Show started at 7pm and if you've ever been in MN in the summer you know it doesn't get dark til close to 10pm for a few months, so the opener, Bleak Sabbath (yes, a Black Sabbath tribute band) had to bring the darkness in the light of day. These guys are crazy-talented, every one of them a master of their instrument and with a huge love for the source material you could close your eyes and easily imagine you were at a Black Sabbath gig.
The guitar player from Bleak is also the guitar player for the headliner, so it worked out well gear-wise. The venue is on the smaller side (more on that later) and we shared a lot of cabinets and the drum set just to make life easier for everyone for changeover.
Bleak played for a little over an hour and definitely gave everyone a great Sabbath-fix. Perfect opener for the Evening of Doom show.
We had about 15 minutes to get our gear in place and get ready. Didn't get much of a sound check (as much our fault as also a victim of circumstances) and with that came my first downside. My live tone is dialed in and I use a 410 and 115 to get it. The 115 gives all the low end rumble while the 410 is the punch in the face. Well, we decided to build cab stacks on each side of the stage to frame the banner and I specifically bought a longer speaker cable to reach from my amp to the far cab (the 115). When the time came, the cable was about a foot too short. So, in a split decision moment, I decided to roll without the 115 rather than move it closer. Probably would have been fine, except I didn't adjust the volume on my amp to compensate for only one cab. According to folks in the crowd (including a sound engineer we're working with) it sounded great still, albeit a little quieter than I would have liked. The other downer was I couldn't hear my vocals at all on stage, which led to a less than great performance - although the crowd didn't seem to think so.
We hammered through our set list: Ashes - Blood in the Frost - In Cygnus - Insurgent - K.I.A. in what seemed like no time at all. Drummer later told me we played the songs faster than normal (probably just excited to be on stage finally) but the crowd loved us anyway. Overall, we had a few bumps and warts along the way, but did better than I expected for a brand new band playing our first gig. J, the guitar player on the right in the above photo, just joined about 2 months ago, and the other two bands have been together for years essentially (minus one new member), so it was cool that we held our own.
Once we were done, the headliner, Living Through Ghosts, took over. One of my friends used to be their singer, a few years back when they released their first album. He's since moved on to a local death metal band called Synopsis. LTG debuted their new singer, Felicia Wray, and she kicked @$$. She also fronts a local Dio tribute band, and does it very, very well. So, imagine a female fronted, incredibly talented doom band and you get the picture. Epic is a great way to describe them.
They're working on a new album that they mentioned they hope to release by years' end. If ya love doom, keep your ears out for that one - the songs they played from it were incredible. And, the GAS ignited for the guitar on the right side of this pic. An electric blue Phoenix with chrome hardware. It looked amazing and sounded huge.
Once the night ended, we had a lot of people give us praise, including members of both bands and the venue. The following morning, I got a barrage of texts and FB messages from people raving about it, sending pix they took, etc. Overall, it looks like this fever dream was worth the effort cause man, there's nothing like the feeling of a killer show. From my not so great math, my best guesstimate was about 50+ people came out. Perfect crowd size for a place like that and our first gig.
As for the venue, it's on the smaller side (as you can see in the pix). It's called Klash Drums or Klash Coffee. Confusing? Well, they started as just a drum store. Then began giving drum lessons (my drummer is one of their alum), then they took over the coffee house next door and started doing shows just over the last few months. So, we were the first doom gig they'd ever had. Just over the past month they've begun giving guitar lessons and hope to pair their guitar students with their drum students and begin spawning bands - while allowing those pairings to put on shows there to build their confidence and hone their skills - sort of like a House of Rock thing. Pretty cool to see someone investing in the local music scene so heavily.
Not sure if/when we'll play there again, but it was a great first show.
Next up, we have a gig in mid-August, where we'll debut a new song, Whispered Lies, and add Armor Up to the set list. The one we played the other day was about 30 minutes. With the two added songs, we'll be over 40. Trying to build to have 45-60 minute sets, as we had folks saying they wanted us to play longer than we did. Guess it's better to leave 'em wanting more, right?
