Author: Urban Bolta
Location: Etnoblog / Trieste / Italy
Concert date: 07.02.2012
Attendance: 160
Ticket price: 12€ / 15€
Two years have rolled around, which for American hard rockers House Of Lords usually means another turn of the repeating “album – tour” cycle. Ever since 2004, when they hit back with the comeback record “The Power And The Myth”, the band led by frontman James Christian has toured tirelessly and put out a new album every two years. The latest of them, “Big Money” (review here) came out on Frontiers in the second half of last year, and as tradition dictates, it was the perfect excuse for a new tour.
But that’s where things got stuck. Christian, who at 57 is no longer among the youngest people on Earth, came down with prostate cancer, so the tour was pushed from its originally announced November slot to February. After the prescribed rest, House Of Lords finally hit the road, and the stop closest to us landed in Trieste on none other than the Slovenian cultural holiday.
Trieste has come fully back to “rock” life lately, thanks to a handful of music lovers gathered in the association “Trieste is rock”. This time the hardworking organizers staged the show at a small club called Etnoblog, which sits right by the sea, a few minutes’ walk from the main city square, Piazza dell`unita, heading along the road that runs parallel to the sea. The extremely low temperatures had frozen the club solid inside, so we heard first-hand that the gig was still up in the air in the middle of the afternoon, but House Of Lords finally decided to play anyway.
The evening was opened by Sweet Loraine, old acquaintances of the Trieste rock crowd. The band has found its calling in playing evergreen Uriah Heep classics, as the name, borrowed from a track off “The Magician`s Birthday”, already hints. They’re known for their professional approach, so meeting them is almost as intense an experience as watching Mick Box and company on stage. But this time the goddess of fortune wasn’t on their side. The guitar was barely audible in the overall sound picture, so the keyboard-guitar interplay never came alive with the power that Uriah Heep classics demand. What sets Sweet Loraine apart is their choice of repertoire, which always makes a stop at the albums of the late seventies too, when John Lawton held the helm in Uriah Heep. Frontman David Žorž walked a solid line between the colors of Byron’s and Lawton’s vocals, though, hand on heart, the years are slowly eating away at his voice in the higher registers too. Sweet Loraine once again proved themselves a tight, well-oiled collective of seasoned musicians who know exactly how to serve up the goods!
After a half-hour break, House Of Lords lined up on stage and kicked off with the punchy Sahara. Guitarist Jimi Bell ruled the left corner of the stage, bassist Chris McCarvill the right, B. J. Zampa sat behind the drums, and watching over and above the trio was none other than James Christian.
Jimi Bell deserves a special mention here. For reasons unknown (to me), on the “Carthesian Dreams” tour he was replaced by Danger Danger guitarist Rob Marcello, but this time Bell was ready and raring to go. He’s an exceptionally accomplished guitarist technically, so the show had no shortage of fast-fingered runs up and down his guitar’s neck. Jimi Bell left his recognizable stamp on nearly every song they played, but at the same time he took care that his technical wizardry never crossed the line set by the melodic House Of Lords school.
With Big Money, the first encounter with the album of the same name came soon, and the quartet later played two more from it, Blood and the phenomenal One Man Down. The new numbers follow the old House Of Lords tradition of extreme kinetic power and energy, peaking in layered choruses, so they blended easily in with the older material. The Americans jumped back and forth between the older, “classic” material and the younger songs, written after the band’s restart around the turn of the millennium.
These days House Of Lords are a small club band, and it’s hard to believe this is a group that once filled big halls and worked with musicians of exceptional pedigree like Paul Stanley, Chuck Wright, Doug Aldrich, Tommy Aldridge… A limited budget (just like on the previous tour) left the band’s fifth member, the keyboardist, at home, so all his parts were sampled and played off a backing track. With that kind of delivery, the audiophiles in the crowd simply can’t fall 100% under the spell of the show and rightly feel cheated, because the fullness of sound you hear is really only an illusion. The quartet is superbly tight and did its job, multi-part vocal harmonies included, with flying colors, but the missing keyboardist was exactly where the show lost its potential magic.
As the set went on, Christian slowly started running out of steam, so each of the instrumental trio got a few moments to show off their chops. The bandleader used his free minutes as wisely as he could, refreshing himself with sips of water in the right corner. The close of the show was all about the 1988 debut “House Of Lords”, with three of its songs back to back: I Wanna Be Loved, Pleasure Palace and Slip Of The Tongue, before the Americans bid the Trieste crowd a final farewell with One Foot In The Dark as the encore.
An hour and a half’s journey through the classic heritage of the West Coast hard rock/AOR school was a decent diversion for a midweek trip to the Trieste area. Trieste is within easy reach for the average Slovenian, so a visit from a band like House Of Lords shouldn’t just be blown off, Prešeren-style. Honestly, though, if you’ve already met them face to face in this life, it’s hardly worth traveling much farther than that.
Photos: Martin Prezelj
Setlist
1.Sahara
2.I Don t Wanna Wait All Night
3.Big Money
4.Come to My Kingdom
5.S.O.S. In America
6.Love Don t Lie
7.Cartesian Dreams
8.Blood
9.I am Free
10.These Are the Times
11.One Man Down
12.Rock Bottom
13.I Wanna Be Loved
14.Pleasure Palace
15.Slip of the Tongue
—encore—
16.One Foot in the Dark
Photo gallery
