Far From Refuge

This weekend was one built for the gods of metal. After a long week in the office, I needed some sort of release. Friday night I went with Jeff, Amy, and Heather to the Grove in Anaheim to see As I Lay Dying. Yes, a very metal name. As I Lay Dying happen to be Christian metal act, which sounds like a bit of a conundrum but it works well I think. Anyways, one of the opening acts of the show was Bring Me the Horizon from England. I have been really digging on their new cd for the past couple weeks and was even more excited to see them than AILD.

Other than crappy sound, Bring Me the Horizon blew me away. For an opening band, the crowd was really into it as well. After much head banging and rocking they left me very satisfied. I thought they were going to steal the show to be honest. Then AILD came on. Holy crap. They were filming a live DVD of the performance so I think the crowd was getting into it even more than normal. Needless to say, they melted my face with their constant rocking and shredding. After their last song, Jeff, Amy, and I decided to move to the front, as we were enjoying from afar and knew they would do an encore. By the way, can just say that encore's are ridiculous? I hate them. Its like bands now include it on their set list and plan to come out again. I would refuse to do them if I were in a band. Its so dumb. They leave the stage like they are done full well knowing that they are coming back out. It really gives it away because they lights remain off and the house music doesn't come on. I digress. So, we decided to move up for the last few songs. They played two of my favorites for the encore. I haven't been in a mosh pit since probably high school. Probably for a couple reasons. I used to go in them in high school when I was big into punk music. Punk music probably sounds worse live than on the cd. So you really arent missing much by going in the pit. Now that I usually see bands that actually have...talent?....I like to sit back and watch and enjoy the music. So after i don't know how many years of not going in a mosh pit i finally returned on Friday night. All I gotta say is good times! I had a lot of fun. I forgot how gross and sweaty you get sure, but it was a lot of fun.

Last night we went to LA to see In Flames at the brand new Club Nokia. Unfortunately I had a headache from the get go. Listening to some crappy opening French metal band play for 30 minutes when you have a headache is not fun. In Flames rocked my world. My neck was already hurting from the previous night, but I rocked out some more to In Flames. In Flames is a sweet Swedish metal band who pretty much wrote the book on metal from that area. They have been around for like 15 years and have a huge catalog of albums that even I don't know. Probably about half the songs they played I didnt know, but the other half I did know were rad. My face was melted once again. I'm pretty burned out now. Luckily its only a 3 day week!