Interestd to see Cortizone because they'll be supporting TOOL in June. That's TOOL, TOOOOOOOOOOOL. Hmmm. Yeah. Only caught about 4 songs, and it's not really enough to judge a band by, but to be honest, maybe the songs will grow, but at the moment, there's far more musically worthy bands that could've been given the privelige of supporting TOOL. They're limited on stage in terms of space, so there's no performance as such, and the crowd response is minimal. Wrong support slot, or indicative of what the band are like? Well, as I said, 4 songs isn't enough to really judge.
Talking of Tool, and the fact that they're going to be playing Brixton Academy, I'm sure I remember seeing Paradise Lost play there with Sepultura a good few years back. How times have changed. Playing with that sort of band would seem a strange combination now, and in being brutally honest, well, last 3 times I've seen them, it's gone Rock City main hall, Rock City Rig, and now, Rock City II - the disco, the basement. To be fair it's pretty much full, but my the fickle nature of the rock fan. May cry out against nu-metal and "trendies", me included sometimes. But if it weren't for them ... old farts like me don't turn up and you get well established bands having to lower themselves to this kind of thing.
On the other hand, there's a number of people who I hear bemoaning why this isn't on upstairs in the big hall. And they miss the point. Here its crowded, the band whereever they look will see people jumping, arms in the air clapping, rather that sporadic bursts of barely filled space. Yeah, individually people would've had more room, but the overall impact of the gig I suspect would've been lessened, and your parting thought the amount of space there was.
They've taken a brave route, almost abandoning the sound that made them, but you have to respect their decision to do so. And Nick has really come out of his shell onstage, making numerous quips "this is the ultimate death metal song. You'll have heard nothing like it since Bathory". They open with some new songs, before there's a few from the more recent albums, such as Say Just Words, Mercy, Permanent Solution and more. And the strange thing is that although I've not really listened to those albums much, I recognise and like the songs as they're played. Strange that live, PL have never been a band that really did it for me, yet these songs seem to have more to them live than on CD. The other strange thing is watching some of the obviously metal fans enjoy those tracks, though not as much as the likes of Forever Failure, yet you know they'd probably not like other stuff that is similar by other bands. The K! journo who I think savaged their latest album is dedicated a song, though I don't think it's necessarily in the happy happy joy joy scheme of things.
At the end, one guy near me courageously keeps clapping and crying for more. He's rewarded, though Nick claims "I'm not very death metal any more, too old" and proceeds to demonstrate that he can't do the vocals. So the crowd help out with As I Die. The first song off Draconian Times is aired, is it Enchantment, I foget now, all I know is it's one of my favourite PL songs. But in some respects, my memory failure on names, that kind of "yeah, they're good but uh, what was I saying" sums up the predicament for modern day PL.