[Review] Paradise Lost/Insomnium/Vreid, York Duchess, 22/4/12
Well, it's been a hell of a busy few weeks around here. And as usual, I'm behind on reviewing it all, so let's start here:
So a couple of weekends back, I ended up in York with hellbound_heart (and the rather more elusive prelati) for Paradise Lost at the Duchess. I'd originally suggested this gig to Keri more or less on a whim, as I was basically looking for an excuse to go and hang out with her some more and Paradise Lost looked like the perfect one. ;) However, the anticipation factor racked up to the point of near-explosion when I found out not long before the gig who was going to be supporting: Insomnium - can't say fairer than that - and, oh my gods... VREID! I have a bit of a thing about Vreid, having discovered them a couple of years ago at Wacken where they were one of my bands of the festival. The idea of getting to see them in a proper club, as opposed to having their impact diluted by the middle-of-the-afternoon dead man's slot at Wacken? Oh hells yes... \m/
So I turned up bright and early on the day, having spent the usual two-and-a-bit-hour bus ride from Whitby curled up comfortably with an assortment of evil Black Metal (which led to a bit of grin-inducing synchronicity when I spotted a large cross on a village green with "He Is Risen" written on it, while right in the middle of Mayhem's In The Lies Where Upon You Lay - yeah, right). While in some ways it's a pain in the arse having that long and highly underserviced (more on that later) bus route being the only sane way to get from Whitby to York, I do kind of love it all the same as it means I get to have a look at the moors and chill out with my music, so by the time I arrive in York I've always had time to decompress and be ready for whatever's going to happen when I get there...
...which in this case initially involved being met by Keri and dragged back to her place, where we sat around and set the world to rights for a bit before heading back out to the venue. We deliberately aimed to be as early as we thought sensible, since Keri had had intel to the effect that Vreid were likely to be on pretty much as soon as the doors opened, and I was damned if I was going to run even the slightest risk of missing them. Also, I had a pocket full of flyers for the Ravenage/Old Corpse Road gig in Whitby (June 1st, get your arses up here!) and therefore could amuse myself by flyering the queue. We were also diverted by the appearance of a rainbow, which was about the least appropriate atmospheric event we could think of to presage a Paradise Lost gig. ^_^
Neither of us had ever been in the Duchess before, so we didn't know what to expect - although to be honest, the least expected thing of the entire night was a surprise tukie on the door, as I hadn't known that that particular venue was where he worked! *waves* On getting downstairs, though, we found ourselves in a dark, low-ceilinged, labyrinthine little venue that reminded me of nothing so much as the old Q Club in Cambridge, and was laid out far more like a club than a live venue with whole sections of the space being around the corner and out of sight from the stage - which in itself was oddly configured, being deeper than it was broad and closed in to the sides which gave the impression that the bands were going to be playing in some sort of small cave. None of these issues mattered to us, though, because we managed to stake a spot on the right-hand side of the barrier. Even if half the rest of the audience wasn't going to be able to see, we damn well were...
There's a deep and atavistic happiness that comes from seeing a band live who you don't merely like, but genuinely love and trust. Vreid are one of those bands, for me. They're always fiercely emotional in their music and their performance, hearts pinned to their sleeves right alongside their band-uniform armbands, and I feel completely safe just letting go and joining in. Tonight they take to the stage like they've had a V2 rocket shoved under them, stalking onstage to the menacing strains of Helvete and then tearing from there straight into Arche like they've well and truly got something to prove. The sound is massive, a clinically-precise wall of pure Black Metal thunder that plugs straight into the aggression circuits at the bottom of the brain and elicits an instant desire to headbang, punch the air and snarl ferally at the band members every time they look your way, and the band are clearly feeling the exact same way and having the time of their lives and it's absolutely fucking perfect-
-and then something explodes. Strom's amp drops out, briefly cuts back in again, and then rolls over entirely and holds up a little white flag. The sense of crashing disappointment is palpable as the energy that had just been starting to really get going is brought to a brutal all-stop. Frontman Sture, faced with what must be every singer's worst nightmare - total silence in a venue where the local language isn't your own - apologises to us but wisely decides not to try for any humorous banter, for which I don't blame him at all. Instead he goes over to consult with his bandmates, gear is moved and swapped and poked, and then, gods and techs be thanked, it's working again. Sture, Strom and Hváll stomp back to their places and let's try that again, shall we?
