| Deathstars / Marionette / The Defiled : Live Review & Photos |
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| Reviews - Live Gig / Festival Reviews | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sunday, 26 April 2009 21:04 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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16/04/09 – O2 Academy 2 Bristol
London based rising stars of British Hardcore, The Defiled took to the stage first. Admittedly before seeing them play I’d made the mistake of
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prejudging them due to a couple of them having side fringes and lumped them in with the current epidemic of emo bands usually labelling themselves as “Hardcore”. It didn’t help that trend following, teenage pop magazine Kerrang had described them as ''An explosive mangle of Manson stage craft and middle finger metal! - KKKK'' which in my experience is usually a euphemism for radio friendly twats primarily marketed to 12 year olds who had graduated from Emap’s other magazine for the tween demographic “Smash Hits”. 
Deathstars took to the stage to the opening strains of the title track from their new album “Night Electric Night” accompanied by the usual high pitched screams from teenage girls with vocalist Whiplasher Bernadotte running out last in his trademark PVC pseudo military hat causing the oestrogen levels in the room to further erupt. However despite them being exceedingly “pretty” I admit to being a huge fan of their material. After a bit of the usual banter with their strong Swedish accents they launched into Motherzone which got a vocal majority singing along. Next up was Semi-Automatic which they absolutely nailed. Generally I think the material from their first two albums comes across as more polished than Night Electric Night but I suppose that’s logical considering that they’ve performed it more. After blasting through Mark of the Gun they played Termination Bliss favourites “Tongues” and “Last Ammunition”. When I saw them on their last tour in October 2007 in Birmingham they introduced “Tongues” by claiming they planned to indulge in a spot of fornication with our granddaughters although I imagine that wasn’t repeated this time as that kind of thing just doesn’t look good in the Daily Mail. The Fuel Ignites, New Dead Nation, Trinity Fields and their classic Synthetic Generation followed, punctuated by the usual high pitch screams, and members of the band removing items of clothing. One especially loud gentleman in the audience invited Whiplasher to “get his cock out” at one point which probably wouldn’t have been the best idea considering that the over 14’s policy clearly hadn’t been stringently enforced! Realistically though how does one ID a 14 year old? It’s not like they have a driving licence and realistically no one runs around with passport! However based on the standard and execution of Download the last few years (I had the “pleasure” of overhearing a group of excitable children saying how much they were looking forward to Papa Roach at that particular event) perhaps it would be beneficial if someone stapled their passports to their foreheads and stuck some of them on a flight to Wacken. Speaking of foreign destinations Chertograd was up next. I’ve been trying to work out the rational behind the name of the vaguely communist sounding destination of the song and discovered that A) There is no such place as Chertograd, B) As great as the lyrics are there’s no clear reason the song is called Chertograd and C) I should stop procrastinating when writing reviews of concerts by attempting to find deeper meanings behind song titles using Google. 
single Blitzkreig. This was probably the best performance of a song all night and the academy was whipped into a frenzy with the vast majority shouting along with the extremely catchy lyric “FUCKING BLITZKRIEG BOOM” probably being the loudest sung. In case you were wondering “Blitzkreig” is German for “Lightening War”. Bassist “Skinny Disco” then took the opportunity to berate the singing abilities of the Bristol crowd. Whilst we may be partially responsible for The Wurzles it’s also worth remembering that thrash metal band Onslaught are from Bristol and they can definitely sing. As their “last song” before the inevitable encore 2005 single Cyanide was played with such precision that it sounded like the original recording. After a great deal of noise from the audience the band returned to the stage for an encore performance of new single Death Dies Hard and finally The Revolution Exodus. 
laura - May 6, 2009, 3:48 pm