For the second time this year, I left a show scratching my head at the odd decisions made by record companies when packaging tours. I’m all for musical diversity and the greater community of metal, but like my foray into the darker parts of Brooklyn last month, there are times when too much diversity of sound on the same bill is a very bad thing, no matter how much you enjoyed the rest of the show. In the case of this show, I think if Trivium had saved us all an hour by not taking the stage, it would have been a good thing. Still, impressive performances by Gojira, Machine Head and Lamb of God saved the day.

Gojira: Thunderous Death Lizard

I had first had the pleasure of seeing Gojira live in December, when they melted off my face opening up for Children of Bodom at the Nokia Theatre. The progressive death band from Bayonne, France continues to get the job done as they plow through their tour promoting From Mars to Sirius and I hope to see them on a bigger bill sometime soon; without a longer set I feel a bit robbed of the full Gojira musical experience.

Machine Head Rocks the Stage

Every once in a while, you see a live show that comes at you out of nowhere and blows you away with its unexpected power. Machine Head’s set at the Roseland was one of those rare occasions, a criminally short 45 minutes where the band had the crowd hanging over every note, every fist pump, every middle finger and every devil horn thrust into the air. Bursting through the start of the set with the epic “Clenching the Fists of Dissent,” the ten-minute plus opening track from their new record, The Blackening, Machine Head went from strength to strength, avoiding any material from their much-maligned nu-metal period and delivering a performance that gave the capacity crowd all of the screaming, pounding, angry riffs they could want in a give and take that left the audience breathless from singing and moshing and the band almost shocked at the outpouring of adoration they had just seen. If this show is any indication, I don’t think it’ll be long before Machine Head starts headlining tours.

See pictures of Machine Head from this show.

Trivium Provides Some Disappointment

Although I spotted a few Trivium t-shirts in the crowd, everyone I talked to after Trivium’s set said one thing: if Trivium had to be in this lineup, they should have come on before Machine Head, not afterwards. Later on, when Lamb of God singer Randy Blythe saluted all of the bands that had played that night, Trivium was the only one to get an unmistakable chorus of boos mixed in with the cheers. Although the band certainly gave an enthusiastic performance, their problems were legion: they had the misfortune of taking the stage after a mind-blowing performance by Machine Head; their emo-tinged choruses and proggy guitar lines sat about as well with this particular audience as a passing body-surfer’s kick to the head; and as I mentioned above, their whole style of metal seemed really out of place with this particular group of bands. Although they may be one of America’s rising metal stars, on the Roseland Ballroom stage they were a time-wasting mistake that killed some of the show’s momentum.

See pictures of Trivium from this show.

Lamb of God: Excellence in Person

Bassist John Campbell has a good quote about Lamb of God’s music on the band’s page on the Sony BMG UK site: “The complexity of our music appeals to people who like technical playing, but the arrangements are not so extreme that they fly over the average listener's head. It's a good balance.” Achieving this balance may be the secret behind the success the band has generated over the past nine months and the reason why their live shows can be so incredible to watch. Lamb of God’s music is somehow technical enough to make you think, raw enough to make you want to bang your head into oblivion, and cuts you so deep that you can’t think of enough edge-based metaphors to describe it. When the circumstances are right, like they were at the Roseland, it’s powerful, powerful stuff.

Playing a set of selections from their two most recent albums, with a nod or two towards their older material, including the fan favorite, “As the Palaces Burn,” Lamb of God used their hard-edged riffs and even harder-edged vocals to cut a swath through the eager crowd. The additions from Sacrament, the band’s most recent release, like “Walk with Me in Hell,” “Redneck,” and “Pathetic,” though less than a year old, have now become tightly-tuned cornerstones of the set list. “Walk with Me in Hell” in particular hit a particular community chord among the crowd, raising strong feelings of solidarity.

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