Job For A Cowboy, All Shall Perish, Animosity, Annotations Of An Autopsy – Station 4 – St. Paul, MN

I’ll try to be quick about this show. This is a serious tech metal bill. All of the bands are super talented musicians, so there wasn’t even a question whether these guys were good. Hate Eternal was supposed to play, but cancelled “due to an injury” according to signage posted outside. Bummer, as I was looking forward to seeing Derek Roddy play some smoking fast drums.

The first band, Annotations Of An Autopsy, is from England. These guys can play. They’re very technical with some pig squeal vocals and low growls (like most of the bands). They had fun on stage and seemed genuinely surprised at the crowd being so into them. They attempted a wall of death, but didn’t tell everyone when to go, so it flopped. If you don’t know what a wall of death is, look at youtube. These guys should have played later. I liked them a lot.

Animosity played second and I really love these guys. Their newer stuff is a little more chaotic, but I saw them play in Davenport, Iowa, a couple of years ago, and they were incredible. Great musicians with lots of fun grooves and quick changes. The vocalist always seems to have fun as well. Moves around a lot and gets a little crazy. Great stuff.

All Shall Perish played third. I can’t get enough of these guys. They are amazing musicians and they aren’t afraid to show it and then break it down real heavy like. They had some dueling guitar solos (something I haven’t seen in a long time), and it wasn’t really that cheesy. They also were borrowing the guitarist from Sleep Terror, which is a huge feat, especially since he wasn’t playing lead – the guy is still amazing. The singer is a great frontman and they all seemed to have fun on stage, which is always nice.

Job for a cowboy, I can take or leave. I like them just fine. They’re great musicians and are pretty technical. Their stage present isn’t great, but it would be great for a top-notch supporting act. They’re headlining since they’re a draw, but if you went in order of talent and musicianship, I’m not sure they would be the headliner. They’ve got some good break down type parts, but mostly they’re fast and noodle-y.

Some things I saw at the show that cracked me up:
A) Some trashy whore-y girl wearing almost nothing. Normally fine, except she had a serious case of poison ivy on her upper body or some other unidentified rash. Girl, I appreciate your dedication to the metal show whore uniform, but hang it up until you get some salve or something.
B) During Job for a Cowboy, there was a different trashy whore dancing like a stripper to their music (and sound check). She was running her fingers through her hair and down her body all slutty. But if you know JFAC’s music, you know they don’t play the same speed or riff longer than 2 seconds, so I’m not sure what she was hearing, but she wasn’t on any sort of beat.
C) With a ratio of 75% comb-overs on the kids at the show, it was funny to watch the bands finish playing each song and then see 300 kids swing their head in unison to put their hair back on the right parted line and then run their fingers across their brows to keep it out of their eyes. You stupid followers… (sorry, just my little rant)

Top 5 things about the show:
1. Annotations Of An Autopsy
2. All of the bass players were really good and not filler
3. All of the bands seemed to enjoy themselves and the crowd
4. Trashy people watching enjoyment
5. I was home before 10pm – All ages shows rule!

Bottom 5 things
1. Sound guy – please put both guitars in BOTH main speakers so the people on the left can hear the whole band. Really bad form.
2. Hate Eternal cancelled
3. Comb-over kids
4. Coach and/or Jim weren’t able to go with me
5. I missed out on a guy selling a cheap ticket out front because he looked shady – I shouldn’t have judged (everyone looks shady at these shows)

Station 4
Annotations Of An Autopsy
Animosity
All Shall Perish
Job For A Cowboy

Intronaut, Behold…The Arctopus, Mouth of the Architect – Des Moines, IA

The last time Intronaut played near me, there was a huge ice storm that prevented me from going. I was not pleased. So a 4 hour drive from the Twin Cities was not even a concern for me. I met Sarah, Coach, Tara, Jim, and Smalls at Vaudeville Mews in Des Moines for this stellar show.

I missed the opening band(s) due to the fact that I was starving – see the post on the Royal Mile. But I walked in to see Intronaut saying who they were and starting the show. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed this show. I absolutely love these guys. It’s a sick combination of metal and jazz. The bass player has some serious jazz chops and drives the jazzy portion of the sound. The guitarists are extremely good and don’t play stupid power chords. There were some real chords being used as a weird mix of metal and jazz. Hard to explain. The drummer was an absolute machine with all kinds of time and temp changes and insane accents where you weren’t expecting. They played some new stuff which was insane. I can’t wait for the new cd to come out in a few weeks.

Behold…The Arctopus played next. Three piece insane tech metal act with a catch. They have two guitarists a bass player and a drummer. Sounds like four but it’s not. One of the guitarists played a twelve string, thick necked “war guitar”. Let me try to explain: Imagine two guitar necks fused together to accommodate twelve strings. Six regular strings and then a six string bass above that, but strung inverted. So you’ve got kind of a high-low-high stringing. The guy tapped both parts at the same time. Absolutely insane arpeggios. He looked like he was playing piano, while jumping around and flailing about. This going on while the other guitarist, playing a standard guitar, shredded some of the most intricate patterns I’ve ever heard. The drummer sounded like he was soloing the entire time, yet, everyone seemed to follow him like clockwork. People stood there in amazement, not sure who to watch. I bought their DVD which shows multiple 3-pane shots of all of them playing. It’s awesome.

While Arctopus was playing their last song, the Intronaut guys stormed the stage and dismantled the drumset while he was playing. Everyone was cracking up, but the drummer kept going with like 2 drums and a cymbal. It’s SOOO nice to see bands have fun on stage.

Mouth of the Architect played next. I was unfamiliar with them, but Sarah reminded me they were a sludge band. If you’re not familiar, that means you play excrutiatingly slow repetitive patterns for like 10 minutes. It’s terribly boring. I was worried that I might drive home at 35 mph after listening to them. I left after song two (which sounded exactly the same as song one)(and just as boring). Which got me home far earlier than I expected.

If you are looking for some extremely talented musicians playing metal, then look no further than these two bands. I will also commend the venue for having amazing sound as well (though I suspect, the bands have their own sounds dialed in to be perfect no matter where they were playing).

Top 5 things about this show
1. Intronaut
1. Behold…The Arctopus
3. The jazzy bass player from Intronaut
4. The 12-string war guitar
5. Cheap merch!

Top 5 bottom things
1. No 2X shirts – come on, I’m tubby
2. Mouth of the Architect
3. The bathroom was REALLY exposed
4. A LOT of tight punk rock pants on the guys
5. Didn’t get to hang with Jim and Sarah after the show

www.myspace.com/intronaut
www.myspace.com/beholdthearctopus
www.myspace.com/mouthofthearchitect