[sakeido]

Went and saw this show last night. I gotta say it is the oddest line-up of bands I've ever seen; the Devils Wears Prada is a Christian hardcore band, Protest the Hero is crazy prog post-hardcore whatever madness, and then the other two bands - illscarlet and Silverstein - are pussified radio punk that is absolutely horrible and totally not heavy.

So needless to say, I did not watch illscarlet and spent all that time in the beer gardens drinking only mildly chilled brew. They sounded like some kind of reggae band or something. The one guitarist played all Orange gear, so I had to give him some props, and one of the guitarists from Silverstein also played Orange.

So anyway, what follows is a review of the two bands I did watch:
THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA - ONE OUT OF FIVE
I just really don't like hardcore bands I guess. All of their songs sounded roughly the same. They were definitely having a good time up on stage and the drummer was giving er shit for almost the whole time, but the guitarists could barely be heard. I am almost positive the one on my side of the stage was playing his 5150 with the mids at zero, so buzzy and hollow his tone was. The vocalist was pretty good at what he was doing, intense screams and a good growl. The guitarists both played Schecters, one was playing that oddly shaped Tempest thing and the other had just a C1. They were not playing very hard and totally couldn't be heard. They had an organ player who had some pretty cool sounds going and he got to do a lot and was really rocking hard, and he could be heard.
I don't get hardcore music. I'll headbang to anything that rocks - Gojira has the writing of headbanging riffs down to a science. They know how to do it right. These guys just had no idea. I think every song was roughly of the structure - verse chorus verse breakdown chorus verse breakdown breakdown-chorus. Like jesus christ. Breakdowns are boring as shit and unlike Bury Your Dead, these guys just didn't have riffs to fill the time in between breakdowns.
On the whole, it was a thoroughly boring set. I did not enjoy it. It was weird at the end when they all the sudden started talking about their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and all this. I respect them standing up for their beliefs like that, but it just came out of left field.

PROTEST THE HERO - SEVEN OUT OF FIVE
These are the guys I went to see. I don't even really know what genre they are. Post-hardcore I think? I dunno. Its really uptempo, punk style at some points, but with frequent shredding. We're talking lots and lots of tapping and sweeps and just all around awesomeness. They have a ridiculous amount of prog influences without having pretentiously long songs. The closest comparison I can come for these guys would be if you took Sikth, Between the Buried and Me, and the Fall of Troy and then blended them altogether furiously with Canadian beer. Did I mention they are Canadian?
Anyway, first things first, the gear. The more talented of the two guitarists plays a 22 fret Ibanez S something with a gray flame maple top through a VHT (without graphic EQ) into a Mesa cab. His tone was kickass. The other guy's rig was hidden somewhere, but he was playing a nice sunburst ESP Eclipse that looked great and sounded fantastic. He also has a huge beard. The bassist had good tone as well, and really cut in the mix, and the drummer had a weird hardcore kit that had barely any drums. No rack toms? Madness. He was playing his ass off though.
So anyway, their set was about 30-40 minutes. The singer was already smashed when he came out but somehow still managed to hit every note, which was pretty impressive. They started off with Bloodmeat, the single off their latest album Fortress, which gets into a tapping riff probably about a minute into the song. They harmonize tapping, the guy on the Ibanez was shredding crazy fast and was hitting every note, it was insane.
Really words fail. The only guy I've seen live now that shreds harder than these guys would be Victor Wooten. These guys riff really fast and then they go off and play the craziest fills that are just total madness. And they were nailing it! The songs are kick ass and creative to start with and to hear them come together like this live was awesome.
Really good show. I was pumped. I wish they were headliners so they would have had more stage time, but oh well.