Having said that, I did take notice of a few numbers which stood out musically, with the catchy style of ‘What You Do To Me’ and the ferocious ‘Conversion’ impressing in particular, whilst Brown‘s break neck speed headbanging during the latter could have smashed a brick wall if needed.

Having toured the UK a number of times over each of the past few years, the fans came out in force yet again for one of the best professional and live bands around in the metal scene. And it’s no wonder really. LACUNA COIL, now on their Darkness Rising tour, for me have always been one of those bands that are better to see live than on record. Don’t get me wrong, I can listen to them on record easily, but when you see them live, they are a different beast altogether.

The darker and more gothic elements and riffs become a lot more prominent, and create a really sublime atmosphere, with opening numbers ‘Our Truth’ and ‘To The Edge’ being prime examples of how this transforms from record to live. The vocal problems that plagued STRAIGHT LINE STITCH‘s performance didn’t transfer to the headliners and the dual vocals of Cristina Scabbia and Andrea Ferro sounded excellent, with the only minor gripe with the sound being that the bass was a bit too high and overpowered the guitars at times throughout the first half of the set.

The majority of the set was made up from their last two efforts, ‘Shallow Life’ and ‘Karmacode’, with the likes of ‘Fragile’, ‘Fragments of Faith’, ‘I Won’t Tell You’ and a great rendition of the melancholic ‘Wide Awake’, while it was great to hear classics in the form of ‘Heaven’s A Lie’, ‘Daylight Dancer’ and ‘Swamped’. With a new album out early next year, entitled ‘Dark Adrenaline’, it was nice to hear a taste of what is to come from it. ‘Kill The Light’ and ‘Trip The Darkness’ were on offer tonight and sounded extremely good. They had those familiar LACUNA COIL traits stamped all over them and if the rest of the album is in a similar vein, it will be one to look forward to.

Their cover of DEPECHE MODE‘s ‘Enjoy The Silence’ closed the main set, which was the cue for some audience participation on the chorus, and to say they were loud is probably an understatement. LACUNA COIL came back on as the intro to ‘Survive’ played and delivered a killer version of it, whilst the rest of the encore was made up of the aforementioned ‘Trip The Darkness’ before the superb ‘Spellbound’ closed proceedings for the evening. LACUNA COIL could have easily delivered an extra 15 minutes on top of the 75 we got tonight. They certainly have the material to warrant it, but I don’t think that was on anyone’s mind as they headed for the exit. LACUNA COIL are always going to be one of my favourite live bands, and I bet we won’t have to wait too long for another chance to see them in the new year, especially with a new album just around the corner too.

Ratings:

Photography By Alex Shaw (click here for Lacuna Coil gallery)

AMON AMARTH have been a huge success since they hit the metal mainstream in the UK a few albums ago, and it has been great to see them develop and evolve their sound, as well as earn the credit they deserve over the last 12 years or so since I first discovered them.

With new album, ‘Surtur Rising’, being released the Monday before the gig, the fans had a few days to familiarise themselves with some new material before their set tonight. Three new tracks were on offer tonight and set opener ‘War of The Gods’ is one of the best opening songs to an album and a live set I have heard in some time, whilst the impressive ‘Destroyer of The Universe’ also sounded excellent in the live arena.

Unfortunately, with only a 45 minute set to play with, a lot of material was going to be omitted, and classics such as ‘Death In Fire’ and ‘Cry of The Blackbirds’ were the ones to miss out. The majority of the set was made up from their last opus, ‘Twilight of The Thunder God’. The title track of that album along with ‘Varyags of Miklagaard’ and ‘Live For The Kill’ were set highlights as the fans literally couldn’t get enough.

