Heavens Basement are one of those hit
and miss support bands this evening; the vocalist
shows his nerves by what appears to be nervously
pacing around the stage and the other members
bar the lead guitarist all remain motionless as
the lead guitarist being one of the sole original
members of this band has had many a show to this
degree of room size and high attendance before.
They play a fair few new tracks and a couple of
old songs that I recognise, amicably played by
the lads but I don’t know what about this
set doesn’t feel right, the obvious nerves
perhaps? I’m not too sure but I remember
this new Heavens Basement putting on extremely
insane shows but this isn’t one to add to
that tally, maybe a smaller headline set is where
they belong at this moment in time, big leagues
are a nerve-wracking thing.
Seether fully embrace the old school live presence
of the Grunge genre, interaction to the bare minimum,
literally we barely got a “thank you”
after each song and that was about it, the rest
of the time was filled with feedback and distorted
instrumental noises. What I like about vocalist
Shaun Morgan is that he doesn’t just sing
the exact notes lay down on the album; he shakes
it up a bit and sings alternate notes seemingly
improvised based on his feelings which are all
good by me. Seether have released 4 full studio
albums of original material (obviously this doesn’t
include “Disclaimer II” which was
mostly re-mastered and remixed songs) and they
spread their set list around them throwing a couple
in from “Karma and Effect”, couple
from “Finding Beauty in Negative Spaces”
(both of which albums in my opinion was less popular
and much less impressive than their other albums),
3 from their latest release “Holding on
to Strings Better Left to Fray” and 5 from
their masterpiece of a debut record “Disclaimer”
. The most memorable songs for me as apart from
a few odd humorous comments and a nice big thank
you speech before set closer “Remedy”
(which absolutely slayed every other song may
I add) there wasn’t many “moments”
to speak of, but as for songs; opening up with
the powerful “No Jesus Christ”, aggressive
renditions of “No Resolution” and
“Gasoline”, the heart warming “Here
and Now” and “Tonight”, last
but not least a beautiful Shaun Morgan only version
of “The Gift” before my favourite
moment the highly improvised version of “Broken”,
it may have taken years but waiting for this headline
set for me was completely worthwhile.
Heavens Basement 3.5/5
Seether 4/5
Review By James Webb
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