The Metal Spectacle Of Avatar Country At Cleveland House Of Blues

- advertisement -

All Photos By Geoff Ketler/Aces High Photography

With a growing audience in the states, Swedish metallers AVATAR announced a headline tour in support of their fresh offering, Avatar Country. The tour was billed as “The King & Avatar” – given the concept behind Avatar Country, this was self-explanatory. Featured as “The King” would be guitarist Jonas “Kungen” Jarlsby; playing into the imagery and content of the album that was then easily transformed into a thrilling and at some points, gimmicky live show.

The clown makeup and carnival-esque appearance of AVATAR made it easy to pair this tour with a literal carnival sideshow. HELLZAPOPPIN is an eclectic mix of magicians and performers attempting crazy and grotesque stunts presented as if we had all somehow arrived at Coney Island. The host, ”The Govna” Bryce Groves brought out act after act. Ryan Stock swallowed swords, cracked jokes and balanced a chainsaw in his teeth. Short E Dangerously walked on broken glass with his hands and magician Dan Sperry pulled off an amazing performance with doves that blew the audience away. This was my first experience with a circus side-show opening up a concert, I felt it was odd, but fitting and definitely set the tone for the rest of the evening.

Up next was the rockabilly trio, THE BRAINS from Montreal. Rockabilly seems to be the new hipster thing to do these days. I see a lot of rockabilly/psychobilly bands cropping up, but for me, if you plan on heading down this road, you will have to be compared with THE NEKROMANTIX and that is a tall task. It can be catchy, but if you don’t sound original, it just becomes a muddled mess of swing music and dyed black pompadours. Maybe rockabilly just isn’t my thing, but THE BRAINS just did not do it for me. I will say this, drummer Phil The Beast played the entire set with his left foot – I saw him later and his right ankle was immobilized in a brace; an impressive feat. What the band lacked in originality, they made up in raw energy. It was almost like a classic punk set. Although many of the songs ran together and sounded the same, it was entertaining and engaging.

Setlist:

• “Black Jack Death Bet”
• “Out In The Dark”
• “Stay Back”
• “Hell N’ Back”
• “Six Rounds”
• “Take What I Want (Souvenir Of Monte Cristo)”
• “The Witch”
• “Misery”
• “We’ll Rise”
• “More Brains”
• “Screaming”