Three years ago Geoff performed 'Operation: Mindcrime' in full at the Queen's Hall in Nuneaton and it was the slam dunk, no question 'Gig of the Year'. Three years later he was back, this time at KK's Steel Mill, the question was, could he do it again?
Rose hadn't been to KK's Steel Mill before, so this was new to her, whereas I went there with Rich a few years ago to see Destruction, Whiplash and Enforcer. It's a great venue, and bigger than I remembered it I think - probably 2000 capacity I'm guessing?
We got sent the wrong way by Google maps on the way, but still arrived in plenty of time. The car park ticket machine wasn't working and I wasn't about to download a stupid app to pay when I could park in the street for nothing. It's not like open air car parks offer anything in the way of security and it was totally fine.
The support band (XIII something.... was it Doors? Hours? I don't know) were very average, playing the sort of 90s Metal that Hair Metal bands started playing when they couldn't be Hair Metal any more. I guess it was competent and I'm sure a fair few people in attendance enjoyed it, but it ain't for me.
We took a stroll to the merchandise desk and I noticed a neon sign saying 'Meet Geoff Tate' with a piece of card next to it saying '£50'. I wondered if it was '£50' to meet Geoff or was it '£50' for the sign? I'm guessing it was the former. Bit of a cringe moment when a roadie walked across the front of the stage holding said sign right before the show started, I didn't see any takers...
So the time arrived, and I did wonder whether it could possibly have the same impact as last time, I mean it was 33 years since I'd seen Queensryche do it when we saw it last time, but now just three years later...
Well I needn't have worried, because OM is as perfect an album as you could imagine and those songs (even played by other people) still sound as fresh today as they did when I was 18 years old. Just incredible, and a testament to the talent of Queensyche really... it's a pity they went downhill from here (but then again, the only way was down, wasn't it?).
I'm not quite sure why Geoff needs three lead guitarists and a keyboard player on stage with him... that seems like overkill to me, and surely must add significantly to the cost of touring! But it worked and they certainly put on a show, running around like toddlers on the huge stage, they certainly weren't phoning it in.
Geoff is the quintessential enigma wrapped up in a conundrum wrapped up in a mystery. He's so intense on stage, but at the same time it almost seems like he's taking the piss... I'm sure it's all an act, and if he was a massive arse I doubt he'd be okay with his band jumping up and down and disrespecting his legacy...
Wearing a hat does not make you Chris DeGarmo, sadly.
Wisely, the set started with Mindcrime in full and immediately the place was electric. Highlights were plentiful, Revolution Calling, Operation: Mindcrime, Speak, Suite Sister Mary (obviously), Spreading the Disease and my personal favourites I Don't Believe in Love and Eyes of a Stranger all rolled by like a majestic wave of polished metal and my only real gripe (if I'm being super picky) was that 'Waiting for 22' could have been played better. I know it's just a short instrumental, but the guitar solo on that is perfect and I want to hear it EXACTLY like it was played on the album.
'Mary, Mary.... You're just a whore for the underfed!'
After Mindcrime concluded we get a selection of Queensryche classics (starting with Empire) interspersed with songs from Geoff's new O:M3 album. Actually after a slightly ropey start 'The Answer' was actually okay, but the other one was a bit too Spanish Lullaby for my liking, and I can't help but think that maybe it would be best not too. Though it probably can't be any worse than O:M2 was.
Jet City Woman, Silent Lucidity and Queen of the Reich wrapped things up (with more hilarious running and jumping about, even Geoff was pogoing during Jet City Woman - WTAF?) and indeed one of the funniest moments was Geoff's intro to Silent Lucidity, check it out on the video below.
Geoff's rap - 1:33!
I Remember Now / Anarchy-X / Revolution Calling / Operation: Mindcrime / Speak / Spreading the Disease / The Mission / Suite Sister Mary / The Needle Lies / Electric Requiem / Breaking the Silence / I Don't Believe in Love / Waiting for 22 / My Empty Room / Eyes of a Stranger / The Answer / Empire / Jet City Woman / Take Hold of the Flame / Do You Still Believe? / Silent Lucidity / Queen of the Reich
We're not 100% sure when it was that we previously visited Stratford Upon Avon, but it was before we started this blog so it's at least eleven years and probably quite a bit longer than that. Despite that, I remembered so much of it very clearly.