It's a testament to Vreid's determination, professionalism and sheer charisma as performers that by the time they're halfway through the remainder of their set, the technical problems might as well have never happened. They simply pick up where they left off, in full flight, and proceed to finish the demolition job they've already started. Where I am, right in front of Hváll, it's a bit like being at ground zero for an artillery barrage, in the best possible way. I hang over the rail, bang my head, and throw the horns with my heart soaring. About the only thing that could have made their set any better would have been to hear my favourite song of theirs, Speak Goddammit (which I noticed was in brackets on the bottom of the setlist, so probably only got dropped for time constraints, alas) but the colossal black'n'roll anthem Pitch Black, their traditional closer, is enough to make up for damn near anything...
...and then as they finish, I reach right over the rail to throw the horns to Hváll as I've done numerous times already, and he catches my eye, throws them back - and taps something against my outstretched hand. I blink, briefly confused, then realise what he means and my heart nearly explodes. Between his fingers, he's offering me - not throwing catch-as-can, but giving me - his pick. His fucking custom Vreid pick that he just played the whole set with.
I snatch. Scream a "THANK YOU!!!" that I hope carries over the wall of guitar distortion as Strom and Sture finish the closing chords. Clutch the pick, kiss it for luck, and try not to fall over in sheer amazement. Understand - this never happens to me. Damn near never, do I get acknowledged by anyone I admire beyond maybe a smile or a nod. I am the person who can always manage to be in the one bit of ringside that the performers don't do handtaps along at a wrestling show. I am the person who is always just out of reach when the singer decides to stagedive. I am the person who mysteriously gets missed out if there are handshakes and autographs going around. So for someone from a band I love to not only notice me, not only swap horns with me, but give me his pick? The entire venue could have been shut down right there and the rest of the show cancelled and this would still have been one of the best nights of my life.
Except that it wasn't, so I stay right where I am on the barrier, flailing ecstatically at Keri who was apparently nearly as impressed with Vreid as I was, much to my delight. And only a few minutes of changeover time later, Insomnium take the stage.
It's a bit of a change of pace, to be fair. I first encountered Insomnium when they were one of _arnamentia_'s ten CD choices for the Epykk Iceland Trip in '09, and so I have a rough idea what to expect although I'm not familiar with all of their output. As it happens, they draw the set entirely from albums I don't own, so I get to experience their particular brand of Finnish melodic death metal pretty much as though for the first time.
If I had to sum up Insomnium's sound in one word, that word might have to be simply beauty. They've got that weightless, effortless grace that seems to be the birthright of every Finnish metal band ever down perfectly, lacing ultra-melodic guitars and keyboards together over powerful but light-footed rhythms with the whole thing kept firmly on the right side of "too soft" by the reassuringly harsh forcefulness of the vocals. Their sound soars and dips and washes over the crowd like some kind of sonic Northern Lights, a perfect blend of joy and sorrow that's lifted right up and nailed to the sky by the razor-winged lead guitar of Markus Vanhala - who apparently only joined Insomnium last year, but I would truly never have known by the way he plays. The crowd adore it; indeed, I'd say Insomnium probably get the hottest crowd response of the night, especially from the girls in the front row and the one bloke who appears to be shouting his requests directly off the setlist becase he gets every song he asks for. *g* Me, I just lean on the rail, open my heart, watch, listen and enjoy. I'm a sucker for bands like this.
Insomnium's set passes by far too quickly, but the ending of it is enlivened by a brief comedy moment when one of them chucks their setlist into the knot of fanatical Insomnium fangirls standing just beside me. There's a scrap for it that actually results in a corner getting ripped off, and the girl who got it bunches it up possessively in her hand... when I lean across and ask if I can see it so I can find out what the opening song was for my own records, she looks for a minute like she's actually prepared to claw me until she realises that I genuinely do only want to see, not steal. *grin* This is apparently fine, so I finish noting down the setlist and all is well. As you were...
