This post/review (if you wanna call it that) is way overdue. Which implies a couple of things – that the gig wasn’t that exciting, or worst still, I’ve lost the passion to do gig reviews. Heh. I’d like to think it’s the former. When you see more photos than words in a blog post, you’d prolly think the latter, though. I think I almost forgot that I bought the tix about the same time I bought their current record, The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here, online.

We arrived at the O2 in the middle of Ghost‘s ostentatious set. I am sorry, Ghost fans, their set was all merely a WTF moment, which was somewhat palpable in the venue from the sighs in the audience that I could hear. I wondered what AIC were thinking of having these guys as one of the opening acts.

Alice In Chains kicked off the set with Again from their 1995 self-titled record. I was surprised that even from the outset I was feeling a lil’ meh. I wonder if it was because I had been to see them in Nottingham back in ’09 when the excitement was all abuzz with their return. In all honesty, I prolly had listened to the Dino album like err… twice before ripping it onto iTunes and storing the CD in my listed-by-genre collection in the media room. They went on to play the jump along Check My Brain (my fav track from BGWTB) and rocked the house with the classic Them Bones. Jerry Cantrell looked like a cikgu sekolah teaching seni perusahaan after having shorn his locks.

It was when they played Hollow from their new record that I began to feel that I should’ve kept the ’09 experience as the AIC gig for me as it meant something for me then. Everything went kinda downhill for me then, even when they played the eponymous Would?. I was wondering if this was due to them not changing much in the way they write their songs, but hey, in the same breathe, I won’t want them to start playing dubstep or anything of the like. The gig was pretty Alice In Chains-heavy unlike the last show I went to that had more stuff from Dirt, which defo my fav record by them. Their set included the obligatory ditties like Nutshell (still gives me goosebumps that ‘un), Down In A Hole and Man In The Box.

Great show by a fantastic band, but it wasn’t memorable by a long shot.

O2 Academy, Leeds 10.11.13 set: Again / Check My Brain / Them Bones / Hollow / Your Decision / Would? / Phantom Limb / Grind / Got Me Wrong / We Die Young / Stone / Acid Bubble / Nutshell / Down in a Hole // [Encore] Angry Chair / Man in the Box / Rooster