The day before we went I remembered there was a clock museum or something in Stratford and it turned out that I was close but not quite correct. In fact there is the M.A.D. Museum (not quite the same as the M.A.D. Gallery in Geneva!) which displays over seventy different mechanical artworks and automata.
On arrival we parked and made straight for the M.A.D. Museum (upstairs above Lakeland) and spent a solid 90 minutes in there looking at everything and watching the video (which is well worth it). Entry costs £8.50 for adults, which is ridiculously cheap really considering how engaging it is and how long it takes to look around.
This one was really good. The Anubis lifts up the pyramid and each time there is a different reveal. I couldn't understand how it worked but then I looked underneath and saw there was a triangle of wood which rotated and so it allowed three different bugs to be displayed. Very clever!
Here a marble is pulled from beneath by a magnet to produce patterns in the sand. The sand isn't coloured it is lit from around the side. Very Zen!
This was a video which showed a team of Germans changing the time every couple of minutes. There were 72 people involved and it was a real struggle to keep it on track for 24 hours it seems!
Rose particularly liked this clock. And it is cool, but quite where we'd find to put it I'm not too sure!
This wasn't mechanical, it was one of those concave artworks that appears to be convex and 'moves' depending on the angle you look at it.
This work was commissioned by the Halifax Building Society. For what purpose I cannot imagine, perhaps it was used in an advert?
After we finished there we headed briskly back towards the car and a Greene King we'd noticed on the way that sold scampi!
The 'Pen and Parchment' was a nice little pub and when we arrived (just around 12) we found it pretty much empty. However, no sooner had we sat down and ordered than a party of 40 piled in and soon they were turning people away. It pays to eat early in these touristy places!
Scampi was nice and very cheap at £10.25 each, indeed the whole meal 2x scampi and 2x pint of Diet Coke only cost £29. What a bargain. The only downside was having to listen to the old bloke at the table behind us being generally tedious about anything and everything (especially his disappointment that they didn't have the IPA he wanted, poor lamb).
We never got offered a dessert menu (and we didn't really want one anyway) so we took our leave...
The plan was to take a boat trip after our meal, but seeing that it was £13 each for 40 minutes we decided not to bother and instead just took a stroll around the town. We tried to find some gardens that we visited previously, but despite walking up and down several streets we couldn't find them.
We came across 'Crystal Chain' (which I'm pretty sure has been there forever) and Rose got a nice necklace and then we looked in the window of the posh jewellers (saw the new TAG Heuer Superdiver) and visited a charity shop where I bought a birthday card for my Mum.
We also came across a jeweller that sold second hand watches and spied quite a few pre-owned TAG Heuer's in the window. The prices on some of them seemed a bit optimistic though!
By then it was getting hot and we headed back to the car, stopping off at the perfectly acceptable public toilets along the way. All in all it was a good little day out, even if the journey back seemed to take longer than necessary and a rather unusual route! But who knows, maybe there was an accident on the more direct route?
After our visit to Escapologic a few weeks ago, we decided to return and tackle another one of their escape rooms, this time 'Howitz' which is set in a haunted toy store. I was a little concerned that after the novelty of the spinning room we might be a bit underwhelmed this time, but I need not have worried because again this was another brilliant experience!
The room is quite small, but it has three more rooms that open off it (eventually) and it was great fun. The only bit that was a bit frustrating was when I had to sit behind a glass and try and grab things I couldn't see (eventually they let it go, because I would still be there now). We got out with just under two minutes to spare and we will definitely be going back to Escapologic again I'm sure.
When we came out we walked past a pub called 'Royal Children' which has the most freaky looking sign I think I've ever seen!
