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thedarkprojectOn Saturday was the long-awaited trip down to London to see 2 of the finest bands Ireland has to offer, plus a bonus bunch of Swedes. When I originally told Chris and Allan I'd bought 3 tickets for this, they had money out of their wallets to buy the spares off me within 10 seconds. Neither of them had seen Primordial before, and I hadn't seen them for several years, so we were all looking forward to this.
A travel plan eventually evolved - Allan would drive us down to his home town of Leighton Buzzard, and from there we'd take the train to London Euston, then the underground up to Camden, reversing the process to get back. All good fun, and relatively cheap too. Setting off from Notts at just after 11am, we passed various strange people on the M1 and the odd dead badger or two in Buckinghamshire, arriving at Château d'Allan some time after midday. After a quick meet'n'greet with the relevant parental units and visiting toddlers, we were deposited at the local railway station and left to get the remarkably quick and silent train down into London.
We got into Camden at something like 2:15pm, and did the expected wandering through the various alternative stalls and shops there. I've never been during the day before, only at night to gigs and clubs, so I've not seen the whole Camden shopping experience previously. It's an interesting place for sure, but there's not all that much variety on display. We must have seen the same Matrix-cassock-with-buttonholes-that-look-like-curtain-ties in over 5 different places, for example. Mostly Chris just complained about the poor state of alternative fashion these days, and I retorted accordingly. ("Bah, it's all kids clothes now!" "No, we're just old now." [...] "It's gone all cyber!" "Chris, we are in Cyberdog.") Allan, who hates browsing through shops, trudged along about 10 paces behind, muttering quietly.
After a bit more of that, we stumbled upon Resurrection Records, a place reputed to be a Mecca for metal cds, but which is actually Pretty Fucking Small. I was slightly disappointed at there not being a wider selection in there, but I still managed to fill my pockets with stuff before walking out.
At 4pm or so, it was time to get some food, so we found a Nice Traditional English Pub and ordered some Nice Traditional English Pub Food. Little did we know that we had apparently stumbled into a gay bar. Immense. I'm not sure what tipped us off, whether it was the stickers exhorting us to have 'safe' fun, the pictures on the walls of women that weren't quite women, or the American man sat at the table behind us talking about how his boyfriend was only interested in sex, but we worked it out eventually. My companions didn't look out of place with their nice leather trousers, either. Still, it looked like any old pub from the outside, and there were plenty of hetero people inside, so no big deal. Food was good too. We didn't linger too long, however.
Then, across to the World's End pub for a drink or two before going into the gig venue. There was an impressive array of merchandise on sale, and somewhat unusually, a lot of cds being sold for bands other than the 3 that were playing. Chris was keen to get a good spot, so after picking up a t-shirt I made my way through and got pretty much dead centre in the front row. Chris and I started examining the guitar effects pedals ("ooh, Boss Chromatic Tuner! ooh, Zakk Wylde Overdrive!") while Allan turned his nose up disdainfully at the cheap cymbals everybody was using.
First up were Mael Mórdha, who impressed me a lot the last time I saw them, and repeated that feat this time too. Being so close to the action was great, except for one thing: Roibéard the singer was wearing a rather loose robe, and lifting his foot up to stand on the speaker could have led to those of us on the front row seeing more than any man needs to. Luckily the robes spared us. The performance itself was great, and the low whistle parts add something rather unique. Allan did his usual band-wooing trick and ended up with the drummer coming over to give him specifically his drumsticks at the end. Bless.
Grand Magus were the next band up, and although I'd never heard of them before, they seemed to have a fair few fans in the house. They played well, sounded ok, and seemed to leave happy.
Finally came Primordial, the band we'd come for. Vocalist A. A. Nemtheanga strode onto the stage, dripping (theatrical) blood and staring confidently into the crowd. "We meet again, London!" Indeed. They kicked off with 'Empire Falls' from the new album and played a set of all the favourites, which did not disappoint. The rest of the band were quite calm onstage and were content to concentrate on getting the songs right, but their singer has enough stage presence for two whole bands anyway. I don't often bother getting to the front row for gigs these days, but it was worth it on this occasion. The sound was great there, the view was perfect, and the singer was quite appreciative of those of us in the front row who knew every song. Even a couple of the guys from Mael Mórdha were waving to us from the side of the stage. Top stuff.
