By Andrew Bansal
July 30th 2013, The Roxy, West Hollywood CA: Swedish/Danish power metal band Amaranthe are currently on their first ever US headline tour, along with Canadian heavy metal rising force Kobra & The Lotus as the support act. The tour stopped by at what’s perhaps become West Hollywood’s most frequented venue for metalheads, the Roxy Theatre. Along with the two touring bands, this show had local support from Sirion and Sign Of Sirin. Except for Sirion I had not seen any of these bands before, so just like the Into Eternity show I had attended last Saturday at the Joint, I had no expectations from this show and was going in with a completely open mind, waiting and hoping to be pleasantly surprised by at least some of these bands’ performances.
For a Tuesday, it was a decently long line of people waiting outside before the doors opened at 7.30. Sign Of Sirin, a band from the San Fernando Valley, kicked off the show at 8 o’ clock with their brand of melodic extreme metal. For a band of this genre, they had a relatively simple four-member setup of one guitarist, bassist, vocalist and drummer, which probably turned out to be a positive factor as it highlighted each member’s musicianship that much more. The vocalist had all sorts of things going on with his vocals, from low guttural growls to high-pitched screams, and carried himself really well. He mentioned that this was only their second show, and considering such lack of experience, the band definitely kicked ass. They have solid guitar melodies and rhythm section with an excellent frontman to lead them. A worthy opener to this lineup, by all means.
The second and last local support band of the night was Los Angeles’ very own epic metal 6-piece outfit Sirion, a band that’s been amazingly active in the recent past with plenty of gigs. They’ve just been hitting the Hollywood scene as hard as possible, and I think it has paid off for them. They had a huge group of fans here for them at this show, and it created a great atmosphere at the venue. Out of all four bands that played last night, they certainly got the best crowd response and deservingly so. Unlike last Friday’s show at the Whisky where they opened for Holy Grail, this time they got their mix perfectly right and besides the usual elements, their epic keytar sound could be heard loud and clear. The dynamically heavy, melodic and epic segments of their music got everybody inside the Roxy moving. Heads were banging at full tilt during the said heavier parts. They held their own on that lovely stage and proved themselves as one of the finest local bands going around at the moment. Sirion ruled the Roxy last night. The day is not far when I’ll see them play a headline show at this very venue.
sirion.us.com
facebook.com/sirion
These two local bands succeeded in warming up the crowd perfectly for the touring acts to follow. The turnover between bands was short and things were moving along smoothly here as Kobra & The Lotus took the stage at 9:35. Now, this band has been around for more than four years but very recently they got signed to a label on the Universal Music roster and subsequently co-signed onto Gene Simmons’ record label which got them immediate attention out of the blue. I checked out their self-titled album and enjoyed the female-fronted epic metal I heard. Many people told me that the band is even better live, and I was looking forward to find that out for myself last night. Based on frontwoman Kobra Paige and her band’s performance, it’s safe to say that the girl can sing, can command the attention of a crowd with her vocals alone, and has a great band to back her up, specially the two guitarists who put forth some scorching riffs and grand melodies. I thought it was an excellent set from them overall. Having said that, I did think their style of music, the vocals in particular, comes across as ‘too epic’ for North American audiences. This is a band that’s undoubtedly destined for bigger success in Europe and South America, but regardless, it was great to see a legit female-fronted band like theirs play some solid tunes.
kobraandthelotus.com
facebook.com/kobraandthelotus
twitter.com/KATLofficial
So far, this show was turning out to be awesome. All three bands played impressive sets and the stage was ready for Amaranthe to capitalize on the work done by these support acts, to put on a good show themselves. But alas, the show only went downhill once Amaranthe hit the stage at 10:30. With three singers and just one guitarist, the six-piece band’s sound simply wasn’t heavy enough to please a metalhead to any extent whatsoever. Don’t get me wrong, female vocalist Elize Ryd has a good voice and everything, but her stage presence wasn’t anywhere near as commanding as that of Kobra Paige, for example. And I don’t understand the need for a second clean vocalist when there’s already a female in the band for that. The sole guitarist in the band tried his best to keep some semblance of ‘metal’ going, but his guitar sound was neither clear nor strong enough to create any sort of impact. To make matters worse, the keyboards weren’t even played live, which was a big turnoff for me. Metal is about live musicianship more than anything else, that’s why we go to shows to see bands.
Even in their shortish 5-year old career so far, this band has achieved success in their home continent and I was really hoping for a good show from them at what was probably their first ever LA headline show, but it was a major letdown to say the least. Bands like Epica, to name just one, can easily smoke Amaranthe off the stage any day with a proper metal show.
So, aside from the headliner, this show was worth the time.