After that we went and had a Coke in the Crowne Plaza before getting changed to go to the Marco Pierre White restaurant over the road. Unfortunately when I was getting changed in the toilets my bag fell off the (shite) hook on the back of the door and the small vial of Halfeti I had brought with me smashed, leaking into the bag. Thankfully there was only a tiny bit left, but it meant I entered the restaurant smelling less expensive than I would have liked and of course the bag was useless then as it reeked of Penhaligons.
Both Rose and I ordered the fillet, which on arrival looked absolutely tiny, but was actually quite satisfying and tasted lovely. For dessert I again had the cheesecake, which was still very nice... but maybe not quite as mind-blowing as the previous time. Maybe it was just 'too soon'.
Our server 'Julia' seemed to remember us from our previous visit and we had a good laugh with her. But she told us she wouldn't be there much longer as she was leaving to start her career at Rolls Royce!
The only slight fly in the ointment was that there was a big football match on and we could hear it coming from the casino next door (the bar is shared between the two). A real shame that as the jazz piano soundtrack gives the perfect relaxed atmosphere normally.
It's a curious thing that we hardly ever go in to Leicester town centre any more even though it's very close by. And when we do it always seems to be slightly annoying, disappointing or down right depressing. But, we thought, it doesn't really matter where an Escape Room is, does it? Well it shouldn't, but somehow it did.
It didn't help that we arrived flustered, having taken longer than expected to park and walk across town to the old Market Place. And once there we were greeted by Grits (I think his name was), who seemed perfectly nice and friendly... but very young. And so the hour proceeded to fall apart, with the Escape Room having a policy of making you 'dance' for the camera to earn clues.
I'm sure this is fine if you have a bunch of youngsters in, but read the room mate. Older (grumpy) people in attendance who don't want to be pissing about for your entertainment while wasting precious minutes of our dwindling thinking time.
The room itself was actually quite good, but if you're not really in the right mood and then you have someone insisting you dance for every clue (Muggins here did the dancing, Rose would have sooner eaten octopus than give this guy the satisfaction) it all turns into a massive waste of time and money.
At one point, Grits had to come in and chastise us for being rough with a bureau drawer that we couldn't figure out how to open. Oops. He's lucky Rose didn't punch him on the nose.
Anyway, we didn't get out and I don't think we would have even if we (well, I) hadn't wasted time dancing for clues. It was quite hard for a 3/5, but then if you're not in the mood for it that just makes it even harder to concentrate.
Never mind, we'll go back to Nottingham next time.
Afterwards we nipped in to Hotel Chocolat and bought a few things to nibble and then we went to the TAG Heuer boutique and saw the new pastel F1s, which are okay but far too big for Rose's wrist.
And then after that we took a drive down memory lane (for me at least)...
This is the road where Archways rehearsal studios used to be. Every Sunday I used to come here to rehearse, and I haven't been back since May 1991 (when Cycorax disbanded). It's funny how the railway arches are still there, and still quite rundown, but on the other side of the road there's all these shiny new buildings (which I think are for University students to stay in).
About a week before this gig I found out that Hypocrisy were main support to 'Blood Fire Death' at the Incineration Festival in London during the May Bank Holiday weekend. I was mildly annoyed as this was the second 'festival' I'd found out about recently that featured bands I'd like to see but wasn't prepared to pay the ticket price (actually the other one featured 4 bands I wanted to see over three days and cost about £240!), and while I would like to have seen Blood Fire Death I didn't want to go to London and pay £100. Also B.F.D. seemed to be playing in a different venue to Hypocrisy (both in Camden) and I really can't see how that would work, especially as their stage times overlapped by ten minutes!
But then a couple of days before the gig I got wind of the fact that Hypocrisy were also playing in Manchester the night before (along with two other bands from the festival). However we were supposed to be going to a family party, so I wasn't really expecting to be able to go. But Rose kindly said she could go to the party on her own and so I set off from work at 3:45pm facing down a 240 mile round trip.
