August 26th, Rock n Roll Pizza In Portland, OR Systol, Utterance, Leadface, Sweety, Quandry & Separated
The first band up had some promising musicians, obviously new to the stage, and a little nervous I bet.They had this look about them, like guards with AK-47's were offstage forcing them to play, play, play!!!! for the crowd.....uhm...yeah, anyway the good news is that with time, that look will wear off and you guys will have more fun onstage, show yer chops off a little more...drink ROCKSTAR to lose that zombification.hehe
Next up, Utterance.These guys came on with all the energy that a rock band should have.Utterance is a great name, as it describes the vocals nicely...bloody screaming UTTERANCE! Tight strings, strong drums...the frontman was very charismatic and rapped to the crowd some, intro'ed some other bands that had shown up for support...like Syx.The greatest thing this band did was hit the NOTE...the one...the only one, that steadily vibes the barstools.They are in fact the only band of the night that hit this note....girls love that, thanx *grins*More info at Utterance.net
Next up Leadface, the band with the saxaphone. This addition gave a very street sound to already hard, grinding metal.The vocalist used some cool fx....sounded very concert....The crowd loved these guys.The sax player made his sax sound like harmonica at some points...this was actually a very sweet effect.Nice job, guys.
Sweety had an old school sound that reminded me of Nazareth, Molly Hatchett, Cheap Trick, Styx and U2 all at once. Maybe even a little Bad Company....hmmm...it was very good except the vocalist insisted on hitting way too many high notes...those are excellent in a sprinkling, but every other note gets just annoying.Overall, they had a nice, solid, bluesy rock sound.
Oh yay, Quandry was there! I was pleased to see them again, cuz I know they are good. This was not the same stuff though....when I last heard them, they rocked the house with heavy tunes, that had a beginning, middle and end. This time, there seemed to be more free form jamming without vox, and I really didn’t like it too much.It reminded me of this band I used to be in that refused to play actual songs....I thought then the same as now...nobody wants to hear you surf....just play a damn song! At any rate they still sound great, and look fabulous!!! .They did play a new song, inspired by the Doors, that was very good...slickly done Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds sound...great vox of course, pounding bass n drums rockin the house and those perfectly timed lead guitar lix.
The final band of the evening, Separated.WOW. These guys are really very good.I was choked out by the fog machine...I was breathing wet powder..it sucked.They began with some Celtic sounds and built to a very Sabbath feel....Great lighting, good looking band, superb lead vox. Dude...ya need some harmonies to flesh out ya sound...take that band from very good to freakin GREAT.Those were some of the best vox I have heard recently....wow....harmonies.....need em.Not on every note...just the chorus n stuff...Remember REO Speedwagon back in the day?Before the 80's thing ruined them? ok..the vox were that style, but better.SAH-LAMMIN drums....this guy played the hell outa his drum set...this is a guy that will have a nicer set in the future and use every last feature on it too...Very interseting twists in their songs...reminded me of LIVE. A lot...they even did a spiritual song about never really being alone....and had some cool video backdrop at one point.More on the death metal Styxers at Separatedsound.com
The club itself was sweet, very gritty the way I like, and had the best pizza in town, I swear...that was GREAT pizza.