Meanwhile, having hung onto our place on the barrier for this long, Keri and I agree that there's no point in removing ourselves, so we stay put while a fairly extended changeover goes on - Paradise Lost's rig seems to require absolutely everything onstage to be extensively shuffled around. This does, though, give me time to lean over the rail and start transcribing their setlist onto my phone for the record, because oh man, this is going to be a LONG set. No way am I going to remember all that many tracks in order by the end. I am sure many people are bemused by my antics as I balance and hang over the barrier trying to see the top of the page.
Paradise Lost finally appear, to a suitable roar of acclaim, and launch into Desolate, but it's quickly obvious that something ain't quite right in several directions. First, they're deafeningly loud to the point where the sound is distorting, way too much bottom end making the speakers rattle and growl, nearly drowning Greg Mackintosh's guitar (which is frankly criminal) - and atop that, Nick Holmes is not looking, or sounding, so great. He looks tired and pissed off and generally floppy, and seems to be holding back vocally - my best guess, certainly based on the way he kept putting a hand to his midriff and the point a few songs in where he disappeared offstage briefly, would be that the poor bugger was feeling decidedly unwell. Thankfully the sound problems were to improve as the set went on, and Nick seemed to rally at least somewhat, but as an opening to what should have been a triumphant set, it's less than ideal.
But as Paradise lost start to pick up, the sound clearing and Nick beginning to show some vocal strength even if still being very tight on the crowd interaction (he starts telling an anecdote about going on a ghost walk earlier and cuts himself off almost at once with "I can't be arsed with this"), something else is turning decidedly rotten in the front rows... in the form of the dreaded Frotting Man. Keri mentioned this in her review, but she wasn't the one it was directly happening to - I was, and I report accordingly. About a song into Paradise Lost's set, a burly, drunken shorthaired bloke barged through the crowd to the second row, coming to a halt behind me and the girl to my left, whose boyfriend was standing behind her with an arm around her. Apparently this guy wanted to be on the barrier.
Well, fuck him, there wasn't room. I couldn't have moved without shoving Keri off the end, and I'd be damned before I'd do that when we had spent the entire gig staking that spot and paying our respects to the support bands. I set my feet and stayed put.
Nothing deterred, he started... dancing. At least, I assume it was meant to be dancing - the actual effect produced in the tight space was that of having his upper thigh rubbed vigorously against my arse and the back of my leg. I was trying to watch a band I love, from a damn near perfect vantage point, and this unmitigated buffoon was apparently using me as a wanking post. I braced my feet even more firmly and attempted to ignore him. The girl on my left, presumably getting the same treatment from this guy's other thigh, looked distinctly squeamish and I don't blame her.
It took about three songs for a sort of utterly disturbing erosion effect to eventually push me and the other girl (plus her bf) far enough apart that Frotting Man could squeeze his capacious arse into the gap thus formed on the rail, by which point I was throwing the horns to Aaron Aedy with one hand and holding a white-knuckle grip on the barrier with the other to stop myself being shoved into Keri any harder. At least once he'd got his spot I was no longer being molested and then only had to worry about his bulk blocking my view of Greg on the far side of the stage... which was annoying enough, given that Greg's lead guitar work is one of my favourite things about Paradise Lost and I was trying to watch the man play!
