All That Remains with Lacuna Coil
Date: 10/16/09
Place: House Of Blues, West Hollywood CA
Review by ~ Aniruddh (Andrew) Bansal

The show started at 8 o clock with the opening band Taking Dawn, a band from Las Vegas. They were quite impressive and displayed good talent and energy in their show. The front man even stepped down from the stage and went into the mosh pit himself. Both musically as well as visually they were an entertaining act. I wish them all the best as they are definitely a promising band. They are certainly taking the right steps, signed on by Roadrunner Records, going on tour with Dragonforce and now going on tour with All That Remains. This will ensure that people from diverse genres like power metal and metalcore get to know of them. Their debut album comes out next year and I'll be one to keep an eye out for that one.

The next band was called Maylene And The Sons Of Disaster who are a Christian/Southern rock band from Alabama. I had never really heard 'Christian Rock' before so I wasn't expecting anything from them. They turned out to be pretty good actually, even though the singer looked too drunk to be able to put together a performance with his band mates. But I guess it seemed to work for him and that's what matters. He was complaining a whole lot though, about lack of room on stage, about photographers taking up space, etc etc. Anyway, it was a decent show by them.

After waiting for a few minutes, it was time to finally see Lacuna Coil. I always wanted to see the lovely Cristina Scabbia and her band in a live concert and I was glad to finally get this chance to do just that! The band appeared on stage among very loud cheers which became even louder when Cristina came on stage. They kicked off the set with the song Survive from their highly successful latest album Shallow Life, the album which they are here to promote. The crowd's response was great to say the least. The band continued playing another song off of the same album, the song named Underdog. Another good song I must say! Cristina and Andrea on vocals certainly managed to get the crowd pumped and excited for these opening songs. They went back to the Karmacode album for the next song Fragments Of Faith, another song which was well received by the young and lively crowd at the House of Blues tonight. They followed this one with the song I'm Not Afraid.

Andrea said 'Now we're going to play a song that you should be familiar with, and we expect some loud singing on the chorus'. The crowd definitely gave them that, as the song in question was Heaven's A Lie, probably the most popular Lacuna Coil tune. This was the song that introduced me to Lacuna Coil a few years back and I was happy to see the band playing it live in front of me. This amazing song was followed by Fragile off of Karmacode. Then they did a couple more songs from Shallow Life namely I Won't Tell You and Spellbound. They thanked the crowd for coming out and supporting their music. Cristina summed it up perfectly by saying, 'For most people, Hollywood is about flashes and lights but for us Hollywood is about true heavy metal fans'. With these grateful words the band played the last song in their set Our Truth. I would give the band lots of kudos for being a very good live act, especially to Cristina for having the kind of authority over the crowd that she had tonight. Andrea did a splendid job as well, as did the other members of the band. To be honest, my interest in gothic/alternative metal has faded in recent years as I've become almost completely an 'old school' metal fan, but Lacuna Coil was one of the first metal bands that I had heard so it was a pleasure for me seeing their show for the first time.

Here's their set list in order:

1. Survive
2. Underdog
3. Fragments Of Faith
4. I'm Not Afraid
5. Heaven's A Lie
6. Fragile
7. I Won't Tell You
8. Spellbound
9. Our Truth

All that Remains hit the stage at 10:50 with the song Before The Damned. The crowd went literally wild. They were jumping up and down together which was an amazing sight. The mosh pits were intense. There were plenty of crowd surfers as well. This is what I like about a young crowd. I've been to shows headlined by much bigger bands, but sometimes the crowd participation leaves a lot to be desired, the reason being the generally 'older' crowd. It was not the case at this show though. It was definitely the best crowd I've seen here at the Hollywood House Of Blues and it has to be up there with the most energetic ones I've ever seen. Getting back to the set, the second song was Not Alone from the Fall Of Ideals album. Another song off of the same album Become The Catalyst was next.

They continued playing more songs from Fall Of Ideals including Air That I Breathe and The Weak Willed. It was back to the Overcome album for the next song Forever In Your Hands. More awesome songs like Six and Focus Shall Not Fail followed. The songs so far had been along a similar pattern, starting with heavy riffs, growls, head banging followed by melodic riffs and solos by their lead guitarist Oli Herbert. But it made for a good live show and it was very entertaining for the crowd. Philip Labonte on vocals gave a terrific performance, unlike last year's support gig with In Flames in which he sounded like he was under the weather for the most part of that show. Jeanne Sagan was incredible on the bass and her growls to back up Philip's vocals were quite intense and fierce. Mike Martin looked effortless on the other guitar, so did Jason Costa on drums. Philip gave lots of little speeches and rants in between songs, including one in which he said something along the lines of 'I wish people would buy a shirt instead of buying drinks worth $8 and $10 each'. Generally, he came off as a sensible bloke. He conducted the 'wall of death' in the most perfect manner I've ever witnessed and everyone who participated in it seemed to enjoy it without getting hurt.

They did a few more songs before closing the main set with the popular Two Weeks. The encore was the song Indictment. It was a very good headlining show from All That Remains. I was in two minds about going to this show but I'm glad I did, because no matter what we think of this kind of genre of metal and whether or not we listen to it at home, this band does put on a great show for everyone who pays to watch them. Horns up!

Here's their set list in order:

1. Before The Damned
2. Not Alone
3. Become The Catalyst
4. The Air That I Breathe
5. The Weak Willed
6. Forever In Your Hands
7. Six
8. Focus Shall Not Fail
9. Tattered
10. This Calling
11. Undone
12. Days Without
13. Two Weeks

Encore:
14. Indictment

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