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Live Reviews : Children Of Bodom, Eye Of The Enemy & Emergency Gate @ The Hi-Fi, Brisbane 10/05/2014

By on May 11, 2014

Images:  Amanda Brenchley
Words: Andrew Kapper

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Although they might be a long way from home, Germany’s Emergency Gate get a impressively warm reception from the already filling Hi-Fi surroundings. Soundwise they’re a pretty safe choice of support for this evening’s headliners, with a fairly stock standard Euro-Metal vibe – clean/growled vocals, heavy guitars, sprinklings of keys and straight forward song structures. So, there aren’t any new musical territories being discovered by the German’s, but what they do is pump up those who have made the trip in early, and after tossing a handful of promo CSS into the crowd after their set, it’s almost a guarantee that they would have picked up more than a couple of new fans this evening.  However, the one (completely trivial) criticism that is painfully obvious during their set is usage of a keytar – it is seriously impossible to make those things look cool.

Emergency Gate

Emergency Gate

Sounding like a thrashier version of Lamb of God, Melbourne’s Eye of the Enemy turn up the heavy, which works well with the previous act – almost as if you combined the two supports you would get close to Bodom’s sound. Playing a fair number of tracks off of their new LP “The Vengeance Paradox”, you can tell that the guitarists and bass player are throwing out some technically furious riffs, but it frustratingly turns into a wave of noise thanks to a brutal mix. Towards the end of Eye of the Enemy’s set their songs do become a tad repetitive, but it’s a tight, professionally well oiled set from the Melbourne five piece.

Eye of the Enemy

Eye of the Enemy

Kicking off with the cracking “Sixpounder”, Finnish heroes Children of Bodom start their set with bang, and the pumping mosh responds immediately with waves of energy and movement that lasts for the entirety of the evening. Aside from the three new tracks taken from last years “Halo of Blood”, Bodom’s set is straight up hit after hit – from their early more shreddy material to the mid 2000’s more groove and thrash orientated songs. Alexi Laiho (and the oft-forgotten Roope Latvala) are modern day guitar heroes, cut from the same cloth as George Lynch and Yngwie Malmsteen, effortlessly firing off technically dazzling fretwork – which the pocket sized Laiho does whilst barking out lead vocal lines.

Children of Bodom

Children of Bodom

It’s a pain that for most of the set both the guitar and keyboard solo sections get buried in the mix, with only the high end notes and harmonic screams really cutting through the mix, with most of the nuances getting swallowed up. To be fair though, the band don’t do themselves a lot of favour by absolutely blazing through a number of tracks, with “Bodom Beach Terror” in particular several bpms faster than the studio version, while later in the set “Blooddrunk” is almost chaotically loose. Whether or not this has to do with the Finns infamous drinking and partying tendencies or not is hard to tell, but fortunately the following track “Every Time I Die” redeems the band flawlessly with dancing dual guitar and keyboard lines, as does the neo-classical solo section of main set closer “Downfall”. “In Your Face” finishes the show for this evening, and while it wasn’t a mind-blowing evening with the Finnish Hate Crew, a decent set from Children of Bodom is better than most metal acts on the tour circuit.