Still, all that aside, I can't really fault the rest of the set. Nick rallied noticeably when the band started hitting their later songs - I couldn't help noticing that the set was biased heavily in favour of material from after Draconian Times, maybe they're just tired of playing the older stuff? - and the four tracks we got from the new album sounded absolutely fantastic, especially the colossal Fear Of Impending Hell which I think I'd have to declare my favourite on a first listen. There were also a few quality "fuck yeah I wanted to hear this!" moments, probably most of all As I Die but also Erased and the encore opener One Second. I was kind of gutted that Say Just Words was listed on the setlist as the closer but didn't get played, so they finished one short on an admittedly cracking rendition of Faith Divides Us - Death Unites Us - though as I say, given that Nick looked so rough I'm certainly not going to hold it against them! So on balance, a brave effort from a band who seemed to be struggling on the night, and while I wasn't as blown away as the last time I saw them, I'm still glad I went. ^_^
Gig over, I shot outside as fast as I could go and proceeded to spend the next ten or fifteen minutes handing out flyers to every mother's son and daughter who came out of the door. *g* That was actually the first time I'd done flyering at a gig that size, and it was nice to find that everyone was either happy to be flyered, or at least just evaded me with relative courtesy. There also was a noticeable lack of dropped flyers littering the pavement outside shortly afterwards, too, which seemed like an excellent sign. Keri and Gav caught me up outside at the end of the process and we headed back to theirs, where we settled in for food, conversation and a movie...
The movie in question was a genuinely delightful British flick from the seventies called Psychomania, which I really need to get a copy of so I can do a proper review but which I can at least report that I absolutely loved. It's a charmingly surreal movie following the misadventures of the best-behaved and most terribly British gang of adolescent bikers you could ever hope to meet, as their psychopathic yet oddly lovable young leader Tom drags them into a twilight world (well, more like the Twilight Zone) of black magic and undeath. Honestly I've never seen a movie like it - it should by all rights be a dated, stilted, utterly ridiculous thing, yet I found myself caring about the characters, enjoying the daft plot, and generally having a great time with it. Cheers for that one Keri!
After that, as usual, we sat up talking for ages before eventually giving up and going to bed... whereupon I found myself still too excited to actually sleep and had to lay awake for some time being rather confused and annoyed at myself (aren't you supposed to be too excited to sleep BEFORE the gig, not after?) Still, eventually the problem resolved itself and I nodded off...
Cut to next morning, whereupon I made a decision that was to end badly. I'd initially planned to get the earlier of two possible buses home, but I was sat comfortably talking to Keri and having a good time, and I really couldn't face moving so decided I'd go for the later one instead. Keri had to go to work a bit later, though, so I walked in as far as the bus stop with her and then went to wander around York for a bit on my own.
I love York. There's always something worth looking at, and I found myself on this occasion first wandering around the gardens of the Treasurer's House taking photos, and then sitting in the grounds of the old hospital/current York Museum, watching squirrels and falling cherry blossom. All well and good until I went to get that last bus home (at a mere 3pm in the afternoon, mark you)... only to discover that by some act of random and genuinely out-of-character stupidity, I'd managed to misread the timetable and missed it.
Under normal circumstances, this would still have been a cause of only minor irritation as train/bus to Scarborough + bus to Whitby can solve that particular problem - for a price. But therein lay the next difficulty. That particular weekend, I was fucking broke. I'd barely had enough cash to make it to the gig at all, I certainly didn't have enough for the long route home. The closest thing I had to an option would be to get the next bus back as far as its terminus at Thornton-le-Dale using the return ticket I had, and then walk the rest of the way...
...bearing in mind here that when I say "walk the rest of the way", that would have been close to twenty miles right across the North Yorks Moors on a very narrow main road with no pavement. In the dark. Never before had it dawned on me exactly how bloody close to the middle of fucking nowhere I actually live. *headdesk*
Thank gods for smartphones. Because obviously I did what any hip twenty-first-century dude would do in this situation, which was get my phone out and have a good whinge on Twitter before settling in to trying to ring my housemate koilungfish, who it turns out was actually asleep at the time... :p
I was interrupted by a call from my bff, the former oml404, who'd seen my twittery flailings and proceeded to be a total fucking star and walk across town at his end to pay cash into my bank account so I could afford to get home. <333333 I have the best friends, I really do. Some hours later I did in fact make it home, in a state of considerable aggravation, and all was well - but seriously, of all the stupid ways to end what had been a fantastic weekend!
