»12th August 2010

Rio's

So Sins of the Unforgiven played their second gig on 6th August at Bradford Rio's. There were a few notable improvements over the first gig which can be summarised thusly:

• We got to play on a proper stage.
• Our set started at about half ten/quarter to eleven, as opposed to one in the morning.
• We did not share the stage with a Bhangra band.

The venue itself was great, there was a proper stage, lifting you about a metre or so above the heads of the crowd which would make my life a lot easier. At the last gig, I couldn't see or hear anything beyond the front row, which whilst good for blocking out the one heckler, gave me no sense at all as to what everyone apart from the front row thought about the band.

Martin had picked me up at about quarter to five to give us enough time to get into Bradford and get ready for the sound check at 5:30. We were the first ones there and met with the sound guy, Boots Riley, who was much more talkative than the immortal Lich-roadie at Zuu Bar.

Having a flyer for your gig really helps give it an air of authority. Even if only eight people bother to turn up. By the way, if you were one of those eight people who did turn up: Thanks!

Whilst waiting around for the sound check to start, Daron, who had come straight from work and was wearing a suit, was asked on two separate occasions if he was our manager. We totally should have gone along with that, think how professional that would have made us look. Daron had to disappear after the sound check to go home and get changed, so we totally couldn't have sustained that. Perhaps we should all turn up in suits, and hire people to chastise about the size of the meat relative to the bread. I'm sure you would agree, that would be totally awesome.

After some initial drama when Ryan the drummer was delayed in traffic, we rattled through No Remorse for the sound check. The sound was fantastic. After this, whilst the bands that were on before us set up their increasingly more-impressive-than-ours sets of gear, we stood chatting to the other band members that had arrived, who I think were just the guys from Kill To Gain and Dyinise.

Whilst moping around the empty club before things kicked off I cast my eye over the posters of upcoming events at the club. A particular band caught my eye for two reasons. It was Distroyent, a Death Metal band who one of the guys from Dead Till Dawn was involved with for a time. Distroyent happened to be using the same font Sins of the Unforgiven use. For those who are interested, the font is Bleeding Cowboy. I've also spotted it being used by what looks like some blues rock band called The Blue Inks on a poster at the Factory St. rehearsal rooms as well as on the side of a Painter/Decorator's van. I think we need a new font, or even better, a proper logo.

Whilst attempting to sort out the bizarre ticket situation, we ended up chatting to the girl on the door. I commented that I thought the band name was 'About two words and four syllables too long.' But the girl on the door thought it was alright, and besides, look at the name of the first band.

Vultures In Vivid Colours

Vultures In Vivid Colours describe themselves as Metalcore which I'd say was pretty close to the money.

I'm not a massive fan of Metalcore and as a result there aren't many bands from the genre that I'm familiar with or particularly appreciate. To Vultures' credit, I'd have a hard time differentiating them from one of the big, signed Metalcore bands who I'm not going to embarass myself by attempting to name.

VIVC didn't turn up for the soundcheck and I'm not sure what they were doing for amplification. They sounded like they were down-tuned in a big way, which made me fret for the safety of my bass amp which was hiding at the back and had already been signed up for use by one of the other bands.

Vultures In Vivid Colours. Rendered by a child in MS Paint.

Vultures' were incredibly heavy, as Metalcore ought to be I suppose. They were a five-piece with two guitars, bass and drums set up on stage and the singer patrolling in front of the stage. There wasn't really a 'crowd', the majority of the people watching were also playing later on in the evening and were arrayed neatly along the periphery of the room. My issue with Vultures', though it applies to Metalcore in general, would be the way the songs are structured. I have a hard time discerning where the songs are going, they feel just like a string of riffs, albeit super-heavy riffs, though it makes picking one song out from another a fruitless endeavour.

Despite all this, I did think Vultures In Vivid Colours did a pretty good job. I know nothing of Metalcore except that I am lukewarm to it, but they did what they did very well. They also had t-shirts! I was most envious of their rather tasty looking merchandise complete with a cool tattoo-style vulture graphic.

Kill To Gain

Kill To Gain describe themselves as 'Screamo' and I'll take their word for it.

