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It has been decided - Opium Toad March 26, 2008

Posted by Sharny in : Life, Music, Scraps , add a comment

Yes, Opium Toad is the name of our band. This post is kinda to see if google will finally index myspace.com/opiumtoad and opiumtoad.com but it acts as an announcement.

We have one song complete, a few covers we can play solidly and a lot more of our own material in the works. I’m pretty confident that we can get somewhere as I really like some of the stuff that we’ve got so far. Our completed song has been received well by everyone that has heard it (and no, it wasn’t just our family members). We may well have a couple of gigs lined up for the coming months, we’re gonna approach them with a sort of try our best but if it fails we don’t care very much if it fails as it is early days.

The Sword at Rock City - 25/03/08

Posted by Sharny in : Entertainment, Fun, Music , add a comment

Last night me and three friends went to see The Sword live at rock city. We grabbed a the nearest bus to all of us and got there at about 7.30pm and waited a few minutes to be let in. There wasn’t a huge gathering of people outside and although I didn’t know before hand this confirmed my suspicion that it would be in the basement. This isn’t hugely surprising but at the same time Freya is on guitar hero 2 so there was always the possibility of a larger turnout.

Anyways, we headed in and into the basement (if you’ve never been there it’s not really a basement but its got a low ceiling and is quite compact and is primarily used for metal so I guess that is how it got it’s name, don’t really know) and the band merchandise was to the right as we went in, something I haven’t seen before. We just hung around for a while waiting for the first band, Black Cobra, to come on. When they did, we were a bit surprised to find out they were only a two man band. Musically, they were OK, not the worst support band I’ve seen but not particularly good either. Essentially we all agreed that they should just leave out vocals and be instrumental because the lyrics are totally inaudible over the screechy vocal style, which is pretty horrible within itself. Maybe those vocals are part of the sludge genre, I don’t really know because it’s not something I listen to generally.

When they went off we took the opportunity to move forward a bit and waited again for Saviours to get ready. Having listening to Saviours a bit more before coming to the gig I was expecting better of them than Black Cobra and aside from a few technical difficulties (which meant we heard the first two riffs of their first song three times) they didn’t dissapoint. Again, after they left the stage we moved forward a bit more to be nearer the action for The Sword.

It didn’t take long for them to set up and they started with a song I didn’t recognize, which was kind of the trend for the night. They played a lot of stuff I hadn’t heard before, which is kinda surprising given that I thought I owned their only album. As it happens, it’s all from their new album, apparently released at the beginning of April (even though it seems to be available for buy and download on iTunes right now) which I intend to buy on CD when I can.

In all honesty, I would have liked to hear more stuff I recognized as I can get into it a lot easier and really feel the groove but they did play a few goodies such as Barael’s Blade and Iron Swan. Freya was saved for the encore, which started with a cover song that neither me nor my friends knew. They got a bit of heckling for that choice which is understandable. I did like how Freya was introduced: “Now for a song by the other greatest band from Texas” which confused me for a few seconds before they started off into the first riff.

Overall it was a pretty good night, my only real complaint being that I would have liked to see more of The Sword and less of the other bands (although I did enjoy some of Saviours). There were also some weird issues where the guitars didn’t quite have the oomph that I would expect, the sound just seemed to fall apart at some bits and it sounded a bit odd. I don’t think it was the fault of the band or a lack of skill on their part I think it was a pure technical thing, whatever they used to obtain the sound on the record probably couldn’t be done live for whatever reason. I picked up a t-shirt on the way out which I’m wearing as I type and I’d definitely go and see them live again, hopefully at a point where they don’t have much new material and I’ve managed to soak the new album into my brain.

Turisas at rock city September 16, 2007

Posted by Sharny in : Life, Music , add a comment

Went to see Turisas at rock city last night. They are one of my favourite bands and I mentioned them when they released their second album.

We (me and 2 mates) had been attracted into town early (4:30, with the show starting at 7) due to promises of alcohol from one a friend of one of my friends. As it happened she was drunk and had given the last of her alcohol to a friendly homeless guy. So much for that.

