AVENGED SEVENFOLD / DISTURBED | LIVE REVIEW
Motorpoint Arena Cardiff, Thurs 19 Jan
Following on from Korn and Limp Bizkit’s triumphant return to the capital in December, tonight Cardiff is once again treated to another bill of metal behemoths. Bringing their full production to the Motorpoint this evening are goth nu-metal heroes Disturbed and metalcore kids turned arena rock gods Avenged Sevenfold.
Kicking off tonight’s events are Sweden’s In Flames [below], who’ve been knocking around since the early 90s. Despite the doors opening at 5.30pm, they play to a decently sized crowd who lap up their melodic brand of death metal. They prove to be a good appetizer before the double main event.
By the time Disturbed [below] hit the stage the Motorpoint is as full as I’ve ever seen it. Striding onstage in a long black leather coat, singer David Draiman looks like a goth priest about to conduct his nu-metal flock through their favourite hymns. Kicking things off, as their latest album does, with the one-two of The Eye Of The Storm and Immortalized, the crowd go suitably mental. Now I confess to not being Disturbed’s biggest fan, but there’s no doubting the efforts they’ve gone to to put a show on tonight. The pyro, which accentuates every chorus, must have cost a fortune alone.
Prayer, from 2002’s Believe, gets the first real moshpits of the night going as does old favourite “Stupify”, before a short break leads us into current favourite The Sound Of Silence, a cover of the Simon & Garfunkel classic. They wheel out a small orchestra and Draiman invites Cardiff to light the night with phones; Disturbed’s biggest fan behind me informs me that we just witnessed something special. Another oldie, Down With The Sickness, finishes their set off, before Draiman and co disappear into the night. Not my cup of tea, but Cardiff loved them.
I first saw tonight’s headliners Avenged Sevenfold when they were metalcore’s brightest hope, supporting Lostprophets in Cardiff University. Since then, they’ve gone on to become Download headliners and arguably metal’s current biggest band. The stage is stripped bare, save for a modest drum kit in the middle, and it’s new sticksman Brooks Wackerman who enters the fray first – followed by guitar god Synyster Gates, who leads us into The Stage from their new album of the same name.
Flanked by six 30ft screens, intercutting live shots of the band with an impressive array of graphics, the band launch into Afterlife, which prompts a mass singalong. Even singer M. Shadows’ mic cutting out doesn’t seem to bother anybody: Cardiff is happy to fill in. It’s not long before Shadows informs us that they now have seven albums worth of fans and they intend to please us all. With that we get a brace of tracks from their first two albums, the epic To End The Rapture followed by Chapter 4, and one lucky fan gets to join the band onstage to help on backing vocals for Nightmare. The crowdpleasing Almost Easy is rolled out, before they launch into one of their quirkier tunes, the horn-led Sunny Disposition followed by the oldie pleasing Warmness On The Soul.
Things get a bit farcical during two new tunes Planets and Acid Rain, when much to the band’s amusement it takes three attempts to inflate a huge skeleton astronaut to soar over the crowd, but soar he does eventually. The band return for an encore, with Shadows now draped in a Welsh flag, running through a ferocious version of Bat Country. The poignant A Little Piece Of Heaven is dedicated, as always, to late drummer The Rev, before a truly surprising set closer of Unholy Confessions prompts the biggest moshpit I’ve ever seen.
It’s easy to see why Avenged Sevenfold seem to go from strength to strength. They have an appeal that stretches across the rock spectrum and there is something about them to please everyone. These package tours are becoming ever more popular and Cardiff is lapping them up. More please.
words CHRIS ANDREWS photos RAYMOND BANNISTER