Kill To Gain were a five-piece band, two guitars, bass, drums and vocals. I had spoken with their rhythm guitarist earlier on in the evening. He certainly knew his gear, and he had the most intimidating 'rig' of the evening. Certainly, the title 'rig' was well-earned with his bafflingly complex set-up. There was some rack effects processing unit, a Mesa Boogie amplifier (to power the rack) and some unusual half-size cab that (if memory serves) was also a Mesa Boogie. The guitarist reminded me of Lars Ulrich, he certainly talked the talk of someone who spends a lot of time playing music and touring. It was both reassuring and intimidating being able to share a stage with musicians like this.

Lars had earlier taken over direction of the soundcheck from the sound guy, and despite earlier careful tweaking of the levels of the drum mics and guitar EQ, as soon as he was on stage, there were urgent expressions of dissatisfaction to the sound guy, 'Turn me up!' 'Up!' My memory was cast back to my guitar lessons and some of the sage advice from my guitar teacher, 'When you're on stage, if something doesn't sound right, make sure the last thing you try is turning up the volume on your amp.'

Kill To Gain's drummer had an impressive metal beard.

I'm very patchy on the area of Metalcore, Emo, Screamo, and have trouble distinguishing the styles. At the time I thought they sounded alright. They had some pleasing melodic passages and some pretty meaty riffs on a couple of songs. Their vocalist alternated between clean, rather high-pitched vocals, and a powerful scream/grunt. This isn't the sort of music I really go for and I can't really talk about it with any authority, I enjoyed the set more than Vulture's but I have never been particularly keen on bands who alternate between very clean vocals and very harsh grunting. There's plenty of very well respected bands that do it, but I think at its worst it sounds melodramatic, and generally I'd prefer to listen to one style or the other in a song, not both.

As with Vultures', Kill To Gain played for about half an hour to an audience which was still very thin on the ground and was at least half people who had already/were going to play. Rather disappointingly, Vultures With Vivid Colours seemed eager to pack up early and make a quick exit and disappeared halfway through Kill's set.

Dyinise

Dyinise were my favourite band of the night. They describe themselves as Melodic Thrash Metalcore. I'd describe them as no-nonsense Thrash.

Dyinise were the band I was anticipating the most having checked out their stuff on MySpace prior to the gig. Originally, they were to be going on after us, but this was later changed for some reason. They were a three-piece, guitar, bass and drums. The bassist and guitarist both shared vocals, with the guitarist taking most of the lead vocals.

Dyinise played a great set with lots of riff-heavy songs and lots of lead. Bizarrely, at one point the lead guitarist donned an Iron Man mask for part of one song. I have no idea why, but it was great. Clearly, Dyinise took themselves a lot less seriously than the previous two bands. The bassist's vocals were a bit on the dodgy side, but he had cool white contact lenses and I liked the duelling vocal style.

What's this?! 'This next song is by Megadeth.' Oh please say it isn't so... is that... is that Symphony of Destruction? Nooo!

Dyinise even kicked things off with a 'Hit The Lights'-esque introduction.

Yes, it was either the last or second-to-last song in which Dyinise played Symphony of Destruction. This was significant in that we were set to play the very same song as our second number. Dyinise did a pretty straight cover of it. The bass sound was satisfyingly meaty for this number, I shed a tear of pride for my bass amp. This prompted a moment of panic, 'Okay, so what the hell are we going to play for our second song?' It was decided that Wasting My Hate would be the stand-in. Most reassuringly, Dyinise also threw in a few hand actions into the song, like doing a little robot dance for the line 'Acting like a robot,' Oh how I rejoiced that I wasn't the only person who thought that sort of thing was amusing.

It's worth nothing that Dyinise have nothing short of a fantastic lead guitarist. The solos were just excellent and my hat goes off to anyone who can play rhythm guitar and sing lead vocals. Seriously, you don't want to see what I'm doing getting away with on bass.

Sins of the Unforgiven

Sins of the Unforgiven describe themselves as Thrash Shanty. I'd describe them as Folk-infused Post-Aggrotech.

