Montreal: day 7
The day started by showering and packing as we were due to move hotel. We grabbed a cab down the road and were ready to check into our final night stay hotel but we weren't able to do so for around three hours as we were early. We left our luggage and went to check a few things in the local area. We found our bus which would take us to the airport the following day right outside our airport, and we also accidently found a chinese dragon performance 2 minutes walk away. We were right next to chinatown so we had a bumble around before scoffing a nice chinese buffet for lunch.
After a bit more looking round the shops we had killed enough time and were able to check in. We quickly legged it up to the venue and even though we were 45 mins after the advertised start time of the first band the sound check was still going on. We killed some time in which I accidentally bought a Rotersand promo.
A new schedule was put up on the wall and the first band started roughtly an hour late. The first three bands had set times of 30 mins rather and 50,40 and 50 as the original schedule showed. Clearly over the course of this weekend something was screwing up the sound checked causing the days to regularly start late.
Detroit Diesel has some good looking T-Shirts but that was pretty much all I knew about the band. In my opinion two of the three first bands on were pretty damn awesome (for the full days, ignoring the first warm up day). Unfortunately Detroit Diesel weren't that good and really didn't do anything for me. This was a theme that continued through Factured, Glenn Love, Cesium 137 and Run Level Zero. I did bump into Sami (Faderhead) in the merch area picking up his bottle of Vodka for the gig, some things don't change.
Faderhead was the first gig of the day that I enjoyed and even though he said it was going to be ballady it came out quite stompy. He acquired miming knob twiddlers from another band to back him up on stage so the gig was pretty much him and his vodka. He performed a new track which he hadn't even finished all the lyrics to and that went down pretty well. He ended up getting the crowd going pretty well and finished on "Dirty Girls, dirty bois" and "TZDV".
The next band I held any hope out was for Frozen Plasma but mainly because of their old Nam Nam Bulu roots. Unfortunately my opinion of FP live still matches my opinion of them recorded. Not a patch on NNB and while they have the potential, they don't appear to have the songs.
Rotersand followed and brought us exactly what we were all waiting for. The venue was full and they brought us a great number of hits without any technical hitches, hicups or screw ups of any kind. They did feel they had to explain what a DALEK was before they played "Exterminate, Anihilate, Destroy" but I honestly thought that 90% of the audience would have known about that anyway. A storming set woke me up completely and gave me the energy to keep going.
This was something I was needing as I was shattered from getting up early to move hotels, and my foot was still hurting for earlier in the week and felt like it was actually getting worse. I pretty much wanted to see what Unter Null were like these days I as remember not liking what I heard at Infest but enjoying a more recent track or two release on compilations. With the gig still running about 20 mins late I was hoping UN would still get a look in.
Covenant were up next and should have delivered us a polished and enjoyable set. However, quite uncharacteristicly for them that's almost exactly what they didn't bring us. The fist two tracks had a mis-match of speeds between the pre-recorded base lines and the overlayed snare track. Every time the snare track kicked in it seemed that Eskils vocals got slightly out of sync. It took me a minute or two to work out what was going on and it seemed he was following the baseline for his vocals.
After two songs this incongruity was sorted out, but this didn't appear to save their set. Eskil still seemed to have trouble keeping his lyrics in time with the bars and at one point almost started another verse when there was meant to be a break.
They even got one of the drummers from Combichrist in for the last song, but introduced him half way through their set. This meant we were told 'And here we have xxx from combichrist' and then for him not to turn up on stage for five more songs. When he did turn up he didn't really do much other than randomly bash some drums and it seemed like this stage entrance was more of a last minute thought than a practised and planned collaboration.
In all, there was a lot wrong with this Covenant set and I've seen them do much, much better before. Yes, I'll admit you can't always avoid technical hitches but this just seemed ill prepared by them, I wasn't impressed. The crowd seemed very appreciative though, I can't quite work out why though.
Melotron were someone I'd not heard of before and I was now tired and grumpy and wishing the end of the festival would come soon. Meltron bounced up and played some incredibly cheerie synthpop with quite a lot of emphasis on the pop bit. This was completely at odds with my mood but I'll give them credit that the managed to bring me round a little. If I was not shattered for a multi-day 51 band festival and in the mood for a little bit of poppy stuff I'm sure I would have loved them. The fact they brought a smile to my face means they were doing something right. I'll have to check them out when I'm in the appropriate mood.
Due to all the runnning lateness Unter Null came on about 25 minutes late. This was a real shame as they really had to gut any planned set they had and and churn through 3-4 songs with virtually no time to set the stage up. They launched on stage in a similar style to Caustic and Erica ran through a number of her songs which felt like they were deafening compared to the synthpop of Melotron. They mostly sounded similar in structure to one of the tracks I've got on a recent compilation but I didn't recognise it as that so I think her style has basically evolved in that direction. The room felt like it rocked properly and it was worth the wait right until the end of this festival. I enjoyed her stuff much more than the stuff I saw years ago at Infest and she ended on a cover of The Mercy Seat by Nick Cave. This included a stage invasion from the Brian, Kat (gothsciles) and Matt (Caustic), awesome.
As soon as Erica finished we legged it out for a taxi back to our hotel. We got in around 4am and we basically had to check out at 7am to get the bus to the airport. This wasn't going to be fun as I found my feet hurt so much that they kept me awake for about an hour. I think I dozed off at around 5ish and was woken by an incoming call to my work phone around 6:10am! I wasn't concious enough to answer it but only managed a power nap after that which meant I was up, showered and out the hotel for 7. Erk. A day of flying and lack of sleep to get home.
