Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Ice Nine Kills Concert Plus Birthday


This weekend I celebrated my birthday. For two days straight. Saturday and Sunday. It was awesome! On Sunday, the actual day of my bday we went to Hurricane Harbor and went to a concert at the White Oak Music Hall right here in Encino. Here I'd like to discuss the concert.

The venue is pretty small and very loud. Not loud enough to pierce my ears so hard that they hurt for too long thankfully. But loud enough to sound deafening in that small venue. The first band that played had a lot of sound troubles. This became a trend as the night went on. They had some major feedback problems from one of the speakers and it cut into their vocals and stuff. It seemed cool that they had a hot girl singer doing clean vocals with a guy doing the screaming growly death metal stuff but the girl's cleans weren't very good. Out of tune mess. At least she was hot. XD

There was another band with a good growler but the clean vocals guy just had the most annoying nasally high pitched voice. If you have a high pitched voice you should stay focused on the melody and sing in tune. How people don't understand this is beyond me. Not the best singers that's for sure.

There were some people moshing in a small pit but it wasn't until later on that the pit got a little crazy. Remember, its a small place so you can't really mosh too hard without hurting someone. My friend got a little hurt by these two guys and his shoulder is a little fucked up still. Kinda funny but it must suck.

This was pretty weird but when the bands were done playing they played this post-bop jazz music pretty loudly. I thought it was strange that they playing jazz loudly to feverish metal fans during the setups. It would've been better if they played metal music, or just no music at all. However, I did enjoy it for a little while until I kept thinking that I was gonna arrive at the fourth floor. XD

The next important thing to take note on was this rap nu-metal band. They went pretty fucking hard. The rap with nu-metal thing has been done to death in the 90s so I wasn't impressed that they were playing a stale style of music. However, I was impressed with the singer. The rest of the band, not so much. The singer could do aggressive screaming and rap pretty well. However, with only a mediocre band and riffs he can only do so much.

None of the guitar players in any of these bands played guitar solos. Which begs the question, are they even good enough to play guitar solos? Or are guitar solos just not welcome in this style of metal? Has metal music taken a turn for the wimpy guitar worst, like the 90s alternate grunge era when it was frowned upon to be a long hair neoclassical guitar shredder? I feel like it has in some ways.

For example I think its great that some bands don't have solos. That's cool. But its always nice when a band has a guitarist who can deliver the goods in every form-and that has to include solos. I get it. Solo's aren't for everybody and not all fans like them. It's not commercial in today's musical market. But I still like them.

These kinds of bands that I saw all have a certain style that many other bands have. They play aggressive music but they all have clean vocals to go with the screaming. So its kinda emo but its also super heavy metal too. The music has a lot of breakdowns but nothing complicated to play, and nothing too memorable. It's not heavy on melody. It's a style of new metal-core I would say. The latest edition if you will. My friends dig these kinds of bands a lot. After seeing the best bands in this style at Warped Tour this summer I would say its pretty fun to see live. But I wouldn't really listen to it while relaxing at home. I have listened to some bands like Motionless in White and Sum 41 at home recently though.

There was also a lot of hot girls there. There was this short girl with black hair who was going fucking hard in the pit. She grabbed my friend's hand and threw him in the pit at one point. Pretty funny.

The headliner was Ice Nine Kills, this band we saw play back at the Warped Tour. They were the best band in terms of everything. The visual stage show, the sound (although they too had technical difficulties), and the music. Their breakdowns were super heavy and aggressive. They had a mascot there-someone wearing a Fox outfit carrying an axe (plastic axe). It was really funny because I was wearing my Starfox shirt my friend got me for my birthday and they were standing next to me looking at me. It looked like a girl's body in the Fox outfit but it could've been a guy just staring at me. Funny either way. 

Ice Nine slayed pretty hard. For a while here and there they made me feel like I was back at Warped Tour. It was a great feeling. Reliving my glory days of Warped Tour....The last song they played was a song I actually remembered from the Warped Tour. I headbanged pretty hard. It was awesome.

Although the other bands weren't that great I think Ice Nine Kills made up for that. They played a long set and were super professional. The White Oak venue is a pretty great place to see shows near my house and I'll most definitely go there again. Hope you all had a great weekend enjoying time with your family, friends, or co-workers. Take time throughout the week to listen to some great music, perhaps even see a show if you're free. Concerts are super fun!

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