I went into this concert pretty blind. I had never heard of any of the opening bands and I had heard very little from High On Fire. What I had heard of High On Fire I did like, so I decided it would be worth my time to attend.
The band on the bill that saw was Buried Inside. Unfortunately I came when they only had two songs left. These guys were great. I would describe their sound as a kind of Stoner_Thrash Metal. I know that sounds kind of like an oxymoron but that was the best I could do. Their final song was the best out of the two I saw; this particular song leaned more to the Stoner Metal side and was long and epic. The most unique part about this song was the fact that the singer played a huge gong cymbal. I had never heard of any Metal band using a gong and frankly it sounded great.
The next band up was Big Business. When I first saw this name I thought it was a Punk band and I dreaded the performance. I also thought they were way out of place but fortunately for me it was not a Punk band. Now describing this band is damn near impossible. First off they only had a bassist_singer and a drummer, so every song was really full of fuzzy riffs and was pretty slow. Second off their singer used a echo on every song. I didn?t know what to think about this either, however it did go quite nicely with the music. I would say that I enjoyed them but not as much as Buried Inside. For those of you that like them and live in Australia, I overheard their tour manager say that they would be touring down under with The Melvins. I think that they are a perfect fit for this tour because that's about the only band that comes too close their sound.
The third band that I saw was called The Bronx. Now to describe their sound is also difficult. The organizer of this tour clearly put together a very diverse lineup. Anyway, kind of Punk/Stoner Metal but with some Pop added. This band got my head nodding barely, nothing spectacular by any means. However the highlight of the set was these 8 kids that were just going nuts for this band. Rather than doing like a Hardcore dance (i.e. pretend to punch the floor), they were like waving one finger in the air and grabbing their faces like they couldn?t believe they were there. Then there was this kind of moshing going on. Then two of them got on stage and basically jumped right off but this was very unfunny. Clubs need to have more security. What if one of those stupid high school kids had a gun or knife or something then singer = dead_wounded. I know I have expressed this in previous live reports but my heart just weeps for Dime almost every day.
Finally we get to the headliner, High On Fire. As I stated earlier, I was not very familiar with their material but from what I heard it was just mediocre stuff. Actually I think what I heard on a CD sounded quite a bit better than anything I heard live. Overall I thought the performance was not very entertaining or enjoyable. I waited for 45 minutes for something to spark but alas nothing really caught my ear or eye, so I left.
