It was a fairly cold autumn day when Nile and Hate Eternal were scheduled to play at Fowlers Live, the venue that has always been sheltering a lot of international shows in Adelaide. It is a shitty venue for its acoustics but I shouldn’t be complaining, as I thought without Fowlers, Adelaide could have been a shit hole for international metal acts who tour in Australia.
I was pretty busy that day with uni so I only got to come at door by around 7.20pm after some decent yiros for dinner. Support band for this show were One Step Beyond (at last, some decent band apart from crappy hardcore kids). Honestly that was the time I first heard them and I admit I liked them. One Step Beyond play rock’n roll/grind/jazz style and they have really catchy tunes, reminded me of Blood Duster who on their later releases, being more rock’n roll and less grindy. The guitarist seemed like a guy I always see around Adelaide city too. All in all, they rocked the crowd that night. Definitely looking forward to coming to their gigs in future.
Next up were Hate Eternal. Erik Rutan was probably infamous for his roles in the world of death metal. Known as album producer, death metal guitar god, and Morbid Angel’s ex-guitarist for the infamous Domination, Erik Rutan also fronts Hate Eternal which in my opinion, not his best use of talent. Honestly, Hate Eternal style is REALLY not my cup of tea of death metal. Way too generic and noisy on both records and live. Perhaps I was way too up front during their set, resulting blowing sound from Erik’s amps. Anyway, it seemed performing artists do all the setup shit themselves, no crew what so ever. Erik came up the stage with his box of pedals and effects which were associated to his Ironbird.
HATE ETERNAL
ERIK RUTAN IN HATEMODE
Hate eternal started off pretty early than the allocated time frame (about 10 minutes). With 3 piece band this time, Erik, Jade, and a session bassist blasted through their set relentlessly. The drummer was a crazy dude. He made jokes while he was setting up his kit and had hilarious shoutings with the kids in the crowd. This guy can seriously kill. He had a good skill at fast-blasting drummings, which pretty much defines Hate Eternal.
The session bassist was pretty sick individually. I honestly don't know who the fuck he is or which band he was picked out from to cover up this show for Erik. I wish he actually played in a better death metal and got me nuts.
OKAYY..Actually, Hate Eternal were complete boredom. Shit boredom. I wish I could refund half my money for this show. Erik Rutan did not impress me at all other than noisy, dropping tremolo, hate-driven vocals and lifeless stage presence. I kept running within the crowd to find the best spot to enjoy them but failed miserably. Their set went fairly long (an hour of complete ear torture) and some of their fan probably happy with their set and total so called brutality presented. But definitely not entertaining for me.
ERIK RUTAN AGAIN
I tried to get full view of all band members
Up next were NILE. Karl Sanders was the first person to got on stage to set his guitar. This time, it was my first time to see such a delicate setting for a live performance that used digital effects etc. Karl had a 19” lcd plugged in front of his spot that was connected to his laptop(at the back, near amp) now that was a very digitized setting. Compared to Erik’s setting, Karl used pretty much all USB connected gears. On the other hand, other members seemed to have normal setting to their gears, George Kollias was my main focus, since I am so into drumming he had fairly decent setting like the previous drummer (Hate Eternal drummer) I thought he borrowed Jade’s cymbals, judging by seeing Jade having to opened up his cymbal trunk after packing them down. Honestly, I did not expect much from Kollias other than to play a drum solo in the middle of Nile’s set. But that seemed to no avail.
Karl Sander setting up his lcd for tuner/effects etc.All by himself.
As I predicted, Nile started off their set with ‘Kafir’. Blasphemous song indeed, but I shall not elaborate on that. Heavy and somehow sounded better than the cd quality. As I was standing right in front of Karl, I can hear his guitar sounded so sharp and precise. So did Dallas’ guitar whose sounded so heavy. I should not berate much on sound quality of this show as all shows that I went to were promising in terms of acoustics. No wonder some songs just sounded A LOT BETTER live than on their records.Thanks to the pro sound mixer.
DALLAS-That is a sweet DRI shirt
Talking about setlist, they played quite a number of songs from the latest album ‘For Whom the God Detests’ which were awesome. The latest album just kills and no bullshit Egyptian traditional soundtrack done to fill up 13 tracks. There were also songs from the infamous Catacombs and Black Seeds and Nile’s traditional closing song was definitely Black Seed of Veangeance.
KARL SANDERS-Wooppps unintentionally took this picture with the mic stand before him.
Apart from the awesome-ness of the performance, I must highlight the scene where Karl spotted a guy who kept filming Nile’s set and snatched his iPhone away, put it on the spot he was standing. It was hilarious. Clearly Karl did not like his picture or video being taken (maybe due to weight problem? HAHA) during his performance. Karl ended up returning back the guy’s iPhone after swiping it to his guitar. It was cool of him that he did not crush that phone, which I expected he would have done. As a result to that event, I refrained myself from taking too many photos during Nile’s set, since I had taken a few beforehand for this review anyway.
NILE - In action
Nile set went on about an hour and a half. It was a really great set by Nile and it was worth my money spent to see them, unlike the Heh, Etanol. Grabbed myself their tour shirt and 2 more for other Malaysian friends who ordered it through me. All in all, Nile really rocked up the night!
p/s: i got Karl's pick too :)
1 comment:
great review bro! the chorus for black seeds just killzzzzz!!! karl has definitely gotten chubbier since last time i saw them during the black seeds tour way back when. last time karl didn't have that lcd screen, just his laptop. i got the bass pick from the guy that left the band & that was cool.
keep it up man & thanks for this.
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