AllMusic Concert PRE-view
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Coming into this first "Major" of Fall 2010 concerts (Thursday NFL night), the identity has already been established during the initial four concerts: dark and heavy. But before conclusions set in, keep in mind, that these are concert veterans, and are entering their 6th Fall season of concerts---dark and heavy have different standards and meanings these recent years. In the past, dark and heavy meant more mainstream, acts like Seether, Breaking Benjamin, Saliva, 32 Leaves, Nirvana, and Fuel. All admirable concert artists in their own rights, in their own ways, but that was mainstream darkness. Really, starting in Fall 2008 did we see deeper darkness, and more indie heavy-rock. Bands like Hum, Failure, Type O' Negative, The Gathering, Katatonia, all introduced a new definition of heavy, and dark concert music. There is something to dark music that is unforced and coming more from the indie/underground side of the industry. Just like there is something to dark music that is unpretentious---the bands let the listeners come to them. Even a band as turgid and as twisted as Failure, to their credit, at least they don't act like they care what the audience nor their genre is, nor do they care for publicity or the limelight, they make the more hardcore music followers come and find them.
Thursday night is the first real big concert of Fall 2010. The performers know this, and have begun their plans for this event already. There is no reason to believe that the performers won't even further establish the dark threshold that has established itself so much in the early going this Fall. But one emotion at least they have stayed away from is sadness, or depressing tone. You can be dark and not be depressing, and almost all of the dark music presented to this point has followed that notion. And since Thursday night will be the 9th day of September, it will actual be Fall, and not August, so their dark music tendencies will feel even more genuine now. Will Gary come back to the space rock he was doing in late August? Will Andy continue releasing new Katatonia in concerts? Will Submersed continue the momentum? How about the performance? Will it be taken a step higher on Thursday? These are all good lead-in questions to this event.
written on September 3, 2010