Their set flew by, and before you knew it, Olavi was playing the intro riffs to ‘The Pursuit of Vikings’, a song that has become the final entry in their set for the many tours I have been to see them on in the past, which brought a close to decent set, with only a couple of minor drawbacks for me. One was there seemed to be slightly too much reverb on Johan‘s mic, and another is a personal opinion really. I really love the old material, and it would have been nice to hear just one early track, but I guess when in a support slot, it’s hard to please everybody. Let’s just hope a headline tour is around the corner where this is more likely to happen.

Having lost count of the number of times I have seen CHILDREN OF BODOM, I have always walked away from every single one of their sets having been entertained by both their music and by their antics on stage, and tonight was no different. Let’s face it, it must be awesome being in a band who no matter what, can deliver a killer set whilst also having a good laugh on stage.

The chants of ‘Bodom, Bodom’ swept around the venue and soon enough, the fan’s idols took to the stage opening up with ‘Not My Funeral’, one of a number of tracks played tonight from new album ‘Relentless Reckless Forever’. Credit must be given to the sound techs as it was clear from the off that the guitars were too low in the mix, with them being easily overpowered by the bass. This was fixed pretty much half way through the opening song, and the rest of the set was spot on sound wise, as this would have deterred the set’s enjoyment given the technicality of BODOM‘s music.

As with any new album tour, there was plenty of new material to show off, and the likes of ‘Shovel Knockout’, ‘Roundtrip To Hell And Back’ and ‘Was It Worth It?’ all sounded superb live as the crowd lapped up every second of shredding genius from Alexi. With songs from all but one album being given an outing in the set tonight, set regulars in the form of ‘Needled 24/7′, ‘Hate Me!’, ‘Angels Don’t Kill’ and ‘Downfall’ all played their part to make up a great set, despite the apparent omissions of classics such as ‘Silent Night, Bodom Night’ and ‘Everytime I Die’, whilst a real set highlight was a blistering rendition of the self titled ‘Children of Bodom’ getting a rare outing, as well as the fist pounding ‘In Your Face’.

Janne usually messes about with some cheesy tune intros on his keyboards at some point during the set, and tonight’s treat was a bit of BON JOVI. The set was rounded off nicely with the headbanging anthemic jewel that is ‘Hate Crew Deathroll’, with everybody joining in to sing the chorus which made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. CHILDREN OF BODOM are one of best live bands out there, and are still going strong based on tonight’s exceptionally tight performance, which every single member of the Manchester Hate Crew enjoyed. So, until we welcome those crazy Finns back to our shores, Silent Night, Bodom Night!

Ratings:

Photography By Alex Shaw (Children of Bodom Photos)

We arrived half way through the MAN RAZE set, which featured Phil Colleen from DEF LEPPARD and Paul Cook formerly of the SEX PISTOLS. The music is extremely well played and professionally executed, but to my ears is rather uninspired hard rock. Yes it hits all the right buttons, the songs are well crafted but seems a bit passionless and staid.

So onto the main act of the night, at this point the anticipation in the crowd is very high and it is clear that the band definitely has a friendly audience. The stage is shrouded with a curtain emblazed with Alice’s face and the title of the tour ‘Theatre of Death’, this is torn down and they open with ‘School’s Out’, an obvious opener and the band most of whom are quite young do initially come across as anonymous session musicians, Alice of course is the seasoned entertainer and plays to the crowd as you would expect him to. They blasted their way through ‘I’m 18′ (I guess he has been 18 for many years then!), ‘Welcome to My Nightmare’ and ‘Poison’ all of which were slickly executed if somewhat different from their album versions, in particular ‘Poison’. I felt the set kicked up a gear when ‘Dirty Diamonds’ was played, at this point the backing band seemed to have settled and are genuinely enjoying the performance. ‘Billion Dollar Babies’ follows along with ‘Killer’ and three excellent renditions of ‘I Love the Dead’, ‘No More Mr Nice Guy’ and ‘Got You under My Wheels’, the latter being particularly spot on.

