Whew!
Saturday night was a good night! We had been looking forward to playing this show for a long time. Pretty much as soon as it was announced, I hit up Al from the Garage Bar about opening. Why so excited?
Because we're all big Judas Priest fans, and Electric Eye is a phenomenally good JP tribute band. They mostly do JP's classic material, and they do it incredibly well. I'll admit, as a singer I'm pretty envious of anybody who can nail Victim of Changes, and Chris (Electric Eye vocalist) hammers the high notes effortlessly. By effortlessly, I mean Unleashed in the East levels of effortlessly.
But, before we go too far into Electric Eye's set, let's talk a bit about Rule 17, which is at least theoretically why any of you are reading this. We switched things up a bit which was, for lack of a better term, strange. For the past few shows, we've opened with Act of Defiance. The beginning of that song was written as a show opener, and only was tacked onto that tune later as a permanent addition. I wrote that harmonized beginning at the end of the 7th Seal era because at that time we had decided to try Judas Priest's "Hellion" as a show opener. The theory worked great, except everybody was expecting Electric Eye afterward, which we didn't do.
This time we opened with Iron Maiden's "Powerslave", which went over well. We followed that with "In the Wake of Fear", which always seems to get buried mid-set. Things got back to normal a bit when we got around to "Act of Defiance", "Awake", and the newcomer "Beyond". For the first time in a few shows, we brought out "Perfect World", which for some reason always winds up getting kicked off the set when we have to cut songs. Perhaps we have the irrational belief that switching guitars or tuning a string takes upwards of five minutes or something. We closed off the night with Black Sabbath's "Children of the Sea" and perennial closer "Waste Away".
Oh, and there's video evidence!
Powerslave
In the Wake of Fear
Awake
Perfect World
So, we wrapped up our set and settled in to catch Electric Eye. Metal Gods, Rock Hard Ride Free, Victim of Changes, Green Manalishi (With the Two-Pronged Crown), Diamonds and Rust, the list goes on. Tight drums, tight bass, tight guitars. Having played as a two-guitar band for a lot of years now, I always enjoy hearing other bands that do the dual-lead thing well, and these guys synch up and play off each other really well. And the vocals - spot - on.
After a set of Priest classics, they took the stage and did some other killer metal tunes - Take Hold of the Flame (I'm a sucker for early Queensryche), We Rock, Bark at the Moon just to name a few. All in all, it was a whole lot of fun. When they come to town again, definitely check 'em out.
Travis
This blog entry is dedicated to Les Binks, who has been awarded "Best Priest Drummer, EVER" by Chris Fritz and me.
Saturday night was a good night! We had been looking forward to playing this show for a long time. Pretty much as soon as it was announced, I hit up Al from the Garage Bar about opening. Why so excited?
Because we're all big Judas Priest fans, and Electric Eye is a phenomenally good JP tribute band. They mostly do JP's classic material, and they do it incredibly well. I'll admit, as a singer I'm pretty envious of anybody who can nail Victim of Changes, and Chris (Electric Eye vocalist) hammers the high notes effortlessly. By effortlessly, I mean Unleashed in the East levels of effortlessly.
But, before we go too far into Electric Eye's set, let's talk a bit about Rule 17, which is at least theoretically why any of you are reading this. We switched things up a bit which was, for lack of a better term, strange. For the past few shows, we've opened with Act of Defiance. The beginning of that song was written as a show opener, and only was tacked onto that tune later as a permanent addition. I wrote that harmonized beginning at the end of the 7th Seal era because at that time we had decided to try Judas Priest's "Hellion" as a show opener. The theory worked great, except everybody was expecting Electric Eye afterward, which we didn't do.
This time we opened with Iron Maiden's "Powerslave", which went over well. We followed that with "In the Wake of Fear", which always seems to get buried mid-set. Things got back to normal a bit when we got around to "Act of Defiance", "Awake", and the newcomer "Beyond". For the first time in a few shows, we brought out "Perfect World", which for some reason always winds up getting kicked off the set when we have to cut songs. Perhaps we have the irrational belief that switching guitars or tuning a string takes upwards of five minutes or something. We closed off the night with Black Sabbath's "Children of the Sea" and perennial closer "Waste Away".
Oh, and there's video evidence!
Powerslave
In the Wake of Fear
Awake
Perfect World
So, we wrapped up our set and settled in to catch Electric Eye. Metal Gods, Rock Hard Ride Free, Victim of Changes, Green Manalishi (With the Two-Pronged Crown), Diamonds and Rust, the list goes on. Tight drums, tight bass, tight guitars. Having played as a two-guitar band for a lot of years now, I always enjoy hearing other bands that do the dual-lead thing well, and these guys synch up and play off each other really well. And the vocals - spot - on.
After a set of Priest classics, they took the stage and did some other killer metal tunes - Take Hold of the Flame (I'm a sucker for early Queensryche), We Rock, Bark at the Moon just to name a few. All in all, it was a whole lot of fun. When they come to town again, definitely check 'em out.
Travis
This blog entry is dedicated to Les Binks, who has been awarded "Best Priest Drummer, EVER" by Chris Fritz and me.
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