Missing the boat can be my forté of sorts. Like catching the grunge explosion five minutes after Nirvana had left the Newcastle Mayfair after playing a less-than-ten-quid gig. I don’t know what it is, but somewhere after listening to the likes of Pantera, I’ve lost the plot when it comes to metal. Probably it was Pearl Jam and my mid-noughties dabbling in the Gig@Sheffield (meaning I had to listen/play a lot of ‘easier’ stuff), but it wasn’t until the past couple of years that I got whiff of the term new wave of American heavy metal. Yeah, the stateside’s take on NWOBHM.
Thanks to the American ESP website, I listened to my first, and remains my favourite, Lamb Of God song. Along the way, I checked a few other NWOAHM bands and even saw a couple (Mastodon and Trivium comes to mind) – one thing for sure, I noticed that the guitar solos are back. So, six months ago I noted that Lamb Of God was coming to Manchester, I knew that I had to check them out live.
They had three opening acts, the last being Job For A Cowboy, a death metal outfit from Arizona, which I caught the tail end of. Wall of sound it was, and pretty technical sounding band but same-ish throughout. It wasn’t until quarter to ten that the lads from Richmond, VA got onstage with The Passing, the first track from their current record, Wrath, followed by In Your Words, which is now pretty much my favourite track from this record.
