Live Reviews : Lamb of God & Meshuggah @ Festival Hall, Melbourne 22/09/2013

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Excluding the festivals that they have been a part of, America’s groove metal giants Lamb of God and Sweden’s extreme metal masters Meshuggah had never toured together. No one would have thought that Australia would be the first country lucky enough to experience such a huge tour.

Luckily for the handful of Meshuggah fans who only wanted to see them and thought they would get a bad set time as the opening band, the show was billed as a double headliner, and both bands set the stage for an hour and fifteen minutes each. And even though the doors were open for an hour before Meshuggah came on, that still wasn’t enough time to get the crowd for the sold out show in to Festival Hall… including me, who missed over half an hour of Meshuggah’s set due to complications with getting my ticket. After talking to other punters, I discovered that the reason why they were late to the show was that the ticket said doors open at the same time Meshuggah came on. Good going Ticketmaster!

After missing Meshuggah’s first six songs, mainly from their latest two albums “obZen” and “Koloss”, I finally got to my seat during “The Hurt That Finds You First”. The floor was packed and everyone was having fun, same with the people on the balcony above the bar who were all out of their seat. The section I was seated in however, there weren’t many people out of their seats. Quite disappointing really, but even though there were a lot of Meshuggah fans around, it was obvious that there were more people wanting to see Lamb of God.

When you’re seated at the very back of Festival Hall, you don’t get the best view of anything specific that’s happening on stage, even the creepy faces that vocalist Jens Kidman pulls. The bands stage presence was very innovative though. They were more about playing the music and there was minimal interaction with the crowd between songs. The lighting was interesting, but had me confused sometimes, as it followed every note the rhythm guitarist Mårten Hagström played, or the kick pedal of Tomas Haake’s drums.

Seeing them play “Bleed” was the highlight of the night for me, and proved to have the biggest crowd reaction of their set. Like the other songs they played, no one saw it coming, not only because of their small interaction with the crowd, but they didn’t have intros or count-ins to any of the songs due to using a click track.

“Meshuggah is the hardest band to head bang to” is a quote that I’ve heard often from people, and it wasn’t until this show that I realised that. Some people managed to do it well, some tried to follow the snare hits, but watching a big group of people head banging, there were quite a few that were out of time at some points and looked confused. It was funny to watch.
The band ended their set with “New Millennium Cyanide Christ” before heading back onstage to perform “In Death – Is Life” and “In Death – Is Death” as an encore.

Classics by Judas Priest, Megadeth and Metallica being played during the break had the crowd singing along; even the younger fans knew the songs. But it wasn’t long until the room went dark, and Lamb of God hit the stage and opened with “Desolation” and “Ghost Walking” off their latest album “Resolution”. Not a single person in the stands was sitting down, even in the section that I was in. The floor was a constant circle pit in the middle, with plenty of crowd surfers and head bangers infront of that. Singer Randy Blythe laid down the pit etiquette though; if someone falls over, pick them up.

Even with the legal issues over the past year and a half that every Lamb of God fan knows about, Blythe was not there to preach about said issues, he was there to scream his head off and put on a wild performance with the rest of his band mates. That is exactly what they did, as they ripped through old crowd favourites “Walk With Me In Hell”, “Ruin” and “Now You’ve Got Something to Die For”. Lesser known songs like “11^th Hour” and “Omerta” had just as good of a crowd reaction as the favourite, with plenty of people in the crowd knowing the spoken word intro to “Omerta” and singing it.

Being the only member of the band with a microphone, Blythe did all of the talking for the show. He stopped for a few minutes during their encore to address the crowd that Melbourne is his personal favourite Australian city, and that Australia is their favourite place in the world to play in. While getting the crowd to give a round of applause for Meshuggah, he had the crowd laughing/thinking when he mentioned that The Beatles played in the same venue in 1964, and asked them to think about how The Beatles would have reacted to a live Meshuggah show 50 years ago while tripping on acid.

The band ripped through their popular songs “Redneck” and “Laid to Rest” which had the biggest circle pits of the night open up. As always, the last song they played was “Black Label”, and even though that’s known as their “wall of death” song, the crowd failed to get a good wall of death happening. I went outside during the long outro of “Black Label”, but I was still right outside the venue when the song finished, and instead of ending the show by saying “goodbye”, “thankyou” or something boring, Blythe seemed so happy with the crowd that he ended their set with almost a minute of Ric Flair-esque woo’s.

Both bands were on fire tonight and delivered an unforgettable performance. Lamb of God obviously had the wilder crowd, but it seemed like everyone was pleased with both acts. Excluding Soundwave Festival and all of their sideshows that will feature some of the big metal acts on that festival, I doubt Australia will see a double headlining tour of international metal bands this big in quite a while.

Meshuggah’s setlist:
1. Swarm
2. Combustion
3. Rational Gaze
4. obZen
5. Lethargica
6. Do Not Look Down
7. The Hurt That Finds You First
8. I Am Colossus
9. Bleed
10. Demiurge
11. New Millenium Cyanide Christ
Encore:
(Mind’s Mirrors)
12. In Death – Is Life
13. In Death – Is Death

Lamb of God’s setlist:
1. Desolation
2. Ghost Walking
3. Walk With Me In Hell
4. Set to Fail
5. Ruin
6. Now You’ve Got Something To Die For
7. 11th Hour
8. The Undertow
9. Omerta
10. Contractor
Encore:
(The Passing)
11. In Your Words
12. Laid to Rest
13. Redneck
14. Black Label

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