The funny thing is, it's not the first time I've had trouble getting back from York after a visit to Keri's, either. I'm starting to think that city wants to keep me...
Laters,
Rath
So a couple of weekends back, I ended up in York with hellbound_heart (and the rather more elusive prelati) for Paradise Lost at the Duchess. I'd originally suggested this gig to Keri more or less on a whim, as I was basically looking for an excuse to go and hang out with her some more and Paradise Lost looked like the perfect one. ;) However, the anticipation factor racked up to the point of near-explosion when I found out not long before the gig who was going to be supporting: Insomnium - can't say fairer than that - and, oh my gods... VREID! I have a bit of a thing about Vreid, having discovered them a couple of years ago at Wacken where they were one of my bands of the festival. The idea of getting to see them in a proper club, as opposed to having their impact diluted by the middle-of-the-afternoon dead man's slot at Wacken? Oh hells yes... \m/
So I turned up bright and early on the day, having spent the usual two-and-a-bit-hour bus ride from Whitby curled up comfortably with an assortment of evil Black Metal (which led to a bit of grin-inducing synchronicity when I spotted a large cross on a village green with "He Is Risen" written on it, while right in the middle of Mayhem's In The Lies Where Upon You Lay - yeah, right). While in some ways it's a pain in the arse having that long and highly underserviced (more on that later) bus route being the only sane way to get from Whitby to York, I do kind of love it all the same as it means I get to have a look at the moors and chill out with my music, so by the time I arrive in York I've always had time to decompress and be ready for whatever's going to happen when I get there...
...which in this case initially involved being met by Keri and dragged back to her place, where we sat around and set the world to rights for a bit before heading back out to the venue. We deliberately aimed to be as early as we thought sensible, since Keri had had intel to the effect that Vreid were likely to be on pretty much as soon as the doors opened, and I was damned if I was going to run even the slightest risk of missing them. Also, I had a pocket full of flyers for the Ravenage/Old Corpse Road gig in Whitby (June 1st, get your arses up here!) and therefore could amuse myself by flyering the queue. We were also diverted by the appearance of a rainbow, which was about the least appropriate atmospheric event we could think of to presage a Paradise Lost gig. ^_^
Neither of us had ever been in the Duchess before, so we didn't know what to expect - although to be honest, the least expected thing of the entire night was a surprise tukie on the door, as I hadn't known that that particular venue was where he worked! *waves* On getting downstairs, though, we found ourselves in a dark, low-ceilinged, labyrinthine little venue that reminded me of nothing so much as the old Q Club in Cambridge, and was laid out far more like a club than a live venue with whole sections of the space being around the corner and out of sight from the stage - which in itself was oddly configured, being deeper than it was broad and closed in to the sides which gave the impression that the bands were going to be playing in some sort of small cave. None of these issues mattered to us, though, because we managed to stake a spot on the right-hand side of the barrier. Even if half the rest of the audience wasn't going to be able to see, we damn well were...
There's a deep and atavistic happiness that comes from seeing a band live who you don't merely like, but genuinely love and trust. Vreid are one of those bands, for me. They're always fiercely emotional in their music and their performance, hearts pinned to their sleeves right alongside their band-uniform armbands, and I feel completely safe just letting go and joining in. Tonight they take to the stage like they've had a V2 rocket shoved under them, stalking onstage to the menacing strains of Helvete and then tearing from there straight into Arche like they've well and truly got something to prove. The sound is massive, a clinically-precise wall of pure Black Metal thunder that plugs straight into the aggression circuits at the bottom of the brain and elicits an instant desire to headbang, punch the air and snarl ferally at the band members every time they look your way, and the band are clearly feeling the exact same way and having the time of their lives and it's absolutely fucking perfect-
-and then something explodes. Strom's amp drops out, briefly cuts back in again, and then rolls over entirely and holds up a little white flag. The sense of crashing disappointment is palpable as the energy that had just been starting to really get going is brought to a brutal all-stop. Frontman Sture, faced with what must be every singer's worst nightmare - total silence in a venue where the local language isn't your own - apologises to us but wisely decides not to try for any humorous banter, for which I don't blame him at all. Instead he goes over to consult with his bandmates, gear is moved and swapped and poked, and then, gods and techs be thanked, it's working again. Sture, Strom and Hváll stomp back to their places and let's try that again, shall we?
