Enslaved, Alcest, Junius, Struck by Lightning

October 1, 2011 • Outland Live, Columbus, Ohio

I hadn't been to a concert in a long, long time, so I was pretty excited for this show. A Saturday night, and only $17 to see four bands? Not a bad deal, I thought. This was my first visit to Outland Live and I have to say that I was pretty impressed. It's nicer than just about every venue I've been to (besides the House of Blues and the Wexner Center); it has some bizarre decor but the place seemed pretty clean and had a nice bar area set off from the stage area. I'd go back if another good-sounding concert came there. Anyway, on to the bands:

Struck by Lightning

I'd never heard of this group before the show (apparently they are not only from Columbus but have a former member from Mouth of the Architect, which is awesome) so I had no expectation of what I was getting, and I was really impressed with them. They play a sort of crust punk-sludge metal hybrid that sounds really nice; it didn't get too deathcore-y like a lot of bands who try that do. The band all had pretty good chops and although the music wasn't anything incredibly mind-blowing, they did put on a really good show even though the crowd wasn't much into it, and I'm a bit disappointed they didn't have any CDs for sale (no, I'm not paying $25 for your record).
8 • Coolest-Looking Speaker Stacks Award

Junius

Junius is another band I had almost no experience with—I heard their track on their split with Rosetta the day before so that hardly counts. They put on a hell of a show, though. Their music is of the "heavy alt/post-rock" variety and the songs all sounded basically the same to me, but they were pretty energetic and always set up a really great groove and atmosphere. Their drummer is pretty magnificent, too. Worth seeing again.
9 • Best Beards Award

Alcest

This was more or less the band that I actually came to see, and I wasn't disappointed by them either. They sounded pretty bad at first—you could barely hear anything but drums, probably some mixing issues—but that was fixed throughout the show and they wound up sounding really great. I was a bit disappointed that they played mostly new stuff that I wasn't terribly familiar with, but they played "Souvenirs d'un autre monde" which is one of my favorites of theirs, so that was really cool to see. At this point in the show some of the crowd started to get a little rowdier (perhaps it was the effects of the bar) and there were some people who were a little too excited to see Alcest play, but I guess these things happen.
8 • Sexiest Band Award

Enslaved

I have never really been a huge fan of Enslaved; I heard one of their older albums, Below the Lights, and thought it was pretty good, but by the time Enslaved started their show you'd think you were at a goddamn Lamb of God concert or something, everybody went pretty crazy. It was especially irritating since for some reason I decided to stand behind two pretty tall guys and couldn't see much. Anyway, their set was decent; they only played one song I knew (from Below the Lights) (and "Immigrant Song" for their encore—since when do metal bands do encores, anyway?) but the stuff I didn't know wasn't bad. I will say that their more Viking metal type stuff translates better to a live setting since you can actually tell what they are playing rather than just blasting, during which I couldn't tell what they were playing at all. (I'm pretty sure their keyboard player didn't actually play anything, either, because the keyboard was completely inaudible throughout.) Enslaved was definitely my least-favorite act of the night but they aren't really my style of music anyway; besides, they had a lot of hardcore fans cheering them on anyway.
6 • Biggest Tom Rack Award