Words by: Robert Sutton
Images by: Robert Sutton Photography
www.facebook.com/robertsuttonphotography
Monster Magnet played an exclusive one off show on the 19th March at the O2 Forum Kentish Town London as a celebration of their decade with A & M Records. A & M released four albums from Monster Magnet between 1993 and 2003. Support for the night was from Orange Goblin and Scorpion Child.
Scorpion Child: Are an American five piece hard rock band from Texas who formed in 2006. They have two studio albums, the self titled ’Scorpion Child’ and ‘Acid Roulette’. I did think that the evening would be a bit old school classic heavy metal and although a relatively new band ‘The Child’ do fall into this category for me with some wickedly heavy riffs and vocals from Aryn Jonathan Black that are very much on par with that from Led Zeppelin or perhaps Free??…A reasonable sized crowd awaited the band when they entered the stage and their relatively short set got the crowd in the mood for the other two acts that followed. No real mosh pit to be had, no walls of death and I don’t think even one crowd surfer…just a crowd that were lost in the trance of the music being played. A super opening act for the evening.
Orange Goblin: A four piece British band with an impressive eight studio albums to their name, with ‘Back From The Abyss’ released in 2014 being their latest album. Again with that classic heavy metal feel to their sound and with the great vocals from the ‘larger than life’ Ben Ward, who after over twenty years of fronting the band sure knows how to please the audience, and anyone who fronts a band wearing an Alice Cooper t-shirt has to be ok in my opinion!! (….He says, being a lifelong Alice fan…) Simply put, just song after song of crowd pleasing riffage from the band to a virtually packed venue for their performance.
Monster Magnet: The New Jersey stoner rock band fronted by Dave Wyndorf have been on the scene since the end of the eighties and have nine studio albums to their name, but tonight’s performance was in celebration of their ten years with A&M records and the four albums ‘Superjudge’ , ‘Dopes To Infinitiy’ , ‘Powertrip’ and ‘God Says No’ that they released with this label.
They opened their set with ‘Crop Circles’ from the Powertrip album and followed this with ‘Powertrip’ itself from the same album. The virtually no-stop set carried on without any let up in ‘heads down’ classic metal songs from the four albums and with very little conversation from Dave, just playing as many great songs that they could fit into their time allowed. The only time that Dave did ask the audience to join in was for the lyrics for the chorus for ‘Space Lord’ ….Perhaps the printed lyrics for this song were not quite what the audience were actually shouting on the night!!…
They left the stage after this, their eleventh, song of the evening, with the sound of feedback from one of the guitars ringing in our ears. They soon re-emerged for the customary encore and played the appropriately titled ‘I Want More’ followed by ‘Face Down’ from their ‘Superjudge’ album and finished off the night with ‘Negasonic Teenage Warhead’ from the ‘Dopes to Infinity’ album.
In conclusion, if you like your heavy metal to be of the classic rock variety then this was the venue to be at on this Saturday night…Such great performances from all three acts.
Setlist:
1: Crop Circle
2: Powertrip
3: Melt
4: Superjudge
5: Twin Earth
6: Look to your Orb for the Warning
7: Dinosaur Vacuum /Brainstorm
8: Cage Around the Sun
9: Tractor
10: Dope to Infinity
11: Space Lord
Encore:
12: I Want More
13: Face Down
14: Negasonic Teenage Warhead
http://www.zodiaclung.com/
http://www.orange-goblin.com/
http://www.scorpionchildofficial.com/
About Author