It's a testament to Vreid's determination, professionalism and sheer charisma as performers that by the time they're halfway through the remainder of their set, the technical problems might as well have never happened. They simply pick up where they left off, in full flight, and proceed to finish the demolition job they've already started. Where I am, right in front of Hváll, it's a bit like being at ground zero for an artillery barrage, in the best possible way. I hang over the rail, bang my head, and throw the horns with my heart soaring. About the only thing that could have made their set any better would have been to hear my favourite song of theirs, Speak Goddammit (which I noticed was in brackets on the bottom of the setlist, so probably only got dropped for time constraints, alas) but the colossal black'n'roll anthem Pitch Black, their traditional closer, is enough to make up for damn near anything...
...and then as they finish, I reach right over the rail to throw the horns to Hváll as I've done numerous times already, and he catches my eye, throws them back - and taps something against my outstretched hand. I blink, briefly confused, then realise what he means and my heart nearly explodes. Between his fingers, he's offering me - not throwing catch-as-can, but giving me - his pick. His fucking custom Vreid pick that he just played the whole set with.
I snatch. Scream a "THANK YOU!!!" that I hope carries over the wall of guitar distortion as Strom and Sture finish the closing chords. Clutch the pick, kiss it for luck, and try not to fall over in sheer amazement. Understand - this never happens to me. Damn near never, do I get acknowledged by anyone I admire beyond maybe a smile or a nod. I am the person who can always manage to be in the one bit of ringside that the performers don't do handtaps along at a wrestling show. I am the person who is always just out of reach when the singer decides to stagedive. I am the person who mysteriously gets missed out if there are handshakes and autographs going around. So for someone from a band I love to not only notice me, not only swap horns with me, but give me his pick? The entire venue could have been shut down right there and the rest of the show cancelled and this would still have been one of the best nights of my life.
Except that it wasn't, so I stay right where I am on the barrier, flailing ecstatically at Keri who was apparently nearly as impressed with Vreid as I was, much to my delight. And only a few minutes of changeover time later, Insomnium take the stage.
It's a bit of a change of pace, to be fair. I first encountered Insomnium when they were one of _arnamentia_'s ten CD choices for the Epykk Iceland Trip in '09, and so I have a rough idea what to expect although I'm not familiar with all of their output. As it happens, they draw the set entirely from albums I don't own, so I get to experience their particular brand of Finnish melodic death metal pretty much as though for the first time.
If I had to sum up Insomnium's sound in one word, that word might have to be simply beauty. They've got that weightless, effortless grace that seems to be the birthright of every Finnish metal band ever down perfectly, lacing ultra-melodic guitars and keyboards together over powerful but light-footed rhythms with the whole thing kept firmly on the right side of "too soft" by the reassuringly harsh forcefulness of the vocals. Their sound soars and dips and washes over the crowd like some kind of sonic Northern Lights, a perfect blend of joy and sorrow that's lifted right up and nailed to the sky by the razor-winged lead guitar of Markus Vanhala - who apparently only joined Insomnium last year, but I would truly never have known by the way he plays. The crowd adore it; indeed, I'd say Insomnium probably get the hottest crowd response of the night, especially from the girls in the front row and the one bloke who appears to be shouting his requests directly off the setlist becase he gets every song he asks for. *g* Me, I just lean on the rail, open my heart, watch, listen and enjoy. I'm a sucker for bands like this.
Insomnium's set passes by far too quickly, but the ending of it is enlivened by a brief comedy moment when one of them chucks their setlist into the knot of fanatical Insomnium fangirls standing just beside me. There's a scrap for it that actually results in a corner getting ripped off, and the girl who got it bunches it up possessively in her hand... when I lean across and ask if I can see it so I can find out what the opening song was for my own records, she looks for a minute like she's actually prepared to claw me until she realises that I genuinely do only want to see, not steal. *grin* This is apparently fine, so I finish noting down the setlist and all is well. As you were...
