There is nothing more overwhelming than standing at a Lamb of God concert at the fringes of what you thought was a safe distance to watch people running into one another, and then all of a sudden, the area around you clears and you go ‘Oh f**k! This is going to be bad’. The drummer pounds up the double bass and you see what could almost be a million metal heads rushing at you to mosh. Ok! Not a million….I are bad at accounting…..there were probably a thousand…okay…. something in the region of seventy-five.
I was at the Lamb of God concert on Saturday and oh boy, it was fabulous. Close second in terms of energy to the Iron Maiden concert, but it was awesome none the less. Probably the best mosh pit experience. It’s a positive sign for the Indian metal scene when you have bands like LOG come down to add to the list of previous acts like Iron Maiden, Megadeth, Machine Head and others. A few more bands and India would be witness to the holy four of metal…Anthrax, Slayer and Metallica. (Megadeth already came and conquered).
What was more encouraging to see was the Indian bands who seem to have more than impressed many of the LOG members. It is however a sad shame that while we Indians want the metal and rock scene to improve, we are far too critical of our bands. Barring ‘Extinct Reflections’ and ‘Scribe’, the other bands were greeted with ‘F**k off the stage’ and even had empty plastic bottles thrown at them. One of the bands had to even get a little aggressive with the audience, but then, this is a sad sight to any one who wants to see India compete on the international scale. On an unrelated note, ‘Bhoomi’ have the same sound they had when I heard them at engineering college 8 years ago and don’t seem to have any signs of evolution….the other band from the North-East- ‘Boomerang’ were trying too hard to be ‘Rage against the Machine’ that they failed to impress. ‘ Scribe’ came in with a lot of energy and were fairly crisp, except for the vocalist who was all in your face with his frequent ‘buy my album’ rants.
The best part of the evening was the final performance of ‘Extinct Reflections’. They were one of the bands which we’ve been following right from college and they’ve grown from strength to strength with their sound and bandwidth. A band that probably gave us our first glimpses into the sounds from the west through covers of bands like ‘Lamb of God’ and ‘Death’…to a band that found their own sound. And I’ve seen the vocalist at other avenues where he’s sung U2 and other bands….so they’re not one trick ponies like a lot of other Indian bands. It was kind of sad that this was the last performance of theirs as a band, but I guess the ride was worth it.
The headline act for the evening was simply awesome. With a crowd that knew the lyrics to every song, people head banging around you, a hint of weed in the air’…and the many moshpits made the Lamb of God concert totally worth attending. And the audience was a good mix of young college kids, folks like me who’ve grown up listening to these guys and parents who’ve accompanied the younger generation of metal patrons to the show. There just is not enough for me to say to describe how the music brought back a lot of painful memories from engineering college when this was the sort of music that made sense. It was the kind of music that fueled and anger for which most of us did not know the source. And it was probably the same connection that brought dedicated fans to the concert. Except for this odd bhaiya-behanji type couple who must have thought ‘Lamb of God’ was either a religious discourse or free biryani being served. The expression on their face when they were caught smack in the middle of a mosh pit was precious. They were wise to leave before the concert was hitting its climax with songs like ‘Redneck’ and ‘Black Label’.
Overall, one brilliant way to spend the weekend.
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