After a bit more looking round the shops we had killed enough time and were able to check in. We quickly legged it up to the venue and even though we were 45 mins after the advertised start time of the first band the sound check was still going on. We killed some time in which I accidentally bought a Rotersand promo.
A new schedule was put up on the wall and the first band started roughtly an hour late. The first three bands had set times of 30 mins rather and 50,40 and 50 as the original schedule showed. Clearly over the course of this weekend something was screwing up the sound checked causing the days to regularly start late.
Detroit Diesel has some good looking T-Shirts but that was pretty much all I knew about the band. In my opinion two of the three first bands on were pretty damn awesome (for the full days, ignoring the first warm up day). Unfortunately Detroit Diesel weren't that good and really didn't do anything for me. This was a theme that continued through Factured, Glenn Love, Cesium 137 and Run Level Zero. I did bump into Sami (Faderhead) in the merch area picking up his bottle of Vodka for the gig, some things don't change.
Faderhead was the first gig of the day that I enjoyed and even though he said it was going to be ballady it came out quite stompy. He acquired miming knob twiddlers from another band to back him up on stage so the gig was pretty much him and his vodka. He performed a new track which he hadn't even finished all the lyrics to and that went down pretty well. He ended up getting the crowd going pretty well and finished on "Dirty Girls, dirty bois" and "TZDV".
The next band I held any hope out was for Frozen Plasma but mainly because of their old Nam Nam Bulu roots. Unfortunately my opinion of FP live still matches my opinion of them recorded. Not a patch on NNB and while they have the potential, they don't appear to have the songs.
Rotersand followed and brought us exactly what we were all waiting for. The venue was full and they brought us a great number of hits without any technical hitches, hicups or screw ups of any kind. They did feel they had to explain what a DALEK was before they played "Exterminate, Anihilate, Destroy" but I honestly thought that 90% of the audience would have known about that anyway. A storming set woke me up completely and gave me the energy to keep going.
This was something I was needing as I was shattered from getting up early to move hotels, and my foot was still hurting for earlier in the week and felt like it was actually getting worse. I pretty much wanted to see what Unter Null were like these days I as remember not liking what I heard at Infest but enjoying a more recent track or two release on compilations. With the gig still running about 20 mins late I was hoping UN would still get a look in.
Covenant were up next and should have delivered us a polished and enjoyable set. However, quite uncharacteristicly for them that's almost exactly what they didn't bring us. The fist two tracks had a mis-match of speeds between the pre-recorded base lines and the overlayed snare track. Every time the snare track kicked in it seemed that Eskils vocals got slightly out of sync. It took me a minute or two to work out what was going on and it seemed he was following the baseline for his vocals.
After two songs this incongruity was sorted out, but this didn't appear to save their set. Eskil still seemed to have trouble keeping his lyrics in time with the bars and at one point almost started another verse when there was meant to be a break.
They even got one of the drummers from Combichrist in for the last song, but introduced him half way through their set. This meant we were told 'And here we have xxx from combichrist' and then for him not to turn up on stage for five more songs. When he did turn up he didn't really do much other than randomly bash some drums and it seemed like this stage entrance was more of a last minute thought than a practised and planned collaboration.
In all, there was a lot wrong with this Covenant set and I've seen them do much, much better before. Yes, I'll admit you can't always avoid technical hitches but this just seemed ill prepared by them, I wasn't impressed. The crowd seemed very appreciative though, I can't quite work out why though.
Melotron were someone I'd not heard of before and I was now tired and grumpy and wishing the end of the festival would come soon. Meltron bounced up and played some incredibly cheerie synthpop with quite a lot of emphasis on the pop bit. This was completely at odds with my mood but I'll give them credit that the managed to bring me round a little. If I was not shattered for a multi-day 51 band festival and in the mood for a little bit of poppy stuff I'm sure I would have loved them. The fact they brought a smile to my face means they were doing something right. I'll have to check them out when I'm in the appropriate mood.
Due to all the runnning lateness Unter Null came on about 25 minutes late. This was a real shame as they really had to gut any planned set they had and and churn through 3-4 songs with virtually no time to set the stage up. They launched on stage in a similar style to Caustic and Erica ran through a number of her songs which felt like they were deafening compared to the synthpop of Melotron. They mostly sounded similar in structure to one of the tracks I've got on a recent compilation but I didn't recognise it as that so I think her style has basically evolved in that direction. The room felt like it rocked properly and it was worth the wait right until the end of this festival. I enjoyed her stuff much more than the stuff I saw years ago at Infest and she ended on a cover of The Mercy Seat by Nick Cave. This included a stage invasion from the Brian, Kat (gothsciles) and Matt (Caustic), awesome.
As soon as Erica finished we legged it out for a taxi back to our hotel. We got in around 4am and we basically had to check out at 7am to get the bus to the airport. This wasn't going to be fun as I found my feet hurt so much that they kept me awake for about an hour. I think I dozed off at around 5ish and was woken by an incoming call to my work phone around 6:10am! I wasn't concious enough to answer it but only managed a power nap after that which meant I was up, showered and out the hotel for 7. Erk. A day of flying and lack of sleep to get home.