Meanwhile, having hung onto our place on the barrier for this long, Keri and I agree that there's no point in removing ourselves, so we stay put while a fairly extended changeover goes on - Paradise Lost's rig seems to require absolutely everything onstage to be extensively shuffled around. This does, though, give me time to lean over the rail and start transcribing their setlist onto my phone for the record, because oh man, this is going to be a LONG set. No way am I going to remember all that many tracks in order by the end. I am sure many people are bemused by my antics as I balance and hang over the barrier trying to see the top of the page.
Paradise Lost finally appear, to a suitable roar of acclaim, and launch into Desolate, but it's quickly obvious that something ain't quite right in several directions. First, they're deafeningly loud to the point where the sound is distorting, way too much bottom end making the speakers rattle and growl, nearly drowning Greg Mackintosh's guitar (which is frankly criminal) - and atop that, Nick Holmes is not looking, or sounding, so great. He looks tired and pissed off and generally floppy, and seems to be holding back vocally - my best guess, certainly based on the way he kept putting a hand to his midriff and the point a few songs in where he disappeared offstage briefly, would be that the poor bugger was feeling decidedly unwell. Thankfully the sound problems were to improve as the set went on, and Nick seemed to rally at least somewhat, but as an opening to what should have been a triumphant set, it's less than ideal.
But as Paradise lost start to pick up, the sound clearing and Nick beginning to show some vocal strength even if still being very tight on the crowd interaction (he starts telling an anecdote about going on a ghost walk earlier and cuts himself off almost at once with "I can't be arsed with this"), something else is turning decidedly rotten in the front rows... in the form of the dreaded Frotting Man. Keri mentioned this in her review, but she wasn't the one it was directly happening to - I was, and I report accordingly. About a song into Paradise Lost's set, a burly, drunken shorthaired bloke barged through the crowd to the second row, coming to a halt behind me and the girl to my left, whose boyfriend was standing behind her with an arm around her. Apparently this guy wanted to be on the barrier.
Well, fuck him, there wasn't room. I couldn't have moved without shoving Keri off the end, and I'd be damned before I'd do that when we had spent the entire gig staking that spot and paying our respects to the support bands. I set my feet and stayed put.
Nothing deterred, he started... dancing. At least, I assume it was meant to be dancing - the actual effect produced in the tight space was that of having his upper thigh rubbed vigorously against my arse and the back of my leg. I was trying to watch a band I love, from a damn near perfect vantage point, and this unmitigated buffoon was apparently using me as a wanking post. I braced my feet even more firmly and attempted to ignore him. The girl on my left, presumably getting the same treatment from this guy's other thigh, looked distinctly squeamish and I don't blame her.
It took about three songs for a sort of utterly disturbing erosion effect to eventually push me and the other girl (plus her bf) far enough apart that Frotting Man could squeeze his capacious arse into the gap thus formed on the rail, by which point I was throwing the horns to Aaron Aedy with one hand and holding a white-knuckle grip on the barrier with the other to stop myself being shoved into Keri any harder. At least once he'd got his spot I was no longer being molested and then only had to worry about his bulk blocking my view of Greg on the far side of the stage... which was annoying enough, given that Greg's lead guitar work is one of my favourite things about Paradise Lost and I was trying to watch the man play!
