By Andrew Bansal
May 5th 2014, The Viper Room, West Hollywood CA: Cinco De Mayo in Los Angeles always brings forth a variety of entertainment options, and this year the Viper Room played host to premier all-female Iron Maiden tribute band The Iron Maidens along with promising local hard rock act Black Belt Karate for a truly rocking celebration of the occasion, presented in part by Badass Bands Blog. With a perfectly affordable door cover charge and cheap drinks on offer, for fans of rock and metal in LA, this was the place to be.
Black Belt Karate began their set at 10 PM and played a 9-song, 35-minute set that retained the qualities I’ve known them for through previous performances while also presented them in a completely different light for a small part of it. Pristine vocals and lively grooves decorate and embody their unadulterated, barebones style of hard rock, and the vocal choruses sung by all four members add great punch and strength to their overall sound, specially in the live setting. Besides frontman Ryan Hanifl’s exemplary rock voice at the helm, the guitar parts in the songs are delivered through a very simple and clean tone, at times with some basic fuzz, by Jason Achilles Mezilis who plays an old modified Fender Strat with a single pickup, while the rhythm section of Harry Ostrem on bass and Ryan Brown on drums forms the bulk of the sound. Aside from tunes like ‘Rigamortis’, ‘Building Walls’, ‘Kaleidoscope’ and ‘Push’ off of last year’s debut EP ‘Volume 1’, they played a few of their new singles as well, and in the middle of the set, Jason put down the guitar to play the Wurlitzer piano for two tracks, which gave an entirely different touch to the band’s personality.
Sadly, and I almost feel like a nerd student getting annoyed at talkative fellow students for not letting me listen to the professor’s lecture when I say this, but the beauty of the notes emanating from this classic instrument was largely ruined by the noisy Viper Room crowd wherein most people couldn’t bother to be respectful to the performing musicians and preferred to chat loudly with their buddies instead. They shut their traps only once the drums kicked in and they could no longer successfully yell over the music. Nonetheless, the Wurlitzer added a whole another dimension to BBK’s music and the two tunes with Jason playing it comprised the highlight of the set. Hopefully there’s more of it in new compositions from now on. BBK tend to improve and enhance their live show every single time I see them. This was a relatively more ‘rocking’ set as compared to the past times, and they seemed to drop most of their poppier tendencies from the set. For those who claim to be hard rock fans, the band is an absolute must-see.
Black Belt Karate links:
BBKOfficial.com
facebook.com/BlackBeltKarate
twitter.com/BBK_Official
instagram.com/BBK_Official
soundcloud.com/Black-Belt-Karate
Set List:
01. Mechanical Man
02. Street Cleaning
03. Transformer
04. Rigamortis
05. Building Walls
05. * Untitled Wurlitzer Tune *
06. Scuttle & Flow
07. Kaleidoscope
08. One & Only
09. Push
At 11:10, The Iron Maidens appeared on stage following their own intro and the ‘Churchill Speech’ intro, and delivered 90 highly enjoyable minutes of classic Maiden in a manner only they can. The Iron Maidens are a worldwide phenomenon, need no introduction to any Maiden fan, and in terms of the quality of their performance and presentation, nothing bad can be possibly said about them. But most importantly, I feel grateful to be a witness to the continued efforts of The Iron Maidens paying a fitting tribute to the band that is singlehandedly responsible for the existence of this website, and my life in its current form.
Set list-wise, the beauty of The Iron Maidens’ shows is that you get to hear songs that Iron Maiden themselves never or hardly ever play live, i.e. deeper cuts from their classic albums. Sure enough, this particular set consisted of quite a few that fall in this category, tunes such as ‘Infinite Dreams’, ‘The Duelists’, ‘Flash Of The Blade’ and ’22 Acacia Avenue’, but of course, the staple hits are also always included in The Maidens’ sets in order to appease the casual fans. If anything, the set could use some material off of Brave New World, an album I strongly feel matches up to anything Maiden did in their golden era of the 80s.
One aspect that gets increasingly off-putting though is the number of cellphones and cameras that are out when The Iron Maidens are on stage. It’s baffling to note that even for a tribute band that plays local shows every now and then, people would rather hold up their gadgets to take sub-standard, worthless photos and videos the entire time as opposed to absorbing the performance and leaving with a full experience of a live Maidens show. People standing in the front row are the worst at this, shoving their phones/cameras in the girls’ faces. This is hands down the most irritating aspect of live music these days, and since cellphones can’t realistically be confiscated, it’s going to continue being an unavoidable problem unless people took it upon themselves to put down those devices and enjoyed the actual show instead.
Anyhow, I enjoyed the hell out of The Iron Maidens’ set, ‘Infinite Dreams’, ‘The Duelists’, ‘Phantom Of The Opera’ and the ever-amazing ‘Hallowed Be Thy Name’ in particular, singing my heart out and head-banging like there was no tomorrow. That’s just what Iron Maiden’s music does. You know it’s your favorite band when you find yourself involuntarily singing along even to their weakest songs. And I’ve find that going to see these ladies in concert has been really great for my health, as singing at the top of your lungs to go with all the head-banging is excellent physical exercise. If you’re a hardcore Iron Maiden fan, forget the gym and go sing with The Iron Maidens the next play they play a show near you.
The Iron Maidens links:
TheIronMaidens.com
facebook.com/TheIronMaidensOfficial
twitter.com/TheIronMaidens
Set List:
01. Aces High
02. 2 Minutes To Midnight
03. Infinite Dreams
04. Wasted Years
05. The Duelists
06. Flash Of The Blade
07. The Trooper
08. Genghis Khan
09. The Number Of The Beast
10. 22 Acacia Avenue
11. Children Of The Damned
12. Fear Of The Dark
13. Phantom Of The Opera
14. Hallowed Be Thy Name
15. Iron Maiden
The Viper Room links:
ViperRoom.com
facebook.com/TheViperRoom
twitter.com/TheViperRoom
instagram.com/TheViperRoom