Venue: Gasometer / Vienna / Austria
Concert date: 06.11.2010
Attendance: 2500
Ticket price: 26€ (presale) / 30€ (day of show)
What got so many fans from Austria’s neighboring countries, plus the Austrians themselves, to show up in one single place? Nothing less than 3 titans of the death/metal core scene, going by the names Suicide Silence, As I Lay Dying and Heaven Shall Burn. They pulled in a many-headed crowd that ran well into four digits. But the bigger the crowd, the longer it took to actually get inside the hall.
The first time we walked into the venue we saw the line-up of bands and knew we had to hurry into the main hall, because Suicide Silence were starting pretty early. The crowd was packed in and the lights went down. When the SS guys walked out, people started screaming like they were at an Elvis Presley show in the 50s. But that was only the beginning. From the side of the stage to the middle, a tattooed apparition by the name of Mitch Lucker came staggering out. The moment he showed up, the crowd literally lost it. Mitch kicked off with his famous phoenix-shall-fly-again flapping and almost took off over our heads. But once he knew he was about to do his thing, he stomped his foot on the floor and started screaming the words to Wake Up at the top of his lungs. As Mitch screamed, so did the crazed underage fangirls of this California songbird. The guy gave it everything he had when it comes to screams. Growls gave him trouble in the past and still do. We can brush that aside, though, since we’re all used to the SS scream anyway, and that more than proved itself on stage. Some will say the guys have no talent and the frontman has no vocals. They’re wrong. What does it tell you when a vocalist holds the mic half a meter away from his face, screams, and you can still hear him so loud your ears start ringing? It tells you (us) that the man knows how to get his voice out. But just as everything was getting nice and fun, Mitch announced the last song and we knew the fun would be over soon…at least for half an hour.
And so the SS guys played their set, and a horde of pierced ears and slicked-back hair stormed outside for drinks and cigarettes, as they say. Those who didn’t allow themselves a smoke break looked around carefully in case they bumped into someone from the band to take a pic with. Everyone else who did neither piled into the merch corner and handed over their euros in exchange for printed cotton, better known as a shirt or a t-shirt.
Time flew by without a word, and it was already time for the pioneers of modern metalcore, As I Lay Dying. When we walked back into the hall the crowd was twice as big as for Suicide Silence, and everybody was impatiently waiting for their heroes. You could also see they had their own special riser for the drummer, raised above the level of the rest of the band. It didn’t take long for them to hit the stage and start with some melodic burning. Soon after, frontman Tim Lambesis showed up, grabbed the mic and started screaming. But as strong as we’re used to his voice being, you could barely hear anything. Thinking the mic was faulty, he grabbed the guitarist’s, and hurled that guitarist’s mic stand into the crowd. Nobody expected that from him, and in that moment he came across like some spoiled rock star who thinks he can get away with anything. There was also plenty of water being thrown around. The poor photographers clearly had to keep a close eye on their gear. When it was time to say a few words again, the same thing happened. You couldn’t hear him at all, while bassist Josh Gilbert sang without any problems whatsoever. Somewhere in the middle of the show the sound finally started coming from Tim too, and that was progress, but sadly it didn’t last long. That’s how the whole AILD show went, which didn’t bother the fans, since they comforted themselves that at least the instrumentalists did their job well.
As is routine by now, it was time for another break. But this time not everybody poured outside, since most people were waiting for the stars of the night – Heaven Shall Burn. A break is a break, and we needed something to drink to wet our mouths and cool down a bit. Despite the AC, it was hot as the fallen angel’s own home. But the heat didn’t stop us from enjoying the last band of the night.
When the many-headed crowd started filing back into the hall, we knew what time it was. The lights went out and a projection kicked in, showing a swastika on top of the Reichstag. People who weren’t familiar with the HSB guys’ ideology figured it was some kind of Nazi propaganda. But they changed their minds pretty quickly once the band walked out and picked up their instruments. With the first hit on the drum and the first, very explosive guitar riff, the projection showed an explosion and the destruction of that aforementioned symbol. Vocalist Marcus Bischoff ran out on stage and, full of enthusiasm, started screaming. Some people, already visibly drunk, didn’t like their music and started throwing half-empty glasses at the stage. That didn’t faze the guys and they kept on burning. When they launched into the second song in a row – The Omen, the crowd went nuts. As Marcus screamed, the fans screamed along. You could clearly see the smiles on the faces of Marcus’s bandmates, who were enjoying themselves just like the fans. And so that The Omen wouldn’t be the only one to reap all the glory, they played all their hits that every metalcore head knows. That means everything got torched, from Endzeit and Voice of the Voiceless to Black Tears, which many consider better than the original once performed by the Swedes Edge Of Sanity. But all good things come to an end, and so Heaven Shall Burn slowly wrapped up, waved to the crowd with grateful smiles and disappeared backstage.
All in all…all’s well that ends well. The trip to this spectacle was more than worth it. It’ll stay with us forever as a fond memory that we’ll get to tell our loved ones, our friends and, in time, even our descendants. Viva la musica metal & core. And as Heaven Shall Burn, who spiced up our lives, would say: ”In this dying world we are the final resistance!”.
photos: Tjaša Saje
Setlist
SUICIDE SILENCE: 1. Wake Up 2. Lifted 3. Smoke 4. Unanswered 5. Disengage 6. No Time To Bleed 7. No Pity For A Coward AS I LAY DYING: 1. 94 Hours 2. An Ocean Between Us 3. Upside Down Kingdom 4. Beyond Our Suffering 5. The Sound Of Truth 6. Within Destruction 7. Anodyne Sea 8. Condemned 9. Through Struggle 10. Nothing Left 11. Confined HEAVEN SHALL BURN: 1. Counterweight 2. The Omen 3. Combat 4. Voice Of The Voiceless 5. Like A Thousand Suns 6. Endzeit 7. Sevastopol 8. The Lie You Bleed For 9. I Was I Am I Shall Be 10. Return To Sanity 11. The Weapon They Fear 12. Not My God 13. Bleack Tears
Photo Gallery
