Mastodon / Burning Brides
Slim's
April 5, 2005

Review by Jake Thomas

I’ve really been loving the rock show lately, and I mean RAWK shows, like this one. Although it wasn’t my intention, I arrived in time to see most of Burning Brides set. I’ve owned and gotten rid of a couple of their albums, they never quite did it for me – not terrible, just bland mostly. But live, they were definitely more good than bad…they played that one really good song they have, I don’t know the name of it…you know, the good one. They also apparently have a song that sounds like a rip-off of Metallica’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, but I guess if you’re going to rip a song off that’s a pretty good choice. Another thing I noticed about a number of their songs – they’ll play a pretty bland song for the first few minutes, and then they have this breakdown in the song about 3/4ths of the way through the song and then all of the sudden the track gets super awesome…they really need to focus more on those ending parts of their songs, that shit is golden.

Mastodon was the big headliner, and everyone in the crowd was pretty excited… there were unbathed “NorCal Hesher Metal Brahs” as far as the eye could see, hopped up on crappy beer and cannabis and ready to rock the fuck out. It’s probably the last time they ever play a venue this small, and after seeing them open for Slayer at the Warfield it was good to see a more intimate performance. The band was amazing as expected – played lots of songs from their two full lengths, I especially got excited for “Where Strides the Behemoth”, “Aqua Dementia”, “Blood and Thunder” and “I Am Ahab”. They finished out their set with a cover of a Melvins track called “The Bit” – the crowd went a bit bonkers and it sounded pretty awesome despite the fact that I’ve never been much of a Melvins guy. They said they were coming back in the late summer, august or so, and I wouldn’t miss it for the world.







©2005 playinginfog.com