Of course no review of Alice Cooper can ignore the stage show of which never seems to change – fake blood, guillotines, nubile ladies in nurse’s uniforms, and Alice in a rather “fetching” spider costume. To me this is the problem in a way, Alice Cooper is an anachronism, and it’s no longer in anyway shocking or challenging and comes across a bit fey and quaint. Sure its good fun and I suppose that’s all you can expect but I did find at times the stage show got in the way of the music. Overall however I did find the show pretty enjoyable and to be honest that came as quite a surprise. In my opinon they still should have played ‘Freedom’ though.

Rating: 3.5/5

Photography by Alex Shaw(Alice Cooper Photos)

Not long after, lights were dimmed and Reznor took to the stage to open with ‘Somewhat Damaged’, a perfect choice that converted the crowd into a headbanging mass, with a mosh pit forming at stage centre. Tonight’s gig was all about what an industrial rock show should be about, mesmerising light shows and hard-hitting ear-splitting music. Not only that but it was great to see Robin Finck back on guitar and joining the rest of the band.

Given the full back catalogue of music NIN have to offer, albums The Downward Spiral and The Fragile represented much of tonight’s offerings and definitely paid tribute to those fans who have stuck by Reznor and his band over the past 20 years. Highlights of the evening included the back-to-back double whammy of ‘March of the Pigs’ and ‘Piggy’, with Reznor joining the crowd during the former and losing his mic to one very happy and thankfully tuneful fan!! Covers ‘Metal’ and ‘I’m Afraid of Americans’ paid homage to two of Reznor’s inspirations and helped this to become my most memorable and favourite of the year so far. With the likes of ‘La Mer’ and hits ‘Wish’, ‘Suck’ and ‘The Hand That Feeds’, no one was leaving the arena disappointed. All that was left was Reznor’s signature sign-off, a heart breaking encore of ‘Hurt’, which 15 years after its first release still bears the truth and agony of addiction that has marked his psyche.

Despite rocky beginnings, this show turned out what I expected it to be and more, I just hope this doesn’t spell the end for NIN as so many have speculated. But it is with this that I wholly look forward to their performance at Sonisphere and implore each and every one of you to see what is a true master at work. Reznor is the best at what he does and some might say he has nailed it, nine inch nailed it!!

Set Lists:

NIN: Somewhat Damaged / Terrible Lie/ Heresy / March Of The Pigs / Piggy / Metal (G. Numan cover) / The Becoming / I’m Afraid Of Americans (D. Bowie Cover) / Burn / Gave Up / The Fragile / Gone, Still / The Way Out Is Through / Wish / Survivalism / Suck / The Day The Whole World Went Away / The Hand That Feeds / Head Like A Hole / Hurt

Ratings:

NIN: 4.7/5.0

Review by Gavin Regan

The music is interesting to listen to, with an ethereal haunting sound that permeates all their songs, the vocal interchanges are well thought-out giving every song a velvet like feel to them, theirs even the occasional guitar solo courtesy of Tom Chaffer a nod to their base sound but with such a melodic and wispy sound it’s difficult for me to get particularly excited about it.

For those put into a catatonic state LAHANNYA quickly snapped them out of it. Starting off slow with ‘Welcome to the Underground’ the majestic chorus really shows off Lahannya’s note perfect vocals, her voice reminds me of Christain Scabbia of Lacuna Coil which is certainly no bad thing! It dosen’t take long to get to the crushing ‘Inside the Machine’ with it’s apocalyptic message that flows over the interplay of chugging guitars and industrial beats, such an infectious song.

Midway through the set you begin to feel the songs can get a bit repetitive with some set fillers creeping in. That being said Lahannya’s vocal performance shines through even on the weaker songs.

Despite the disappointing turn out that even the horrendous amount of smoke wafting about could not disguise, I don’t think I’ll ever understand the appeal of indoor fog, overall LAHANNYA put on a solid performance with some stand out songs, they’re certainly worth a look if you have chance.

Ratings:

LAHANNYA 3.6/5.0

Review and Photography by Alexander Shaw(click here)