Aural Assault

The two bands we went to the show to see - Avenged Sevenfold and The Confession (MySpace) - were both very impressive. As we mentioned in our preview for this show, we saw The Confession at Warped Tour and they were pretty good, although horribly out of place, at that event. The Confession fit in much better with Thursday night's all-metal lineup, and the crowd was very receptive to their straightforward metal sound. Of course, it wouldn't have been a show at the Electric Factory without some kind of technical glitch. Guitarist Kevin Fyfe had an issue with his axe at the beginning of the set, which required Fyfe to actually leave the stage. Fyfe's absence weakened the first two songs noticeably, as The Confession's sound is largely predicated on the interplay between Fyfe and fellow guitarist Justin Hoffman. Once the issue was resolved, however, Fyfe was back on stage and the dual guitar assault was on. The Confession are strong musicians and have a good sense of how to arrange songs, and their live performance reflects those strengths. The band's weakness is that their sound hasn't fully matured yet, by which we mean, when you listen to The Confession, you can't help but think, "Except for the vocals, there's a heavy Avenged Sevenfold influence going on here. Not to the point where they sound like a tribute band, but the flavor is certainly there." We're encouraged by the fact that The Confession is essentially just getting started, and we expect they'll develop more of their own sound over time.

The men of the evening were Avenged Sevenfold. To put it simply, we were blown away by Avenged Sevenfold's performance. We were a little apprehensive going into the show, because we've seen some really heavy acts really, well, suck, live. When not done well, live heavy metal can just be a merciless attack on your eardrums. Not so with Avenged Sevenfold. These guys really know their stuff and play their [expletive] off. And the fans respond in kind. (We were a little surprised, however, that the circle pit at the recent Bad Religion show was more violent than the one at this show.) M. Shadows's vocals are more impressive live than on CD, and that is saying something. We really expected that to be a potential point of weakness, but we were wrong. As we said before, we really think having the earplugs helped us enjoy Avenged Sevenfold's set. At a couple points during the concert, just out of curiosity, we took the earplugs out for stretches, and the sound really didn't come through as well. It wasn't that it was too loud for us, but that it was too loud for the music itself. (We can't believe we're saying something was too loud for heavy metal.) There was a little bit of that wall of noise effect. But with the earplugs in, we found it much easier to hear each distinct instrument and how they were working together. Or maybe we're simply justifying getting older and not wanting to sound "uncool" by admitting we now need earplugs at hard rock shows. But we digress. Avenged Sevenfold's performance was easily one of the top two or three we've seen this year, and considering everyone in the band is in their mid-twenties and are emerging as the standard-bearers for heavy metal with mainstream recognition, we'll be seeing a lot more of them in future.

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