Front Row Pix: Mastodon and Gojira @ The Palladium in Worcester
What a perfect triple-play of music at the Palladium last week: Mastodon, Gojira and Kvelertak. We had been really looking forward to this! And we weren’t the only ones: the place was packed solid with metal fans.
Continuing an unfortunate recent streak for us, despite showing up in plenty of time to catch the start of the opening set circumstances prevented us once again from doing so. So, sadly I don’t have any pictures, and more’s the pity — the few songs we got to hear sounded great and it was quite a show. Their unique brand of metal-infused rock ‘n’ roll was a great way to kick things off. Despite our rocky start, the evening was off in style…
I was excited to see Gojira again and they lived up to my (high!) expectations by giving an even better show than the last time I’d seen them. They only played the title track off their latest CD L’Enfant Sauvage (luckily, my favorite), dipping deep into their previous albums for the rest of their killer set and ending with a great performance of “Oroborus”. These guys show no sign of slowing down — quite the opposite! — and I can’t wait to see what they have in store for us next.
Headliners Mastodon had a couple of tough acts to follow, but they’re big boys and can definitely hold their own. Delivering a — dare I say it? — mammoth set of some 18 songs with fierce energy, they had all it takes to satisfy every fan in the house both visually and musically. By the time they wrapped up the encore (“The Sparrow”) we all felt like we’d witnessed THE definitive Mastodon show.
Any one of these bands on its own was well worth the price of admission (although of one of the perks of being members of the press is that there is no price of admission, but you know what we mean)… To get all three in one night was like having three slices of birthday cake!
