Concert at Mr. Smalls, 10/1

Let me start off by saying this:

• In Flames
• Between the Buried and Me
• 3 Inches of Blood
• The Faceless

at Mr. Small’s. And it was awesome.

I bought my ticket over the summer before I left to come to school. That’s how long I’ve been excited about this show. Rebecca (my concert buddy) and I decided that the easiest way to arrange our transportation would be to take a cab, so that’s what we did. We get in the cab (that smells like cigarettes and creaks in strange ways) and start driving towards the theater. Rebecca and I are sharing my headphones as I show her some of the stuff I listen to (As Blood Runs Black, Hacride, Arsis, Despised Icon…) as the driver navigates the streets of Pittsburgh. He turns down this tiny road, pulls up next to a house on the corner, and says “alright. Mr. Small’s. $11.35″ – less than we were expecting. Good. However, I had no idea where we were. It was some not-so-nice older residential area, but I knew we were in the right place from the crowds of people in blue jeans and black t-shirts. I looked around, and there was a small, dilapidated sign saying “Mr. Small’s Theater” across the street from where we were. If I liken black-shirted metalheads to electric charge, we were clearly going from a place of low potential on our street corner to a place of much higher potential. There is a large concrete patio in front of the church that is Mr. Small’s theater, so we go find a spot on the wall to lean and wait for the doors to open. It’s a little after six, and the show starts at seven, but already, the crowds are forming. After a few minutes, something resembling an inchoate line takes shape next to the door, so we tag on to the end of it. I tell Rebecca how everyone matches. Almost everyone was wearing a black t-shirt and blue jeans. Maybe a black hoodie. I saw one guy in a white t-shirt, and another in a blue polo, but for the most part, black was the universal color choice. As we’re standing, talking, I say something like “after I saw Between the Buried and Me the first time with my dad, he liked what they played when the singer shut up, so I made him an edited version where I cut out all the screaming. He listens to it all the time,” and the guys behind me laugh and one’s like “that’s awesome! sorry… i know you’re not supposed to eavesdrop and everything, but that’s really cool.” It was kinda funny. Someone with a clipboard comes out and asks if anyone is over 21. One person raised their hand and got a wristband.

The doors finally open, and it was a calm, orderly procession to the ticket-ripper and the theater. Rebecca and I were probably among the first thirty or forty people admitted, so we picked a spot on the left side of the stage, with one row of people between us and the musical gods that would be entertaining us later in the evening.

We kept talking about stuff… I decided that they should post a track listing somewhere of all the pre-concert songs they play over the PA system… The guys behind me thought it would be really funny if the band came out with faceless masks on… and it’s still only 6:45. Five minutes later, some guys come out and start adjusting stuff on stage, and sound checking, then they leave. And at exactly seven, they come back, and The Faceless play a gloriously, brutally heavy half hour set.

I don’t know their catalog all that well, but I know they played “An Autopsy” and… well.. I don’t remember any of the other songs they played. But it was awesome. They played really tight, really well, and I really enjoyed it. I thought it was kinda funny cause the guitar player right in front of us looks like such a nice guy, not like a guy in a REALLY heavy metal band. So anyways, they finish up, and take their equipment off the stage, and 3 Inches of Blood start setting up. I noted that they had one bass drum with a double pedal as opposed to the Faceless’s double drum setup. I had sort of heard these guys before, but I didn’t remember what they sounded like. The guys come on stage, and with the exception of the second guitar player/backup vocalist and the drummer, they were all really really large, hairy, burly men. Canadians (it explains everything…). They start playing and all of a sudden, I thought someone pinched the singer’s balls in a pair of pliers. The highest-pitched singing I’d ever heard was coming out of this giant caveman… I couldn’t take him (or, consequently, them) seriously. Some of the things they played weren’t bad, but it was hard to watch that man sing in such a surprising register.I sent a text message to my dad, “Imagine Metal Church being sung by Zakk Wylde…”

By the end of their set, we were both more than ready for Between the Buried and Me to come on and sweep us off our feet. As the roadies start exchanging the equipment on stage, we’re getting more and more excited. Finally Tommy Rogers comes out in a black shirt and a red hoodie, carrying a keyboard, and starts setting up, followed shortly thereafter by Paul Waggoner (who had a large tattoo of the beautiful orange PRS guitar that he was playing on his forearm).

They get things the way they want them, and finally, the rest of the band emerges. Tommy steps up to the mic, and says “We are between the buried and me. And I have bronchitis so bear with me.” They open with “All Bodies” and play it flawlessly (although Tommy made the crowd sing “Keeper of the stars, I hope to never find, We are just mortal souls, left to dieeee”). It was awesome. Dustie’s guitar was beautiful too, another custom PRS. I had been impressed by the lack of crowdsquish going on during the first two bands (though one guy managed to crowdsurf his way to the stage where a big black security guy was waiting to escort him back to the fringes of the crowd), but with BTBAM, I got shoved right up against this really hot girl in front of me (I reassured her between songs that I was trying hard to keep my hands above ass level… she laughed and thanked me). She certainly smelled a lot better than some big sweaty hairy dude…

I was so close I could have reached over and touched Paul Waggoner’s feet! It was incredible. Paul started talking after their first song, and explained that Tommy can barely talk. He said they were glad to be back in Pittsburgh, and that they had to play a song that they played last time they were here – Selkies: The Endless Obsession. The beginning’s unmistakable 7/8 keyboard riff cuts through the crowd’s excited screams, and the squish comes again, followed by several more crowdsurfers, but after the song mellowed out, the chaos did as well. It was beautiful. A perfect rendition of a classic song. It made me really happy. Then they played a new song from “The Great Misdirect.” I missed which song it actually was, but it was something no one in the crowd had ever heard before. An interesting side effect of this is that everyone was listening, rather than moshing. The crowdsquish essentially ceased, and the theater was awed by the unveiling of a new BTBAM track. Personally, I thought parts of it were a little messy, and the timings in some parts were too odd to sound coherent (especially in the beginning), but I haven’t heard the studio version yet, so I don’t know how it’s supposed to sound. Other parts, on the other hand, were AWESOME. There’s a great groove that they get into in the middle of the song, and the ending is great.

