Spiritual Beggars is a band that I always wanted to see live and a few days ago I was given that chance. The retro/stoner/psychedelic/rock ‘n’ roll (call them what you wish) gods were supported by Drunk Motherfuckers, SixforNine and Full House Brew Crew.
Due to some transportation problems I almost missed the whole set by Drunk Motherfuckers, but the two songs that I was able to witness led me to the conclusion that if you are into dirty stoner, this band is for you. Sweat, beers, fuzz, groove and a badass attitude pretty much sums up their essence.
Up next was a pleasant surprise, SixforNine. Since the first band of the night and the headliners belong to the wider stoner genre, I was expecting something like their sound. However this band had a totally different sound (flawless in the setting and quality by the way). They belong to the alternative/progressive rock movement, although in many points during their set I detected lots of elements from grunge. Beautiful sound, nice ideas in the songs that made me tap my foot all the time and a singer with a great voice and a joyful spirit that enabled him to connect with the crowd. That singer by the way is Fotis Benardo, the drummer of Septic Flesh.Quite the refreshing element of the night, I am sure that all the attendants would not have a problem with them performing another 40 minutes!
Then came Full House Brew Crew. Nice sound, solid, and although they could be easily categorized as stoner, they reminded me more of a mix of Pantera with Black Label Society. A nice performance here, groovy, they conveyed their rhythm to the crowd, but they did not persuade me as much as the previous band. However, this is just the beginning in their career; there is always time for improvement. Furthermore, it would be really nice for them if the singer stopped copying James Hetfield. We are talking about a blatant copy paste here, from the tone, to the way he pronounces the “oh yeah” and all that stuff, it is just too obvious. Create something yours my friend, I’m sure it will benefit the band in general.
After all these nice supports it was time for the headliners. I had heard many complaints concerning the new singer, Apollo Papathanasiou, who took the position of JB after his departure in 2010 and I want to see for myself if these complaints had any value. Well, they didn’t. Yes, with Apollo behind the microphone they sound different from the band that we had grown accustomed with, but since when does “different” means “bad”? He nailed all the songs with his own grace. An exceptional voice that in many parts reminded me of our late king, Ronnie James Dio, may the gods of metal allow me this comparison. Exceptional connection with the crowd too, he was just amazing. He guided us towards many sing-alongs for that matter and was always full of good “mojo” and appetite for rock and roll. When it comes to the other guys to the band, what is it that I could say? Crystal clear sound for all of them, Ammot spitting solos and lead rythms and melodies all the time, with technique and passion alike, that mountain of a bassist they have roaring towards the crowd, lifting us to our feet and delivering exploding bass lines to our ears, the drummer playing like he had come out of a jungle and carrying a tribal feeling inside of him! But the man who stole the show was Per Wiberg slamming those keyboards like a madman, with such ferocity and a “come on people, let’s dance now!!!” attitude that I’ve never seen before in a keyboard player, what an amazing musician! This show had it all: Drum solos, keyboards solos, an out of this world psychedelic jamming during the encore, you name it! “Left brain ambassadors”, “Euphoria”, “One man Army”, “Young Man, Old soul” and “Mantra” were the highlights of their performance. “Angel of betrayal” however was not played to our great disappointment. Come on guys, this is the one song that you should never leave out! Also if you want to know how the new songs sound on stage, they ROCK. “Turn the tides” for example sounded so colorful and uplifting showing in that way the road Spiritual Beggars has chosen to follow. A more 70’s rock, groovy and funky approach is their new outfit and I’ll be damned if it doesn’t suit them just fine.
From the harrowing doom of their 1990 debut, "Lost Paradise", to 1991's genre-defining"Gothic", to 1995's break-out masterpiece "Draconian Times", to 1997's electronically tinged"One Second", to 2007's return to a heavier form "In Requiem", to last year's opus "Tragic Idol", British gothic metal pioneers PARADISE LOST have continued to evolve since their inception in 1988, inspiring countless artists throughout the years. To celebrate their influence on the scene, a special compilation will be released this fall to commemorate the band's 25th-anniversary landmark.
Entitled "Tragic Illusion 25 (The Rarities)" , this album will be released on October 21 in Europe (digitally on October 29 in North America) and features artwork by Parisian designerValnoir, who has worked with artists such as ORPHANED LAND, MORBID ANGEL, WATAIN, and more than 150 others. All tracks found on the compilation are previously released rarities — except the new track "Loneliness Remains", and newly recorded "Gothic 2013" and "Our Saviour 2013".
"Tragic Illusion 25 (The Rarities)" track listing:
01. Loneliness Remains
02. Never Take Me Alive (SPEAR OF DESTINY cover version)
03. Ending Through Changes
04. The Last Fallen Saviour
05. Last Regret (Lost in Prague Orchestra Mix)
06. Faith Divides Us - Death Unites Us (Lost in Prague Orchestra Mix)
07. Cardinal Zero
08. Back On Disaster
09. Sons Of Perdition
10. Godless
11. Missing (EVERYTHING BUT THE GIRL cover version)
12. Silent In Heart
13. Gothic 2013
14. Our Saviour 2013
The song "Our Saviour 2013" can now be streamed in the YouTube clip below.