V R E I D
I finally arrived at Circle Square park at 7:30pm, and then it was a good 10-15 minute walk to the venue, where I expected to perhaps catch 1 or 2 songs of Vomitory's set and then see Vreid and Hypocrisy. Indeed, I had been listening to Vreid in preparation for this... but it turned out that it was Vreid on first and so I only ended up seeing 1.5 songs of theirs, which was a bit of a shame as they were pretty good.
V O M I T O R Y
I'd never even heard Vomitory before the day, and I wasn't honestly expecting much given the absolutely terrible name... but I fired up You Tube and watched their new video (For Gore and Country) and was pleasantly surprised by their Slayeresque Death Metal. I rather enjoyed watching them, but I must admit it was a little difficult to really appreciate their music having not a clue what almost all the songs were supposed to sound like. The next day I listened to their latest two albums and now consider myself a fan.
I last saw Hypocrisy at the Astoria in London way back in 2003 (supporting Dimmu Borgir). I have zero memory of that gig, except perhaps walking all the way back to Euston because it was too hot to go on the undergound... maybe? The time before was at Rios and Peter Tagtgren said in Terrorizer it was the worst gig they'd even done. I don't remember it being particularly terrible, just not terribly exciting (and headliners 'Immortal' weren't that great either to be honest). So, a shot at redemption then...?
Over the last few months I had been listening to Hypocrisy quite a bit and and even rebought a CD I used to have, but sold. I remember searching for dates and finding out that they had last played the UK in 2022 IIRC but on that occasion they had been supporting someone else. So I was keen to see them and had been listening to the setlist on repeat for the past few days.
The show seems to have been moved from the Academy 2 to the Academy 3, but it doesn't seem that much different in size to me (assuming it was the Academy 2 where we saw Tarja?), it's certainly not a small venue by any standards and it was well attended, surprisingly so actually... I feared it might be a bit empty to be honest - perhaps Hypocrisy are more popular than I give them credit for?
The band kicked off with 'They Will Arrive' from the latest album and while the sound seemed louder than before it was quite hard to pick out the riffs on the faster songs. The slower songs were easier to get into, but then it struck me how many slower songs they actually played and how un-'Death Metal' a lot of these were.
Early Hypocrisy was undoubtedly Death Metal, but after The Final Chapter they really started to get a very polished sound and incorporate a lot of melody: not that it's a bad thing, but the contrast with Vomitory (who are definitely Death Metal) was quite noticeable.
I enjoyed the gig as a whole, but Hypocrisy definitely aren't the best live band in the world (despite an impressive light show, some subtle video backing and endless dry ice). Peter Tagtgren does his best but the other guitar player has all the stage presence of a telegraph pole and the bass player may be the original but he also adds about as much to Hypocrisy live as Ian Hill does to Judas Priest! I don't know, this is (sort of) Death Metal after all so I'm not expecting 'theatrics' but somehow Hypocrisy didn't engage me quite as much as I'd hoped they might.
I don't know, it was very polished and professional, but somehow a bit impersonal (perhaps not unlike Dimmu Borgir in that regard). Peter barely spoke to the crowd and as the show reached its climax I did wonder for a moment whether this was really worth 6 hours on the motorway and a dead foot in the morning, but then they played 'Roswell 47' and I remembered why I came. That is a great song, and they do have quite a few really good tunes, but I don't know if I would rush to see them again unless it was in Nottingham or somewhere.
There were a lot of odd people at this gig, lots of very young people who look like they didn't have a clue who Hypocrisy were. I actually wondered whether some of them got free tickets from the student union or something as some of them seemed to be attending 'ironically'... in particular the two 'Goth' girls who danced through Vomitory like they were watching Aerosmith. Weird. Also there was a girl of about 18 who looked like Sheena Easton (in her '9 to 5' phase), although she had a green rinse... 🤣
It's been a funny year for gigs so far, three very different gigs... quite hard to compare and not much to choose between them. Kreator is probably the best so far, if only because they had Carcass and Exodus in tow (although Exodus were a bit shit to be honest) and their stage show was entertaining. Oh well, it will be interesting to see what ends up being my gig of the year, I hope it's not one I've already seen because that would be a bit disappointing...
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