Earlier this weekend, I did part 1 of my concert season reviews. Today, I’m going to do part 2 and get myself all the way caught up.
The fourth concert I went to this year was A Perfect Circle. I’d describe myself as a casual fan of APC, as they have some songs I like, but nothing that really made me want to rush out and buy all their albums. Being a casual fan was probably not good enough to really enjoy their show. In fact, I didn’t enjoy myself all that much. They played showtunes from Broadway musicals in the interludes before the opener, which aren’t really my thing and were a prelude to irritations to come.
The opener was Red Bacteria Vacuum, an all-female, Japanese death metal trio that I’d never heard or heard of. They get points for uniqueness, I can’t deny that. I never expected to see such a band. They also get points for some good death metal fundamentals, such as a solid death metal growl and the fact that, if you don’t know the words beforehand, you probably could not only fail to understand the words, but in this case, it was hard to even tell what language they were using at times. Their English wasn’t the greatest, which hurt their ability to interact with the audience, but that’ll come with time and they did a pretty good job of getting the crowd going for APC, though I wasn’t swayed enough to go out to buy their album.
After more showtunes, APC came on. I didn’t enjoy their performance at all. Sure, APC has some pretty good songs that I like, but they’re not that good live. I was put off by the fact that they didn’t even acknowledge the fans until they’d played about five or six songs. I also don’t remember once hearing a simple, “Thank you to the fans for coming out tonight and making it possible for us do what we love,” or anything like that, which I found somewhat arrogant. I can’t recall ever seeing a show without that, even in the local music scenes. It’s just good manners to do so. They didn’t really give off any energy to captivate you during the show, either. Additionally, they were drinking heavily on stage. I found this insulting. I’m far from uptight in this sense and I can recognize how some fans may appreciate this, but not me to this degree. A couple drinks, maybe a smoke on stage is fine by me and can definitely add to the performers’ aura, but if I’m going to pay to see you perform, at least have the decency to not be totally drunk on stage. Maybe they need the alcohol to unlock their best performance, I don’t know. Yes, it was their last performance on the tour, so they wanted to cut loose, but you have to take care of business first. I get that they were trying to ‘set a mood’, but it just didn’t work for me.
The music was solid, but the stage presence and ambiance were beyond awful. By the end of the night, I was in a fairly sour mood. I found the show, on the whole, insulting and it was possibly the single worst concert I’ve ever been to. If my girlfriend didn’t enjoy herself so much, I would’ve found the night to be a complete waste of money. Either way, I’ll never buy another APC album and I’ll never go see them live ever again. Overall, the best parts of that night for me were dinner beforehand, my girlfriend enjoying herself, and the great escape we made after the concert (getting stuck in a lot of traffic would not have helped my view of the night).
My next concert will be the Rockstar Uproar Tour, but that’s not for another few weeks.
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