Review: As I Lay Dying/Throwdown/All That Remains/Winter Solstice, 4/18/05

#13
April 18, 2005
As I Lay Dying
Throwdown
All That Remains
Winter Solstice
The Ottobar, Baltimore MD

It's so hard to get to shows on Monday night, especially with the traffic and the need to watch my tape of 24 when I get home. Ugh...

Anyway, I missed Winter Solstice because of the traffic and the line outside. They're from VA and I think I might have seen them once at Jaxx or something. They sounded OK from outside.

This was my first time seeing/hearing (of) All That Remains. They were pretty good - their record company calls them metalcore, so I'm going with that too. My notes say they have excellent guitarists and guitar harmonies. Somebody was yelling at the singer to take off his shirt and he finally did. I don't know if it really added anything to their performance (not that it was a bad thing). Since 'hardcore kids and metal kids hate each other' there was a fight during their set and they stopped and waited until it was all cleared up before they kept playing, which was nice. I liked that they had a variety of vocal stylings even though it all sounded pretty much the same. I would definitely check them out again. Special thanks to their metal-dude guitarist Oli, who answered my one ridiculous question: MOS: Who would you like to see in a steel-cage match against Throwdown? Oli: Hatebreed
4/5

Next up was Throwdown. The last time (#28) I saw them I was sooo excited because I love their album Haymaker and short, angry, tattooed men but then came the bitter disappointment of the live show. I don't know how to explain my reaction but this time was a little better because I was expecting nothing. I blame Trustkill Records (I feel almost exactly the same about Poison the Well). Maybe it would help if they were all shirtless...
2.7941/5

[Two guys in front of me were having a conversation about shoes - one has a photo of his shoe collection as his cell phone wallpaper. WTF?]

Finally the big headliners, CA's As I Lay Dying. The first time I 'saw' AILD was with In Flames and somebody I didn't stick around to watch (Killswitch Engage?) at the 9:30 Club. It was a sold-out show and so I couldn't actually see AILD, although I enjoyed listening to their set. Since The Ottobar is about 1/5 the size of the 9:30 Club, this time I actually got to watch the band (when I wasn't watching out for crowd surfers/stage divers) so it was pretty exciting. Anyway, As I Lay Dying is so awesome and I would highly recommend them to anyone who likes any genre of heavy music. Unfortunately I didn't stick around to try and talk to them, although I had some excellent questions since I recently read the book. My mother is a fish!
5/5