it’s interesting to see a girl decked out like betty page at concerts. it’s interesting to see girls dressed like the pin-up queen in any situation for that matter, especially when this girl is punching emo kids in the face. this wasn’t some sort of crazed declaration of war on the entire group mind you, there was only one and this one in specific definitely had it coming. don’t get me wrong though, beating the hell out of kids at metal shows isn’t usually how we get our kicks but there is something about skanking that just makes everyone else around you immediatly pissed off. especially when your the only person flailing like and idiot at a “Protest The Hero” show. so she had to do what any decent (or decently drunk) person would do after being kicked in the legs repeatedly…knock him on his ass. in reality i think he fell into back into a mosh-pit but its all the same in the end.
of course all of this was possible thanks to a limo driver (of all people). its not as if he has off to the sidelines eggin’ us on, but we never would have made it to The Sound Academy if he didn’t have such great timing. like i mentioned already…we were drunk. of course this wasn’t really apparent to us until we tried to negotiate our way to a small house party afterward. none the less, downtown toronto never seemed this interesting.
we’d been waiting by a bus stop with a gaggle of other fans unaware the TTC had taken it upon themselves to go on strike. at this point there were roughly ten of us in total. kim and i had found two randoms from ajax while gettin off the go train, and the rest seemed to come to us. its interesting how you can always tell who else downtown is trying to find their the same concert. your drunk, their drunk – you’ve basically become walking magnets. the point is, a limo pulled up and kim talked him into taking us all to the venue for 50 bucks. not too shabby eh? i know. the best part about all of this is that a friend of ours was supposed to pick us up and give us a ride the the show but had figured we headed out early and left us at home without transport. so you can imagine the look on his face when we finally showed up, in style. or maybe you can’t. don’t blame me for your lack of imagination.
getting in was no problem. quick pad down and what not then straight to the front. general admission is great because there’s no reason you cant make it to the stage. if you don’t its either because your in crutches or blind. of course, i have seen both right up by the gate so maybe its just a matter of will power. currently i’m yawning but that’s not a very fair assesment of how much fun the night had been thus far. as far as any of us could tell, “Chiodos” was the headlining band with “Protest The Hero” opening up the night. neither of us were planning on staying around for the rest of the show once protest was finished but things didn’t exactly turn out that way at all. the whole concert seemed a little reminiscent of Ozzy Ozbourne’s 1986 tour with Metallica. halfway through the tour Ozzy had apparently realised that most of his audience was going home after Metallica had finished. so he did the only thing he could do. he changed the bill and opened for Metallica the rest of the tour. Could you really blame him though? they had just released Master Of Puppets and now had the three best metal albums under their belt. seems better than playing for a handful of fans whose combined age is most likely less the amount of money they had all spent on drugs that night.
NOISE
NOISE
NOISE
and then Protest takes the stage! this is of course after I had already spotted Arif Mirabdolbaghi (protest’s bass player) in the audience and interupted his conversation, with i imagine his girlfriend, to tell him he was incredible. sorry Arif. But they came out blairing the instrumental found at the last two minutes of “Palms Read” from their third album “Fortress”. Buy it. You’ve never heard another album that’ll make your neighbours call the cops at 4 in the afternoon. Its that intense. Here’s a good example. When we had first gone to see Protest at the Kool Haus (after talking our way into free tickets from Edge 102 fm) the band was so loud we had to move a little further back because the speakers were giving kim chest pains.
The funny part about Protest The Hero is that everyone pretends their first album(A Calculated Use Of Sound) doesn’t exist. them especially. at the end of the show they had started to play some forgettable tune from it and 10 seconds in stopped abruptly, laughed, and pumped out “Bloodmeat”. they did however play a few songs from “Kezia” (including No Stars Over Bethlehem, once a live rarity but i’ve seen it twice now) which everyone went nuts for. especially all the skanking emos behind us with bleeding noises.
All in all it was the best show we’ve been to in a while but that will only last so long. i mean come on, The Mars Volta? that’s bound to be the best show of the year! At least until Alice Cooper…in October.
