Last week I made my way up to Hartford’s Webster Theater, as I’ve done so many times in the past 10 years to see some epic and ripping heavy metal. Though I was expecting at least a moderately good time, I actually found myself surprised at how much fun I had. All three bands: Skeltonwitch, Sabaton and Amon Amarth put on fantastic, inspired performances. And I’m not just being nice, I really only thought Amon Amarth would be cool to see live, but I was wrong. Perhaps it was the fact I hadn’t been to a show in a couple months. Or maybe wearing earplugs cancelled out all the excess noise of the Webster's notoriously bad sound and made everything seem that much better. Or it’s that I had a photo pass for the first time and got exhilarated by running around taking snapshots. Or it was just a genuinely great show.
Skeletonwitch
To be honest, I hadn’t listened to a lot of Skeletonwitch since their first album, Beyond the Permafrost. I remember liking it and playing it on my old radio show, but most of their material since has either not crossed my path or has just left me with a shrug when I heard it. Well, to say I was surprised was an understatement. What a great live band! What a powerful stage presence!
Perhaps as a result of its production, the band’s breed of modern thrash metal can come off as predictable and domesticated on record, but within a more spontaneous and raw live setting, the riffs and growls suddenly come alive. Lead singer Chance Garnette leads the band like a general leads his soldiers in a bayonet charge: energized, confident and brutal. The band members all follow suit, with founding guitarists Nate and Scott ripping through the set while the rhythm section of Evan and Dustin provides the heavy and consistent backbone. From the outset, you can tell the band has honed their performance to give their fans a solid heavy metal show.
Sabaton
Fun, extravagant, gloriously cheesy – if there’s one thing you could say about Sabaton, they’re certainly not a boring band to see. Admittedly, I tend to stay away from this type of metal, as it’s just too laughable to take seriously. But there are those rare cases where a band strikes the right balance between legitimate aggression and theatrical flair where the extravagance just feels so perfect. Both the music and the performance speak to metal’s spirit of extreme’s and striking presentation, even at the risk of being laughed at. It’s the honesty of it all that makes it respectable.
And you could tell the band genuinely enjoyed playing their set. This makes a big difference with large-stage oriented music like power metal. Too many bands get caught up in being “larger than life” that they create a phony sort of distance from the audience. Sabaton doesn’t do that. They laugh, they do the dual guitar shuffle, the lead singer strikes his glorious poses, they joke around…and they’re actually funny too. I’m not sure I’d purchase their whole discography tomorrow, but I’d be happy to see Sabaton live again any day. They also got the crowd to do the YMCA at one point. Apparently they tried doing in the Sacramento and the crowd balked at them. Perhaps Connecticut people can be fun after all.
Amon Amarth
Like many of their Scandinavian brethren, Amon Amarth focus their lyrical content on norse mythology and culture. But unlike their more blackened peers in Enslaved, the band’s sound has always been more about the enjoyable bombast of a European festival. So despite their melodic death metal sound, the band’s music lacks the foreboding and evil cultivation of death characteristic of many similar-sounding bands. Unmistakable on record, this approach comes through very clearly in a live setting, giving them a powerful presence, but one tempered by the goal of creating a glorious, celebratory experience.
Amon Amarth is one of those bands where if you own one album, you essentially own all of them. Still, this leaves open the ability for listener’s to discern their own favorites among the vast catalog. Of the set’s many highlights, my own personal favorites included “Death in Fire”, “Destroyer of the Universe” and “Twilight of the Thunder God.” I also liked how the lead singer Johan actually drank out of his Viking drinking horn, rather than just keep it as a useless prop. It may not be 900 AD anymore, but that doesn’t mean we can’t party like it is!
Anyway, if you haven’t seen any of these bands live, I strongly recommend that you do so. Even if you’re skeptical about their individual styles like I was, you’ll do well to just bang your head and enjoy it without any pretentious irony or status-seeking required. A couple beers wouldn’t hurt either.