Alas, all good things come to an end, and after set closer 'Gods to the Godless', the stage was quickly deserted and we had to make our way out. This is where we ran into a few more people and the world started to seem very small indeed. I'd already seen one person (Lisa) who I only know via other people's MySpace accounts, and in the venue I saw a couple of people I recognised off Last.fm, but on the way out I saw and greeted![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
humanjigsaw666, then saw erishkigal briefly, before being interrupted by the familiar figure of Owen Thompson, former president of the Nottingham Trent University Rock Society. Sadly I didn't get to introduce him to Allan, his modern day counterpart, but I'm sure Allan will get over it. After a few quips about age and beards and stuff, we made our excuses and left for the Tube station.
By this point, after having been shoved in the back many a time by eager gig-goers, Chris's legendarily malfunctioning kidneys were giving him severe pain. Thus we virtually had to carry him to the train, which wasn't helped by the Benny Hill style episode of having to go from platform to platform to find a train that actually stopped at Euston. Once we were there, a train back to Leighton Buzzard was waiting immediately, so Chris sprawled out over 3 seats and we sat nearby.
The trip back was fine; a couple of old men sat opposite us wearing jumpers with the Welsh dragon knitted on the front, and they sipped from plastic glasses of whisky while happily telling us that their team had beaten ours at rugby. It wasn't long before we were back in Leighton Buzzard, and Chris was on the point of being sick everywhere. Great fun. Allan's dad picked us up from the station to drive us back to his place, and we then set about grabbing a drink and a bite to eat before the final leg of the journey. While my back was turned, Chris threw up in my Resurrection Records bag. I had already removed the cds from it in the event of such a thing occurring, however.
By 2am we were home, our mission successful, and a good time was had by all. I think I fell asleep contemplating the nature of the final consonant sound in 'Mórdha'; it seems to start off as a 'D' but ends as a 'T'. Those crazy Irish and their mad language. Late night linguistics are definitely part of the rock and roll culture, I'm sure.
A travel plan eventually evolved - Allan would drive us down to his home town of Leighton Buzzard, and from there we'd take the train to London Euston, then the underground up to Camden, reversing the process to get back. All good fun, and relatively cheap too. Setting off from Notts at just after 11am, we passed various strange people on the M1 and the odd dead badger or two in Buckinghamshire, arriving at Château d'Allan some time after midday. After a quick meet'n'greet with the relevant parental units and visiting toddlers, we were deposited at the local railway station and left to get the remarkably quick and silent train down into London.
We got into Camden at something like 2:15pm, and did the expected wandering through the various alternative stalls and shops there. I've never been during the day before, only at night to gigs and clubs, so I've not seen the whole Camden shopping experience previously. It's an interesting place for sure, but there's not all that much variety on display. We must have seen the same Matrix-cassock-with-buttonholes-that-look-like-curtain-ties in over 5 different places, for example. Mostly Chris just complained about the poor state of alternative fashion these days, and I retorted accordingly. ("Bah, it's all kids clothes now!" "No, we're just old now." [...] "It's gone all cyber!" "Chris, we are in Cyberdog.") Allan, who hates browsing through shops, trudged along about 10 paces behind, muttering quietly.
After a bit more of that, we stumbled upon Resurrection Records, a place reputed to be a Mecca for metal cds, but which is actually Pretty Fucking Small. I was slightly disappointed at there not being a wider selection in there, but I still managed to fill my pockets with stuff before walking out.
At 4pm or so, it was time to get some food, so we found a Nice Traditional English Pub and ordered some Nice Traditional English Pub Food. Little did we know that we had apparently stumbled into a gay bar. Immense. I'm not sure what tipped us off, whether it was the stickers exhorting us to have 'safe' fun, the pictures on the walls of women that weren't quite women, or the American man sat at the table behind us talking about how his boyfriend was only interested in sex, but we worked it out eventually. My companions didn't look out of place with their nice leather trousers, either. Still, it looked like any old pub from the outside, and there were plenty of hetero people inside, so no big deal. Food was good too. We didn't linger too long, however.
Then, across to the World's End pub for a drink or two before going into the gig venue. There was an impressive array of merchandise on sale, and somewhat unusually, a lot of cds being sold for bands other than the 3 that were playing. Chris was keen to get a good spot, so after picking up a t-shirt I made my way through and got pretty much dead centre in the front row. Chris and I started examining the guitar effects pedals ("ooh, Boss Chromatic Tuner! ooh, Zakk Wylde Overdrive!") while Allan turned his nose up disdainfully at the cheap cymbals everybody was using.