We were set to play for forty five minutes, as the 'headliner' i.e. 'last' act. Our set was as follows:

No Remorse
Symphony of Destruction Wasting My Hate
The Trooper
Rock and Roll
The Four Horsemen
For Whom The Bell Tolls
Am I Evil?
Ace of Spades
Seek and Destroy

Paranoid

I made a conscious effort to not look quite as terrified as I did during the first gig. Being elevated on a stage made this much easier to accomplish. The sound on stage had noticably deteriorated since the soundcheck and I struggled to hear my vocals. This had the unfortunate effect of me nearly blasting myself out during No Remorse again. This was doubly troubling as 'Wasting' had taken the place of 'Symphony'. I can do whatever I like on 'Symphony' vocals-wise, but 'Wasting' has an exposed and tricky intro which I do not like singing. Fortunately, backing off vocals-wise for the second half of 'No Remorse' whilst I tried to pick out the sound of the vocals seemed to do the trick.

Another part of my flailing, shambolic attempts at 'stage presence' consisted of my bizarre inter-song 'patter'. 'So this next song is by a band I'm sure you've never heard of... Metallica.' 'Oh look it's another Metallica song!' 'Do any of you out there like Led Zepelin? [muted cheers] Do any of you like SLAYER!? [slightly louder cheers, mostly from Dyinise] Alright, well you might like this one. This is called Rock and Roooollll!'

As my stage antics fell apart, so did my bass playing, I hoped that my strange facial contortions and bizarre hand actions would distract from what my hands were doing.

'The Four Horsemen' went down really well. It may have been in this song that we actually got the bassist and guitarist from Dyinise moshing around in front of us, which was really cool. 'Someone else thinks we don't suck!?'

We really do look *that* cool on stage.

I can't remember what I did at the first gig, but for 'For Whom The Bell Tolls' there really ought to be a bass solo at the beginning. Well, conscious of the fact that the bass sound had gone all mushy as the night wore on, and seeing as my distortion made absolutely no impact on the sound whatsoever, I approached a bass solo with trepidation. Fortunately I was able to harness some feedback and so posed around looking I was taking a shit for a few seconds before going into the usual riff.

Most shocking of all was the fact that after we finished Seek and Destroy, the 'crowd'--which was still a mostly thinning collection of band members and band invitees--were chanting 'More, more, more!' This was fucking awesome, however we had a very short list of songs that were cut out of the hour-long set, which we actually wanted to play. I suggested we give 'It's So Easy' its first and most likely last public airing. After some confusion--during which Daron and Ryan had already started to dismantle the kit, and whilst the club manager guy ummed and ahhed about letting us have another song--'It's So Easy' was quickly dismissed and we went with the Bonus Super-Filler Special, i.e. 'Paranoid'. It's corny, but it's all we had! As much as I like 'Mother', you can't end a set with it.

Aftermath

The room where we had been playing was on the first floor and as we tidied up our gear and exchanged slippery handshakes and sweaty high fives with people the room quickly thinned out. Some girl came over to the stage to ask me if anyone else was playing, 'I don't think so, I think that's it. I think there's a DJ on now or something.' I really had no idea and she seemed dismayed.

At some point in the evening I had become some sort of Wayne's World Dyinise fanboy and stood around hopelessly praising and saluting the various members. Around this point, the dirty issue of money arose. The payment situation was that Rio's furnished us with tickets which we sold and then gave them £2 for each ticket we sold. The price on the door was £5 and so we were recomended to sell them for £4 or however much we wanted, so long as Rio's got their share. Right. So promotion of this event was effectively out-sourced to the bands.

It would have made more sense to me if we were just given free tickets which we could sell/give away as we pleased. Just to further illustrate how strange it seems that we had to give them £2 a ticket, I alone spent £14 on drinks, and it's not like I had anything even approaching a 'buzz' when I went on stage and afterwards I just wanted a quick can of miserable Strongbow before we headed off. So how much would the average punter who didn't need to be sobre to be able to sing spend on drinks? You still want your £2? Maybe Sins of the Unforgiven sound like some Temperance Movement band?

Extar, over, out.

'Weekdays in here, Tuesday nights? Dead. Fifty-fifty dancing? Nothing.' 'What's fifty-fifty dancing?' 'Christ knows, but I tell you something. Dancers aren't drinkers. Dancers are not drinkers.'