Apocalyptica
May. 7th, 2008 01:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ivyficI went to an Apocalyptica concert on Monday (be warned, the website plays music). My ears are still ringing. No, I'm not kidding. Apocalyptica is a Finnish cello metal band, most famous (well, "famous") for their first album where they do cello covers of Metallica songs. The album is called Plays Metallica by Four Cellos, which sounds to me like a conversation with some marketing guy. ("What's this Apocalyptica group do?" "Well, they play Metallica, with four cellos." "That's what we're calling the album!") Since then, they've branched out into more and more original stuff, so the concert I went to only had a couple of covers, which were the encores.
The crowd was this weird mix of goth and preppy—some people in the full eyeliner, piercings, spiked hair mode, some in khakis and button downs. Basically there are only two ways you know about Apocalyptica—either you're really into heavy metal and have heard of them for the small amount of acclaim they've gained, or you're intellectual and listen to classical music and have heard of them as a curiosity.
I was invited there by a friend of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
chuckro's who is a true fan, as opposed to me who got a couple of the Metallica covers off of Napster back in college. The concert was in a small hall off of Union Square, standing room only. We stood against a wall, which had the duel benefit of something to lean on (the band actually started playing over an hour after we were let in) and preventing us from getting crushed by the crowd. We could still see the stage pretty well.
The first thing I didn't expect about Apocalyptica is that they're hot. Really. Look.
The second is that they headbang like whoa. I do not know how you can headbang and play the cello at the same time, but then I don't know how you can headbang at all—I tried it once for five minutes and it made me dizzy and gave me a whopping headache.
The third thing is that it was FREAKING LOUD. This is, of course, how metal is supposed to be listened to, but I wasn't thinking about that when I was walking over so did not think to bring earplugs. It was loud enough that with the whole room screaming "Enter Sandman" you couldn't hear the people at all. Since it was mostly low (you know, cellos), it was fine, but for a few songs they brought out a singer and when he hit a high note (I'm talking relatively speaking—it wasn't very high at all), the frequency resonated with my skull. It felt like someone was grabbing me by the back of the head—it made me feel drunk. This is possibly why my ears are still ringing.
That being said, they were awesome. I may not seem like a metalhead, but I do love me some heavy metal, and this is good stuff. This clip is an approximation of what they look like in concert, except with more jumping about and flinging their cellos around and with strobe lights and smoke machines:
The other great thing about this band is that they're Finnish. They speak English fine, but their accent for some reason makes them sound like valley girls. At one point, one of the guys (on the far left of the photo above), who has the long black hair, goatee, shirt off (he's skinny as a rail) with tattoos all down one arm, wearing pants that god must be holding up cause physics sure wasn't, after headbanging through a whole song, grabbed the mike and said, "Oh my god. Headbanging is sooooo cool. It's not—it makes you sweat," and then gave this little laugh. I was like AWWWW!! HE'S ADORABLE!!!! which I'm sure is not the effect that he was going for.
He kept referring to the blond as a shemale (and look at the guy—seriously), but most of the time I couldn't understand half of what they were saying. About halfway through the concert they played a slower song, and by that point they were really out of tune with each other—like, half a key out of tune. (I don't know, maybe it was intentional.) This is what you get when you bang the hell out of a cello for an hour. Most of the time, between the amplifiers and reverb and the percussive way they play, you couldn't tell.
They only played for about an hour and a half, which was about all I could take. We encored them twice, so they ended up closing with "Enter Sandman," "Nothing Else Matters," and "In the Hall of the Mountain King" (since they're classical musicians) which rocked.
I've ordered a couple of their CD's. If you go to their website, between the three songs from the last album that play automatically (controls on the top right) and the video page, you can listen to a lot of their rep. I think what gets me about Apocalyptica is not just the great music but that the band calls attention to the intersection of art and popular culture. They're trained classically, still play in the Finnish Symphonic Orchestra, I believe, but they play stuff that most classical musicians disdain. It's not just about elevating heavy metal to "good enough to play in a concert hall," though, or classical musicians commenting on popular music (like the Kings Singers singing the Beatles). Instead it's a group of people trained to play one way saying fuck it, this is the music we like. We don't care about whether it's worthy of our training or these instruments, we're going to play what we love. And I think that comes across. It shows that just because a genre is popular and, in the case of metal, compared to aural blight, does not mean it requires less skill to play, is less musically complex, or is too simplistic to be enjoyed by people with a "true understanding of music."