Still, all that aside, I can't really fault the rest of the set. Nick rallied noticeably when the band started hitting their later songs - I couldn't help noticing that the set was biased heavily in favour of material from after Draconian Times, maybe they're just tired of playing the older stuff? - and the four tracks we got from the new album sounded absolutely fantastic, especially the colossal Fear Of Impending Hell which I think I'd have to declare my favourite on a first listen. There were also a few quality "fuck yeah I wanted to hear this!" moments, probably most of all As I Die but also Erased and the encore opener One Second. I was kind of gutted that Say Just Words was listed on the setlist as the closer but didn't get played, so they finished one short on an admittedly cracking rendition of Faith Divides Us - Death Unites Us - though as I say, given that Nick looked so rough I'm certainly not going to hold it against them! So on balance, a brave effort from a band who seemed to be struggling on the night, and while I wasn't as blown away as the last time I saw them, I'm still glad I went. ^_^
Gig over, I shot outside as fast as I could go and proceeded to spend the next ten or fifteen minutes handing out flyers to every mother's son and daughter who came out of the door. *g* That was actually the first time I'd done flyering at a gig that size, and it was nice to find that everyone was either happy to be flyered, or at least just evaded me with relative courtesy. There also was a noticeable lack of dropped flyers littering the pavement outside shortly afterwards, too, which seemed like an excellent sign. Keri and Gav caught me up outside at the end of the process and we headed back to theirs, where we settled in for food, conversation and a movie...
The movie in question was a genuinely delightful British flick from the seventies called Psychomania, which I really need to get a copy of so I can do a proper review but which I can at least report that I absolutely loved. It's a charmingly surreal movie following the misadventures of the best-behaved and most terribly British gang of adolescent bikers you could ever hope to meet, as their psychopathic yet oddly lovable young leader Tom drags them into a twilight world (well, more like the Twilight Zone) of black magic and undeath. Honestly I've never seen a movie like it - it should by all rights be a dated, stilted, utterly ridiculous thing, yet I found myself caring about the characters, enjoying the daft plot, and generally having a great time with it. Cheers for that one Keri!
After that, as usual, we sat up talking for ages before eventually giving up and going to bed... whereupon I found myself still too excited to actually sleep and had to lay awake for some time being rather confused and annoyed at myself (aren't you supposed to be too excited to sleep BEFORE the gig, not after?) Still, eventually the problem resolved itself and I nodded off...
Cut to next morning, whereupon I made a decision that was to end badly. I'd initially planned to get the earlier of two possible buses home, but I was sat comfortably talking to Keri and having a good time, and I really couldn't face moving so decided I'd go for the later one instead. Keri had to go to work a bit later, though, so I walked in as far as the bus stop with her and then went to wander around York for a bit on my own.
I love York. There's always something worth looking at, and I found myself on this occasion first wandering around the gardens of the Treasurer's House taking photos, and then sitting in the grounds of the old hospital/current York Museum, watching squirrels and falling cherry blossom. All well and good until I went to get that last bus home (at a mere 3pm in the afternoon, mark you)... only to discover that by some act of random and genuinely out-of-character stupidity, I'd managed to misread the timetable and missed it.
Under normal circumstances, this would still have been a cause of only minor irritation as train/bus to Scarborough + bus to Whitby can solve that particular problem - for a price. But therein lay the next difficulty. That particular weekend, I was fucking broke. I'd barely had enough cash to make it to the gig at all, I certainly didn't have enough for the long route home. The closest thing I had to an option would be to get the next bus back as far as its terminus at Thornton-le-Dale using the return ticket I had, and then walk the rest of the way...
...bearing in mind here that when I say "walk the rest of the way", that would have been close to twenty miles right across the North Yorks Moors on a very narrow main road with no pavement. In the dark. Never before had it dawned on me exactly how bloody close to the middle of fucking nowhere I actually live. *headdesk*
Thank gods for smartphones. Because obviously I did what any hip twenty-first-century dude would do in this situation, which was get my phone out and have a good whinge on Twitter before settling in to trying to ring my housemate koilungfish, who it turns out was actually asleep at the time... :p
I was interrupted by a call from my bff, the former oml404, who'd seen my twittery flailings and proceeded to be a total fucking star and walk across town at his end to pay cash into my bank account so I could afford to get home. <333333 I have the best friends, I really do. Some hours later I did in fact make it home, in a state of considerable aggravation, and all was well - but seriously, of all the stupid ways to end what had been a fantastic weekend!
The funny thing is, it's not the first time I've had trouble getting back from York after a visit to Keri's, either. I'm starting to think that city wants to keep me...
Laters,
Rath