First up were Mael Mórdha, who impressed me a lot the last time I saw them, and repeated that feat this time too. Being so close to the action was great, except for one thing: Roibéard the singer was wearing a rather loose robe, and lifting his foot up to stand on the speaker could have led to those of us on the front row seeing more than any man needs to. Luckily the robes spared us. The performance itself was great, and the low whistle parts add something rather unique. Allan did his usual band-wooing trick and ended up with the drummer coming over to give him specifically his drumsticks at the end. Bless.
Grand Magus were the next band up, and although I'd never heard of them before, they seemed to have a fair few fans in the house. They played well, sounded ok, and seemed to leave happy.
Finally came Primordial, the band we'd come for. Vocalist A. A. Nemtheanga strode onto the stage, dripping (theatrical) blood and staring confidently into the crowd. "We meet again, London!" Indeed. They kicked off with 'Empire Falls' from the new album and played a set of all the favourites, which did not disappoint. The rest of the band were quite calm onstage and were content to concentrate on getting the songs right, but their singer has enough stage presence for two whole bands anyway. I don't often bother getting to the front row for gigs these days, but it was worth it on this occasion. The sound was great there, the view was perfect, and the singer was quite appreciative of those of us in the front row who knew every song. Even a couple of the guys from Mael Mórdha were waving to us from the side of the stage. Top stuff.
Alas, all good things come to an end, and after set closer 'Gods to the Godless', the stage was quickly deserted and we had to make our way out. This is where we ran into a few more people and the world started to seem very small indeed. I'd already seen one person (Lisa) who I only know via other people's MySpace accounts, and in the venue I saw a couple of people I recognised off Last.fm, but on the way out I saw and greeted
humanjigsaw666, then saw erishkigal briefly, before being interrupted by the familiar figure of Owen Thompson, former president of the Nottingham Trent University Rock Society. Sadly I didn't get to introduce him to Allan, his modern day counterpart, but I'm sure Allan will get over it. After a few quips about age and beards and stuff, we made our excuses and left for the Tube station.By this point, after having been shoved in the back many a time by eager gig-goers, Chris's legendarily malfunctioning kidneys were giving him severe pain. Thus we virtually had to carry him to the train, which wasn't helped by the Benny Hill style episode of having to go from platform to platform to find a train that actually stopped at Euston. Once we were there, a train back to Leighton Buzzard was waiting immediately, so Chris sprawled out over 3 seats and we sat nearby.
The trip back was fine; a couple of old men sat opposite us wearing jumpers with the Welsh dragon knitted on the front, and they sipped from plastic glasses of whisky while happily telling us that their team had beaten ours at rugby. It wasn't long before we were back in Leighton Buzzard, and Chris was on the point of being sick everywhere. Great fun. Allan's dad picked us up from the station to drive us back to his place, and we then set about grabbing a drink and a bite to eat before the final leg of the journey. While my back was turned, Chris threw up in my Resurrection Records bag. I had already removed the cds from it in the event of such a thing occurring, however.
By 2am we were home, our mission successful, and a good time was had by all. I think I fell asleep contemplating the nature of the final consonant sound in 'Mórdha'; it seems to start off as a 'D' but ends as a 'T'. Those crazy Irish and their mad language. Late night linguistics are definitely part of the rock and roll culture, I'm sure.
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no subject
Date: 2008-02-04 02:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-04 07:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-04 02:22 pm (UTC)So Owen the Dolphin still exists! Even I remember him from way back in the day when I only had visitation rights...
I think I fell asleep contemplating the nature of the final consonant sound in 'Mórdha'; it seems to start off as a 'D' but ends as a 'T'. Those crazy Irish and their mad language.
Last I heard it was something like "Mael Morrrra", with the d completely ignored. It's not just the Irish; it's more of a pan-Celtic problem.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-04 07:02 pm (UTC)As for the band name, today's research indicates that I was thinking of a different sound with the Ds and Ts, and that the DH is more like a cross between the end of 'loch' and 'log', but it gets more complicated when considering that details on the pronunciation of old Irish are not entirely comprehensive.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-04 09:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-04 05:40 pm (UTC)