I also have to say a big turn-off to a lot of metal for me is the lyrics. Not the subject matter, but the clunkiness ("My wings have been so denied"? Please). (I should add that I do own Metallica's black album, but really, who doesn't?) There's a reason my favorite metal band so far has been Rammstein. I know their lyrics are asinine—I've read the translation—but I don't speak German so that doesn't interfere with my listening. Apocalyptica actually opened for Rammstein on their Reise, Reise tour. Oh, I would have loved to have seen that. With earplugs.
The crowd was this weird mix of goth and preppy—some people in the full eyeliner, piercings, spiked hair mode, some in khakis and button downs. Basically there are only two ways you know about Apocalyptica—either you're really into heavy metal and have heard of them for the small amount of acclaim they've gained, or you're intellectual and listen to classical music and have heard of them as a curiosity.
I was invited there by a friend of
chuckro's who is a true fan, as opposed to me who got a couple of the Metallica covers off of Napster back in college. The concert was in a small hall off of Union Square, standing room only. We stood against a wall, which had the duel benefit of something to lean on (the band actually started playing over an hour after we were let in) and preventing us from getting crushed by the crowd. We could still see the stage pretty well.The first thing I didn't expect about Apocalyptica is that they're hot. Really. Look.
 |
The second is that they headbang like whoa. I do not know how you can headbang and play the cello at the same time, but then I don't know how you can headbang at all—I tried it once for five minutes and it made me dizzy and gave me a whopping headache.
The third thing is that it was FREAKING LOUD. This is, of course, how metal is supposed to be listened to, but I wasn't thinking about that when I was walking over so did not think to bring earplugs. It was loud enough that with the whole room screaming "Enter Sandman" you couldn't hear the people at all. Since it was mostly low (you know, cellos), it was fine, but for a few songs they brought out a singer and when he hit a high note (I'm talking relatively speaking—it wasn't very high at all), the frequency resonated with my skull. It felt like someone was grabbing me by the back of the head—it made me feel drunk. This is possibly why my ears are still ringing.
That being said, they were awesome. I may not seem like a metalhead, but I do love me some heavy metal, and this is good stuff. This clip is an approximation of what they look like in concert, except with more jumping about and flinging their cellos around and with strobe lights and smoke machines:
The other great thing about this band is that they're Finnish. They speak English fine, but their accent for some reason makes them sound like valley girls. At one point, one of the guys (on the far left of the photo above), who has the long black hair, goatee, shirt off (he's skinny as a rail) with tattoos all down one arm, wearing pants that god must be holding up cause physics sure wasn't, after headbanging through a whole song, grabbed the mike and said, "Oh my god. Headbanging is sooooo cool. It's not—it makes you sweat," and then gave this little laugh. I was like AWWWW!! HE'S ADORABLE!!!! which I'm sure is not the effect that he was going for.
He kept referring to the blond as a shemale (and look at the guy—seriously), but most of the time I couldn't understand half of what they were saying. About halfway through the concert they played a slower song, and by that point they were really out of tune with each other—like, half a key out of tune. (I don't know, maybe it was intentional.) This is what you get when you bang the hell out of a cello for an hour. Most of the time, between the amplifiers and reverb and the percussive way they play, you couldn't tell.
They only played for about an hour and a half, which was about all I could take. We encored them twice, so they ended up closing with "Enter Sandman," "Nothing Else Matters," and "In the Hall of the Mountain King" (since they're classical musicians) which rocked.
I've ordered a couple of their CD's. If you go to their website, between the three songs from the last album that play automatically (controls on the top right) and the video page, you can listen to a lot of their rep. I think what gets me about Apocalyptica is not just the great music but that the band calls attention to the intersection of art and popular culture. They're trained classically, still play in the Finnish Symphonic Orchestra, I believe, but they play stuff that most classical musicians disdain. It's not just about elevating heavy metal to "good enough to play in a concert hall," though, or classical musicians commenting on popular music (like the Kings Singers singing the Beatles). Instead it's a group of people trained to play one way saying fuck it, this is the music we like. We don't care about whether it's worthy of our training or these instruments, we're going to play what we love. And I think that comes across. It shows that just because a genre is popular and, in the case of metal, compared to aural blight, does not mean it requires less skill to play, is less musically complex, or is too simplistic to be enjoyed by people with a "true understanding of music."
I also have to say a big turn-off to a lot of metal for me is the lyrics. Not the subject matter, but the clunkiness ("My wings have been so denied"? Please). (I should add that I do own Metallica's black album, but really, who doesn't?) There's a reason my favorite metal band so far has been Rammstein. I know their lyrics are asinine—I've read the translation—but I don't speak German so that doesn't interfere with my listening. Apocalyptica actually opened for Rammstein on their Reise, Reise tour. Oh, I would have loved to have seen that. With earplugs.