage size. It was like watching a wildcat in playpen, or a small child bouncing around during a world Ritalin shortage. This is a man who would be all over the place on a large festival stage.

They played a varied set, and I recognised quite a few tracks as I’ve had a couple of the albums in the car over the last few weeks. What I really like about ATR is that they’re not ashamed to mix three styles of music in a single song, let alone across one album.

None of the bands were ones I’m a massive fan of, but they are ones I listen to. Listening to them live was a great experience, though. Definitely worth the trip into Glasgow and the hairy drive home.

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