Anyone at Gojira/Mastodon tonight?
I was. I was also at Amon Amarth on Sunday.
Man I loll'ed at seeing The Roundhouse after being closed for almost 2 years, it looks almost the same. Slapped some wood panelling around the place, some new furniture outside and moved the merch stand to a hole in the wall. Apparently upstairs has a bar but I did not go up there. It wasn't bad, but I expected more after such a long closure.
Anyway on to the gigs.
Sabaton opened for Amon Amarth and I have never listened to this band and I am not really big on power metal but they were fun to watch. Probably would not go and listen to them offline though.
Amon Amarth absolutely killed it. After seeing them twice at Soundwave opening the main stage at like 11am, it was awesome to finally see them headline inside at night. Heaps of energy, sounded great and you could tell they really wanted to be there and appreciated how many people turned up on a Sunday. I even saw two blokes dressed in full Viking clothes complete with facepaint and faux animals skins.
Gojira was the next night and I am a massive fan of them and had seen them open for Mastodon before which set a pretty high bar. I thought they were just as good as the first time I saw them and their new songs mix really well into their setlist. I will never tire of hearing and seeing Flying Whales live. I think they played just over an hour, I was kinda expecting longer since the gig was promoted as both bands playing "full sets" but that's ok I guess.
Mastodon crushed it. They did have some classic Big Top sound problems though and Brent was absolutely fuming a lot of the time. He was shitty about how his guitar sounded and also his mic volume. At the end of the gig he instantly just vanished off stage whilst Brann talked to the crowd. To be honest the sound sounded pretty fine to me, but I was up close with (high quality) ear plugs in so someone closer to the sound stage might be a better judge. They played a really good varied setlist and I enjoyed hearing their newer stuff along side of classics like Blood and Thunder and Mother Puncher (I will never get sick of Mother Puncher so good).
It has been a fucking long time since I did 2 school night gigs in a row!