The Chickens Concert Series #8: METAL!

So my first metal concert (well my second metal concert because I went to Ozzy and Rob Zombie but my first small scale metal concert and from what I understand small scale concerts are more legitimate representations of metal because they are more outsider-y). Terror and Kataklysm were OK but I liked Divine Heresy and Chimaira best so I'll talk about them. Divine Heresy was the first opening band. The Drummer (Tim Yeung) played so crazy fast it was, well, crazy. It sounds like machine gun fire! Dino Cazares (guitar) and Joe Payne (bass) signed my CD, they were all happy when I told them they were awesome. Dino said he liked my shirt. Good times!


Fun Facts about Divine Heresy:

A new band, they were formed in 2006 by Dino Cazares (born in 1966 in El Centro, CA), who has been in quite a few bands since '89, when he helped form Fear Factory under the name Ulceration, before forming Divine Heresy. He plays an 8 string guitar! EIGHT! Plus it's downtuned a step so he can play even lower - how sweet is that?! (thanks to Donaldo for the random fact). Anywho, Joe Payne was brought on for touring but Dino played bass as well as guitar on the band's first release record (Bleed the Fifth).

Chimaira [sic] (I couldn't find out why they spelled it that way) was the headliner band. I'm pretty sure the opening music was from Conan the Barbarian but I'd have to rent it to check (I'll get the lab boys on it). Apparently Chimaira has recently been rather screwed over by their (now former) record company which almost caused them to break up but it's all good now. Their new album is called Resurrection.

Sidebar: I'm pretty sure it is illegal for a metal band not to have a song called "resurrection" (or some variation thereof) and still call themselves a metal band. Go figure.

Anyway, their new album is supposed to be their most technically demanding to date. Unfortunately I'm a Chimaira newbie and ignorant of their earlier music so I didn't know what was new and what was old. I do know they played a like 20 minute long song with rambling solos for most of their encore. Great stuff. I love how you really only get things like that in metal and jazz. Everything is connected for sure.

One final note: metal album art is so cool.

p.s. To the drunk guy with too low pants sitting at the table in front of us: Tighty whities are NOT metal (I don't care how much black you are wearing on the outside). To the goths who were reservedly rocking out near the stage: I love goths, I'm always impressed by people who put that much time and effort into their appearance. Especially if it is for the purpose of freaking people out. Much better than hippies, they don't put any thought into their appearance for the same reason. Damn hippies.