Live4MusiC

Mass Ritual 2 is the first proper gig for me in almost 4 months. After a one and a half hour wait outside Blackhole, the ritual finally began. It kicked off with an initiation with incense and chanting, with gig organizer Jaarvis drinking a cup of blood-looking fluid. Thereafter, Abyssal [7] kicked off with their first track. It was hard for them to get the crowd, who were restless from all the waiting, to move. But with their infectious style of melodic black metal people in the crowds were soon bobbing their heads to the music. Their frontman tried to fuse some humour effect by mentioning that “no, I (he) am not Cedric, but thanks for the beer” to some laughter from the crowd.

Managed to catch Shern Wong at Esplanade yesterday night.

Shern Wong was performing as part of Esplanade's INSTRUMENTALly ROCK! event. Shern Wong plays instrumental rock in the likes of John Petrucci and Andy Timmons.

The few originals that he played had a strong John Petrucci influence (though not a total rip off), especially his opening track, which had riffs that sounded very similar to Petrucci's Glasgow Kiss.

In addition to his original tracks, he played 2 covers from Andy Timmons, namely Electric Gypsy and Super 70's, which happened to be 2 of my favourite tracks off Andy Timmons' discography. One notable song that he played was a cover of local guitarist, Rosli Mansor's song, as a tribute to a great local guitarist.

Though not the best guitarist around, I have to admit that Shern plays an awesome style of instrumental rock, seeing that his influences are some of my favourite guitarists. His originals also showed that he put quite a lot of effort to make the overall sound of the music move interesting since, as Cynthia mentioned, the drums were actually not just the standard rock beats but actually had a some thought put in them.

Overall a pretty enjoyable performance for a person who's a fan of instrumental guitar rock music.

Attended Rudra's premiere of Hymns from the Blazing Chariot music video today. Venue was at the substation.

It was one of the few metal events where you see people from different walks of life come together. There were the regular metalheads who you usually see at gigs, as well as fans of the director, Jacen Tan, who were there just to see the final product, the music video which has taken close to a year to produce.

The event finally kicked off at around 2015 with a brief introduction to the band and the director, Jacen Tan, after which was the screening of the music video itself. The video looked professional to say the least, being one of the finest videos that I have seen coming from a local band in Singapore. The video screening was followed by a behind the scenes video, showing the process of the making of the film. The Q&A session was pretty brief, with most of the questions being generally about the film-making process. (Where Kathir and the dance company involved in the filming of the video mentioning that there will be a future collaboration for a "metal opera" of sorts by late 2010/early 2011. Looking forward to it!)

Perhaps the highest point of the event which most of the attendees were looking forward to was the special performance after the videos. They played a pretty vast selection of songs, with 1 or 2 songs from each album. They ended with the crowd favourite, The Pathless Path to the Knowable Unknown.

Overall a pretty neat event, especially Rudra's performance which ended the event nicely. Kudos to Jacen and Rudra for producing such a high quality video.

And once again, got too lazy to hang around after the event to have my albums signed. Yes, I'm a fanboy.



Taken from http://todesengel89.blogspot.com/

Zakk Wylde live in Singapore, performing at Changi Prison and subsequently at Swee Lee Katong Concept Store.

Compared to the previous clinic that was held at Swee Lee (Andy Timmons), this was a totally crap show. To begin with, the staff's attitude was bad, with one of them in particular venting his frustration on certain members of the audience, using harsh vulgarities and threats.

This Demo is Shit is Xanadoo's latest demo. Features 3 blazing fast tracks. However, do not be misled by the title into thinking that the songs on this demo are shit because they definitely aren't.