Edguy, Beholder & With One Last Breath (Midlands Rocks Review)

The four fringed members of With One Last Breath finally leave the stage after a less than lukewarm reception from a slightly empty JBs in the town of Dudley. I generously start the review at this point because there is absolutely nothing constructive I could say about this band and their performance... so I’m just going to have to rant. A review of each individual song from their set would be identical. It was about halfway through the second song (a word I use loosely to describe the Frankenstein of stitched-together whiney vocals and mandatory/uninspired breakdowns) that I realised why I felt a bit nauseous – I was having severe déjà vu. I’d heard these songs before, leaking sloppily from the amps of every unintuitive Metalcore band to soil the face of music television in these recent years. However, the band and the audience came down to a pretty reasonable deal: they had nothing nice to offer us, so we had nothing nice to offer them. As they left the stage to an uncertain smattering of polite applause, I wished the lads the best with their career (honestly), but I certainly knew a roomful of people in the Black Country that wouldn’t mind never seeing the backs of them again. It was just the wrong kind of crowd.

http://www.myspace.com/withonelastbreathofficial

Next up, Beholder take the stage – and I mean really take it and make it their own. Vocalist Simon Hall and his admirable beard acquire centre stage, showcasing some fantastic frontmanship whilst his bandmates shred, blast and... bass(?) their way throughout the set, behind him, showing a considerable arrangement of musical talent between them. Hall and his crew promise us some 'Old School' Heavy Metal. Witnessing them tear through colossal songs like “Show No Mercy” and “Snake Eyes”, slowing down momentarily for the highly-emotional “Brave Shall Fall” (an ode to our soldiers overseas), we are not disappointed.

http://www.myspace.com/beholderuk

The lights finally dim and the star of the show (and doesn’t he know it) arrives and kicks our faces off with the latest album closer “Dead or Rock”, leading straight into “Speedhoven”. Both of these songs are cracked open and fleshed out considerably from their studio incarnations, seeming to pack much more of a punch in a live environment, despite Tobi dropping the microphone 3 times, once almost braining a poor woman in the front row. Next, the Edguys cover more familiar ground with 2001’s “Tears of a Mandrake”, to which the audience respond far more vocally. The first true highlight of the evening roars into the now swarming JB’s as promiscuity-promoting “Lavatory Love Machine” explodes from speakers, drenching us in red-hot metal (a lot less painful than it sounds).

“Who wants to hear some Commercial Pop Metal from Germany?” Sammet cries, generating a curiously large scream of approval from the crowd as the band barrel into “Vain Glory Opera”. Something about the performance of this track doesn’t fall quite right on the eardrums. The lack of synth and orchestration leaves the song feeling a little flat, dry and considerably less cheesy than the studio version. The song is transformed from a Europe-reminiscent synthfest into more of a hard rock/heavy metal self-tribute... Not bad, by any means, but not quite what we were hoping for.

From this point on, the setlist becomes a veritable musical orgasm as Edguy destroy the stage with 10 minute epic (and personal favourite) “The Piper Never Dies”. Tinnitus Sanctus opener “Ministry of Saints” follows, leading into an impressive (but noticeably lengthy) solo from drum dynamo Felix Bohnke. The band return to the stage after this instrumental break wielding fan favourite “Superheroes”, which also unfortunately suffers from the lack of live synth and orchestration, but still proves to be monstrously enjoyable. The band continue dolling out the Rocket Ride tracks with soppy but loveable sing-along ballad “Save Me” which really gets the crowd going, despite a disappointing lack of lighters, owing to a despicably healthy crowd of non-smokers. We had to make do with illuminated mobile phone screens.

Prior to the inevitable encore, Tobi announces the faux “last song of the evening”, promising it’ll be a real cracker. He wasn’t kidding. The band surprise us all (or maybe just me) by blasting into bonus track “Fucking with Fire”. The performance of this song is nothing short of breathtaking and as it ends, despite yearning for more, I’d have been happy to have called it a night. The lights go dark.

After a few moments of milking the crowd of their frantic screams and chants, Tobi and the other Edguys return out of the darkness to treat us to the lacklustre “Sacrifice” – a somewhat risky and disappointing way to begin an encore. However, we have to forgive them as they follow up by unleashing Hellfire Club’s speed machine “Mysteria” into the crowd. This monster of a song feeds on the collective energy of the fans, growing in size, getting faster and stronger, ultimately exploding at its climactic ending. Perfect.

Finally, we finish up with crowd-pleaser “King of Fools”; a satisfactory end to a rollercoaster ride of a gig. Plenty of ups and downs, but the important thing is that we managed to end on a high.

http://www.myspace.com/edguy


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(Photos Courtesy of Sarah Payman-Shaw)