After that song, half the crowd starts screaming “white walls” as Tommy asks how everyone’s doing. They make the audience scream for the other bands at the show, and finally, Tommy stands in front of his keyboard, and plays a chord. It’s unmistakable. Foam Born (A) The Backtrack, the first song off Colors. I turn to Rebecca, and say “I hope they play both parts!” People around us nodded in agreement. Tommy says “you’ll have to help me out here cause I can’t sing” and turns the mic to the crowd. I have never heard such a large crowd sing a song so clearly, so well, and so together. “I’ll just keep waiting, you’ll just keep waiting, in the cold…” It was really moving. I could see Tommy smiling, clearly awed by the coherence of the crowd. When the vocals stop in the song, and the rest of the band comes in, Tommy thanks the audience, and they play both parts of the song flawlessly.

Foam Born (B) the Decade of Statues [the second part of the song, and the second track off Colors] is probably my favorite BTBAM song ever. And they played it. Ohhhhh it was so good! I screamed my voice out screaming along to every word. The crowd definitely liked this song too, because a circle formed in the middle of the floor, and I got shoved around a bit standing next to the stage. But it wasn’t too crazy. I was narrowly missed by a crowdsurfer, and I was separated from Rebecca by a few people, but it wasn’t too bad. They finish the song (it was really weird to hear it just end and not fade out into jungle drums like the album version), and Tommy says “we’re gonna play one more song for you.” The crowd makes a *disappointed sound* and Tommy reassures us “don’t worry though, this one’s nice and long” and plays one note on the keyboard. And holds it. And everyone knew. “It’s called White Walls” and the crowd went crazy as they played what technically was the very end of “Viridian,” the song right before White Walls on the Colors album, and built up to the explosive intro riff.

They played it amazingly. The tension build about halfway through: “get out of this closed off circle…” was again the audience’s responsibility. It was awesome. The ending was beautiful. Live, it sounds so full, so thick, so heavy… it’s indescribable.

They skipped the piano outro, and again, it was weird to hear the song just end, but man, was it amazing. These guys are gods. After they finished their set, and the small theater was relatively quiet, I called out “Paul! Throw me a pick!” Hey, it could have worked – I was within two arms’-lengths of him… After they packed up, Rebecca and I decided that since we weren’t huge In Flames fans, we would move back into the middle of the crowd so we didn’t get squished by the surging wall of people that was inevitable for the Swedish headliners. It turned out to be a wise move, because the crowd got crazy, even though, surprisingly, about 15% or 20% left after BTBAM. To me, a lot of In Flames’ music sounds the same, and I can’t really listen to much of them, but man do they put on an incredible live show. Though not nearly as heavy as the opening acts, they commanded the stage with the experience of a band that’s been around for almost 20 years. The singer was quite entertaining, and they had a lot of audience interaction. I don’t know what songs they played because I’m not familiar with every one of their nine albums, but they played some good music.

They were all much more animated than all the other groups. At one point between songs, the singer (who introduced himself: “I am Anders, your host tonight”) looks into the crowd and says “that’s a really crappy spot you’ve got there… here,” and holds out his hand to a girl getting squished in the front row. He pulls her up onto the stage, and asks if she has a camera. She takes out her phone, and he takes a picture of himself, and says “you can go sit over there [on the side of the stage] and take some pictures… stay there until you feel like diving into the crowd and surfing…” She stayed there the entire set. What a lucky girl. She’s never gonna forget that show! The singer really seems like a genuinely nice guy. He’s really funny, and just seems like fun to hang out with.

At another point later in their set, again between songs, the band starts playing some filler stuff as Anders addresses the crowd: “Someone go over to the merch stand and buy a Faceless shirt.” When no one does, he says “I’m not gonna play another song til someone buys a Faceless shirt!” and when no one moves, his response was “Jeez, do I have to buy the fucking shirt myself?” and goes to some backstage guy on the side of the stage and gets $20 from him, “is $20 enough to buy a shirt?” and passes the money through the crowd to the merch stand – “medium please” – and gets a shirt thrown at him. Once he has the shirt, he calls out “okay, now who wants to buy this from me? Can I get $40 for it?” and some guy raises his arms and money, and gets lifted up and crowdsurfs over to Anders. They exchange money for shirt, and the show goes on. A few songs later, Anders holds a black clothing-looking thing (I think it was a hoodie) up, and says “who bought that shirt from me?” When the guy was identified, Anders says “since that shirt was rather expensive, I got you this,” and walks over to the left side of the stage near the guy who was about halfway back in the crowd. He hands the hoodie to the front row, saying “pass this back to him. If any of you takes this from him, I will kill you.” The guy got his hoodie, and the show continued. What an incredible show.

Mr. Small’s is a great place to go see shows. It has a ~650 person capacity, and has a decent sound system. It’s about 15 minutes from school, and easy to get a cab to. It was a lot of fun. No one I want to see is coming anytime soon, but when they do…….