The Beginning: Midevil, HammerFall, Death

Hey, you know what? It was my first show in Cleveland, believe it or not. It took me exactly 2 years and a week to find right place, right time, right show and, finally, (almost) right companions. It was kind of interesting for me to compare everything I would see inside Peabody's, starting with interior and ending with the crowd, to what I saw in those several Moscow clubs that I was lucky enough to visit. I won't go into details here, but I would like to mention one thing that surprised me a little bit, namely, the small number of individuals that people usually HammerFall Taken from www.angelfire.com/nc/hammerfall/frame.html call 'metalheads'. I did not see a whole lot of leather jackets, black t-shirts, spikes or long-haired dudes. What I did see was a large number of plain clad people wearing Cleveland Indians caps, Nike shoes and other clothing that you could rarely see at the metal concert in my beloved Moscow City. Anyway, as we came into the club we discovered that the first band already started to play. As I did not know anything about MIDEVIL (I am not sure if I spelled it correctly) at that time, I was eager to find out what Cleveland has to offer as far as Metal is concerned. Well, if you base your opinion on the music that MIDEVIL played, then not a whole lot. Their set was so-so, not the worse that I'd ever seen before, but certainly not very inspiring or groundbreaking. In my opinion, musically they sounded like cross between PANTERA and MACHINE HEAD, but with more death metal vocals (if I recall everything correctly, he-he). Later some people tried to convince me that this band is actually pretty good and they sound more like old METALLICA or something, but I am still not convinced and not interested in hearing more from them. Well, if someone likes this band, it's fine with me; just don't try to borrow money from me to buy those 'cool' albums :-) Up next was... HAMMERFALL!!! Now I know that some of you will start screaming 'sell-out' right away, but wait! I mean I had my own

very serious doubts about this band, because there are quite a few aspects that I don't really like about them. The only recording of them that I had at that time was their 'Glory to the Brave' maxi-single and it neither disappointed me nor made me crazy about this band, so the show was a very good opportunity to find out what all the hype was about. I must note that as HAMMERFALL was not headlining that day they were only allowed to play around 45 minutes. But believe me my friends (and foes alike) that it was more than enough to make me their fan. What a great show it was! They did not play a single slow song, and it was like fast, fast, fast...faster! Don't get me wrong when I am talking about speed - they are certainly not MARDUK or DARK FUNERAL, but it's not black metal either! They played songs from both old and new albums and I liked around 99.99% of their material :-) Well, I wonder how can you dislike songs like 'Dragon Lies Bleeding' or 'Legacy of Kings' even despite their simplistic lyrics? However, it seemed like the majority of people was really making fun of HAMMERFALL considering them as nothing more than a joke band. Whatever, few dedicated (your humble servant included) did not care much for those stupid enough to make jokes behind our backs and had as much fun as possible. HAMMERFALL finished things up with glorious rendition of JUDAS PRIEST's classic 'Breaking the Law' there they all switched instruments, letting Oscar 'Hell Bent for Leather' Dronjak to sing that last song. Now the band that the majority of people (but not me) came there to see - DEATH - came onstage. I will be first to agree that Chuck Schuldiner is a nice guy and I definitely like his personality and attitude, but I never ever liked DEATH. It was a band that just did nothing for me, period. But they just released their new album 'Sound of Perseverance', they were getting rave reviews all around the world, so I decided: "OK, let's try it once again and maybe I will feel the magic in a live setting". Well, sorry, did not happen. We only managed to listen to 4 songs, before we had to leave in utter disgust and frustration. It's really difficult for me to explain what kind of music they played, but whatever it was it lacked any kind of feeling. Heavy? Yes. Extreme? Yes. Inspired or inspiring? Hell no! To wrap it all up, I can say that I did not really care much for MIDEVIL, DEATH disappointed me a lot, but HAMMERFALL's great show kept my spirit up all night and even a couple of hours on the next day :-) Andy.