We kinda wandered about for a while killing time until finally joining the queue outside rock city at around 6:20pm behind a group of people who all had their faces painted in Turisas red and black stripes. It wasn’t long before some friends of my mate showed up and got their faces painted by the people in front who actually had the paint on hand. Just before 7 the queue moved forward a bit making us think that we were about to be let in. Apparently not though and it was actually another tiring 40 minutes of waiting outside before they finally rounded us up and got us inside.

Once in, I was surprised to see that rock city is quite different for gigs than for under 18s nights and we had a bit of a look around. The support band came on and they were just awful. The drums were too loud, to the point where the bass and guitar (which actually looked moderately complex) was just reduced to a noise where no riff was actually audible unless you left the room. We found out that there would be a 30mins wait from the point that the support band left to Turisas coming on so prepared to wait.

I decided to try and go to the toilet before they started but kinda took too long deciding that so I came back and the intro was about half way through. They started with the intro from the first album which isn’t a proper song but goes straight into As Torches Rise, it works well on the CD and works even better live. We headed into the middle to join in with the headbanging and moshing n shit.

I won’t try to recount some kind of set list but I was really pleased to see everyone’s reaction to some of my favourite songs such as In The Court Of Jarisleif which are mostly based around some great violining. The violinist was a really popular element of the band, which I thought was great because I personally love that part of Turisas. In fact, the rock band staple of a guitar solo was replaced with a distorted violin solo which was pretty awesome really.

Another of the great things about Turisas has been some of the joint male voice sections which sing tunes and it was great to join in with a whole crowd singing stuff like that which you would just never do in any other situation. Joint to that was that Turisas held the attention of the crowd and we were on their side, to the point that the lead signer split the floor in half in order to do a sort of tune based sing off which then transformed into a song and performance of their cover of Rasputin, which if you didn’t know the original you would have no idea they could possibly be the same song.

Overall the crowd were really receptive and there were clearly some pretty devout fans there given the amount of fur, face paint and fake plastic weapons (axes and swords mainly). One great part of the gig was after someone chucked an inflatable hammer onto the stage and the lead signer picked it up and started waving it around before chucking it back into the audience.

After performing Battle Metal again at the end they left the stage but of course chants of Tur-i-sas brought them back on to play another one of my favourite songs - Sahti-Waari - to which the crowd went pretty wild. It’s another upbeat violin driven song and worked brilliantly as an encore. To finish things off they played the last song on their latest album, which makes a lot of sense as a final song since the album is a concept album. I joined in with a few random guys next to me in some hardcore headbanging to finish off the night and Turisas left the stage with (what I feel) was a very happy crowd behind them.

After that, me and one of my friends bought T shirts. I went for a Turisas UK Tour 2007 one and my friend got a Varangian Way (the latest album) T-Shirt. I would severely urge anyone to listen to this band if you like any form of rock, the one mate who came with me who didn’t know the band at all came out feeling like they could be his favourite band and actually we all felt that way. On top of that, both mine and my friend’s mums like the band, which I think just goes to show how accessible a band they are despite being not that well known.

Given all that, Turisas have to get a 10/10 for that performance. It had everything I could want and more and was totally worth the money.

Inlight of such a successful trip I’m planning to go see another of my favourite bands - Porcupine Tree - in December. As they play quite a different style of music to Turisas it should be a different sort of feel but if what I’ve heard on their live album then it should be really great anyway. I can’t wait really.

New Turisas album - hooray May 30, 2007

Posted by Sharny in : Entertainment, Music , 3 comments

My copy of the new Turisas album The Varangian Way arrived yesterday, only the day after it was released so I’m pleased about that for starters. I bought their first album on a whim but it pretty much blew my mind, what they dub as “battle metal” is a sort aggressive folk metal with orchestration. I wouldn’t really expect many people to like it if they didn’t give it a shot but personally I think its awesome.

This new album is much more varied than the previous one, there are areas with much more use of the acordian and violin as well as quieter and louder areas with more aggressive stuff that resembles more of the bulk of the metal genre I suppose. For me that’s great as I really love the folky stuff but it also has variation that I really appreciate and given that I enjoy other areas of metal it all fits together nicely. My first listen gave me a good feeling about it, I’m listening again at the moment and enjoying it even more. I would advise people to buy it (and the first one, totally mind blowing) but

  1. No one reads my crappy blog
  2. No one cares what I have to say about this album

Didn’t stop me writing this post though eh?