Dragonforce!

#20
Thursday, May 4th
Fierce Allegiance
Sanctity
Protest the Hero
DRAGONFORCE! (duh)
stupid Jaxx
West Springfield, VA

Oh, so many reasons to not to go to this show (including nose/throat and ear infections), but it was Dragonforce! I would go through the fire and the flames to see them! After 3IoB and HORSE, I have been waiting all my life to see them! Or at least all of the last several months of my life, at least. Oh man...

So I don't know if it was all the illsnesses or all the medication, but the first couple of bands just flew by. Fierce Allegiance is from DC. They were pretty good. Better than many locals I've had the misfortune of seeing at Jaxx.

Sanctity are the latest darling of Roadrunner records. Maybe they'll actually promote this band...they can be the next Trivium! Except better and heavier and with a redheaded guy.

Then, completely out of character with the rest of the bands (I mean, one of them had a 'fro), Canada's own Protest the Hero. I loved it (and think I maybe saw them before?). It was sort of Dillinger/HORSE-reminescent, what with the screaming and all. It was much more in the vein of stuff I usually listen to, though probably not the rest of the crowd. People were actually polite though - there was no heckling or whatever. The disinterested just went to the bar. Lovely. They had really cool shirts too.

Finally - after their female (!) sound engineer teased the crowd several times by stopping the between-set music, only to restart it seconds later - DRAGONFORCE! Eeeee! They have the drums and keyboard elevated and they had a box at the front for ZP and the guitarists to flit over the crowd. I can't believe how well those learn-from-home Bon Jovi courses work. At one point ZP was even wearing a cowboy hat and standing back-to-back with Sam - tres Jovi. In total, I think their set was about an hour and a half. They played several new songs in addition to the 'hits' (even though they've never toured the US before). I don't really know what else to say right now. It was awesome! Oh, and one thing I didn't mention was that, after the first 45 minutes or so when everyone has to pee or do whatever they do, Vadim comes out and does this whole crazy Atari-esque keyboard solo thing where he's jumping around like crazy and then the guitarists come back and play some 'improv' stuff with him until finally the drummer comes back and they apologize for not having a 10 minute drum solo.

[On another note, I am way ahead of the past two years on terms of show-going. In 2004, I didn't hit 20 shows until August (and that was including the first Coheed week ever). Last year, I was only at 16 in May (and only saw one show in May). Not bad.]