Live Reviews : Kvelertak were fun, Gojira were flawless, Mastodon were torture.

Mastodon, Gojira and Kvelertak @ Billboard the Venue, Melbourne. 27/02/2012

Even if you’re not really a fan of the Soundwave Festival lineups, or music festivals at all, you have to be a little bit thankful when sideshows like this come around. Even Kvelertak, despite their relatively young age, could probably headline their own tour here. As I wandered in to Billboard the Venue, perhaps one song into the opening set, the venue was already full to the very brim.

If there is one key factor in the success of Kvelertak’s debut, self-titled album, it’s the party vibe, and they really do turn that up a few notches live. AC/DC’s blackened, Norwegian cousins blasted through a half hour set of their most upbeat material including “Blodtorst”, “Mjod” and “Ulvetid” (which anybody trying to figure out the pronunciation of their name would have been more than happy to hear). Their sound was thick and punchy, the visually mismatched group were full of the energy that they needed to pull this sound off live, and the combination of having six members and a frontman who couldn’t keep still instantly gave them a huge stage presence. While a whole ninety-minute headline set from these guys might be a bit of a drag unless they vary things a tad more on the next release, this performance was a tough one to fault. Although a light show wouldn’t have hurt…

After what felt like an eternal wait, Gojira wandered onto the stage bursting straight into The Way Of All Flesh opener “Oroborus”; a bit of an odd choice to open with, and lacking the huge explosion of sound that I expected them to kick off with. But as soon as they kicked into “The Heaviest Matter of the Universe”, any possible doubts in my mind vanished. Gojira sound absolutely monstrous live. You can feel their riffs and grooves vibrate through your body, Mario Duplantier’s drumming is flawless, and Joe Duplantier’s vocals were exactly as expected. Thankfully these guys had someone on lights too, with intense strobes and solid colours adding whole new dimension to the experience. The varied set list meant the fourty-five minutes or so was a spot-on mix of their technical and groovier sides, with three tracks each from The Way of All Flesh and From Mars to Sirius, a single song from The Link, and an old-school track (dedicated to all of the death metal fans out there) from their 2001 debut Terra Incognita. The Frenchmen were as flawless as they were hypnotising, and one of those bands you must see at least one during your lifetime. How on earth could Mastodon top that?

Well, they couldn’t. The set opened with two tracks off their latest album The Hunter, ruined partly by some badly balanced vocals, which were sorted out shortly afterwards. Two older tracks, “Crystal Skull” and “Megalodon”, saw the crowd’s energy rise for a short amount of time, before they then broke into a six-track bracket of all new material again. The Hunter is a bland enough album to listen to recorded, and wasn’t any better live. It sits in an awkward space in-between the technicality and touch-of-wank that was Crack the Skye and the heavier, more riff-focused style of ye olden days, that just comes across as a bit lacking in general. The few older songs that were played worked a tiny bit better in that they not only sounded bigger but had a bit more groove to them, and “Crack the Skye” (the one track they played off that album) was fantastic, purely because it’s a great album and served as a nice change in pace, but as a whole the set was just… nothing. Even ignoring personal tastes about the tracks they played, the overall mix and sound was a monotonous mess that didn’t highlight what should have been monstrous sounding riffs, big choruses, interesting guitar moments, or anything else that should have sounded like a stand-out moment. While Kvelertak’s and Gojira’s sets both flew by in what seemed like a couple of minutes each, Mastodon’s was a slow and torturous hour-plus of hoping that all of a sudden everything will improve. While I managed to stay until the end, I know several Mastodon fans that couldn’t last. I guess on the plus side, that’s one less Soundwave clash to care about.

You can view more photos from the night, courtesy of John Raptis, via this link.

Gojira:
Oroborus
The Heaviest Matter of the Universe
Backbone
Love
Remembrance
Flying Whales
Vacuity
——
Toxic Garbage Island

Mastodon:
Dry Bone Valley
Black Tongue
Crystal Skull
Megalodon
Thickening
Blasteroid
All the Heavy Lifting
Spectrelight
Curl of the Burl
Bedazzled Fingernails
Circles of Cysquatch
Aqua Dementia
Crack the Skye
Iron Tusk
March of the Fire Ants
Blood and Thunder
——
Creature Lives