Metal Rules The City Pt.2: Devour, From The Depths, Usurper, Cradle Of Filth

Hello, Now it's time for me to continue my story about the weekend of Reigning Metal! Sunday brought us some colder weather as well as yet another great metal show. This time only "the true ones" (namely myself and Shurik who, by the way, is still asking for your phone number :-) made it to Agora Ballroom, club we had never attended before that day. This club is located much closer to the place there we live than Flying Machine, thus after only a 15-minute drive we found ourselves right in front of the empty stage. As usual, show did not start at the time it had to, and we spent around an hour doing practically nothing but throwing up, haha (JK). Then, finally, the band that was rehearsing and tuning up approximately an hour ago got on stage and started playing. First they played recorded keyboard intro which sounded pretty epic and majestic, so we had kinda high hopes for them, but those fell a little bit short. They performed quite average black/death with growling vocals and neither impressed nor disappointed us. All in all, it was the OK set for an opening band. Later we found out that their name is DEVOUR. Oh yeah, one more thing, their vocalist had pretty cool spikes and a horn from which he was drinking some fluid (allegedly beer) throughout the whole show. Next we had FROM THE DEPTHS which is a local band that plays melodic Black/Death with occasional keyboards. I heard some pretty positive words about them from the different sources and, to tell you the truth, they were better than average, but still not quite convincing. Probably it was due to a bad mix in which keyboards completely lost their power and sounded very weak and distant, but I am not sure. Anyway, I'm gonna keep my eye right on them, because I feel some potential here lurking somewhere in the shadows. I just hope they will be able to come up with something really good in a near future. The last song they played was a cover of some old Metallica classic, but I could not make up the name. By the way, that's when funny things started to happen. Some people threw several bras on stage! I do not know who did that, but both singer and guitarist got their fair share of female accessories. You can probably guess, that my advise to Shurik was to do the same thing with his socks! And to my and his own total amusement he DID!!! He practically hit their drummer with it (this bastard threw only one sock!)! Actually, I think it fell on the drum kit itself!!! You won't believe it, but later he even got his sock back, when someone from the event staff found it and threw it back to the crowd where Shurik was patiently awaiting for his sock to come back :-) Certainly after such heroic actions he got a seal of approval from everyone around us, including some pretty nasty-looking people :-)

Band #3 was Necropolis Records' own USURPER from Chicago. I do not really like their mix of ancient Black/Death/Trash metal, but they sounded pretty amusing live. We also were making a lot of fun of their vocalist, who despite being pretty fat, still wore black leather outfit crisscrossed with some strange-looking belts. As a result, he looked like a fat S&M guy playing metal, haha!!! AT LAST!!! After approximately 30-35 minutes of preparations and crowd chanting switching from "Cradle of Filth" to "What the Fuck" and back again, THEY CAME!!! CRADLE OF FILTH. Showing no mercy and taking no prisoners, they devastated that fucking place. Cradle of Filth Taken from home.bip.net/damien_666/ Never before had I witnessed anything that powerful and beautiful at the same time. The whole place just went totally berserk, and when I say it - I mean it! We were standing right on the edge of the mosh pit and thus got some pushes and hits ourselves before Shurik ran amok. You should have seen it man!!! He was not the biggest man there, but his fury had to be seen to be believed. He was throwing people all over the fucking place, you know?! As for the CRADLE, they ruled! They started with "Forest Whispers My Name" and the rest of the set was just as powerful as the opener. Great sound, great show, great lights and excellent choice of the songs played (they performed all of my favorites except for "Funeral in Carpathia"). The only drawback was that due to some legal reasons they had to live at midnight, but even then they managed to get back and play 2 more songs before they disappeared in funeral fog. Regards, Andy.