PARADISE LOST's Aaron Aedy (guitar) comments: “The years surrounding our formation in the 20th century would have earmarked this as a B-sides collection. These were the songs that were left over from an album recording session you couldn't fit on to the sound quality restrictive, optimal length of both sides of a vinyl LP. You then usually used these for the flip side of your single as a nice extra for fans and also perhaps, as an incentive for the collectors to purchase to help any important charting or sales which could facilitate radio airplay, the best and most important way for your band to heard at that time.
"Yes, my friends, it's hard to imagine now, there was a time before the Internet! A time when, even during the recording and writing of songs for our 'Lost Paradise' album, tape-trading demos and live tracks on the underground scene via mail (the real physical post kind!) were essential to a band's chance of being known by the people who would 'get it.' The magazinesMetal Hammer, Metal Forces and Kerrang! also had a couple of champions of the underground scene too, helping bands like ourselves be known on a wider scale, but rarer still indeed back then were the audio and visual outlets. In the U.K., we had the legendary 'Friday Rock Show With Tommy Vance', who introduced myself and many others to a lot of the bands they went on to love for life. Later, TV shows 'The Powerhour', 'Raw Power' and, of course, 'Headbangers Ball' on MTV. All, of course, pre-empted that Smörgåsbord of information, the Internet, for the discerning and hungry-for-more rock music fans to feast upon.
"Twenty five years has seen a lot of change, not just musically for the band — take 'Our Saviour' and 'Faith Divides Us, Death Unites Us', for instance. The Internet has broadened the choice of music we can readily hear enormously, and more importantly, hear and see for ourselves to form our own opinion — not just what the larger commercial companies and stations want us to hear!
"Added to our extra tracks from the past, we've included the recent re-recordings of 'Gothic'and 'Our Saviour'. This is something as a musician you find a strange experience.
"We as a band have always been an album rather a single band, and re-recording old songs is most often best left alone — but when we rehearsed 'Our Saviour', a song long lost from our live sets for a good twenty years, we found it pretty exciting and fun! We decided before hitting the studio that we would not record it as a perfect 21st-century studio version, as I don't feel this song would benefit from it (in fact more so, lose its original charm), but we decided to just do it quick and almost demo speed. Whilst recording to capture the most raw element, we drafted in our old friend and producer Simon Efemey, who worked on our'Shades Of God', 'Icon' and 'Draconian Times' recordings to capture this, which whilst working to make it sound raw, made it fun too! Don't think of the re-recordings as replacements for our originals, but just as five blokes having fun and re-visiting the past in the studio.
John Parks of Legendary Rock Interviews recently conducted an interview with former PANTERA and current DOWN frontman Philip Anselmo. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.
Legendary Rock Interviews: What surprised me about [your debut solo album] "Walk Through Exits Only" is that, with all due respect to DOWN and all of your other projects, this little blast of energy feels like the most out-and-out "fun" record you've been involved with since PANTERA's "Reinventing The Steel".
Anselmo: Oh, thank you so much, brother; I really appreciate that. I appreciate that so fuckin' much. I wanted to show people a different side of the old sense of humor of me, in a way. There's a lot of tongue-in-cheek, sarcastic fucking things that I say on the record that could be taken one way or another. I think that sometimes when you listen to a band or a performer who's supposed to be very rebellious or anti-authority, sometimes it can be a bit of a letdown, so to have that shock value back in there. Take the songtitles, or the whole fuckin album title, "Walk Through Exits Only". I'm not the type of motherfucker that's gonna sit here and spoonfeed the fuckin listener. I'd rather have people take something and listen to it and make it their own, really. Sometimes I feel compelled just to write a line that could mean a hundred things to a hundred different people. Let me put it to you this way: I like to architect things lyrically and let people themselves finish the building I've begun, so to speak.
Legendary Rock Interviews: I'm glad you mentioned the title track. That is just so fitting, and obviously, it could be interpreted as a classic "fuck you," but there's music history commentary and all sorts of other shit I'm reading into it as well.
Anselmo: When you take the hook line from the verses, where I say, "It's ruined, everybody ruins music..." For me, it's, like, you're always gonna have your critics. You can name any band that puts out any record, it's gonna be loved and it's gonna be hated. Music's like food — you can love it or hate it or be indifferent to it or you grow to like it eventually. So I know that no matter what I did, I could have just fuckin' done a violin-and-spoon record with nothing but yodeling, and some people would have loved it and some people would have fuckin hated it. God knows we put a lot of effort into this record and all that, but still, at the end of the day, it's up to the people to make up their own minds as to how they take it. For me, it's like, fuck it. It's gonna be what it is and people are gonna feel they way they're gonna fuckin feel about it. What can I do about it? Nothing. Put one foot in front of the other and keep on fuckin truckin'; that's what I'm gonna do.
Legendary Rock Interviews: You respect PANTERA's fanbase immensely. Do you ever feel like you are walking a line between understanding what it is they love about you and following your heart?
Anselmo: Not at all, not at all, because honestly, for me, PANTERA is a sacred thing. It's a very sacred thing for fans and for myself, because the musicians that encompass that fuckin band are still, bar none, the greatest musicians I have ever played with, and I think that the approach to the songwriting is very, very different than anything I've ever done, especially because of that particular talent in PANTERA. So, it's a sacred thing and I've never, ever, ever gonna tried to take the place of a PANTERA and I never will.
