As I left my house in the blustery snow last night I thought, "Man no one is gonna show up for this concert tonight.". Wrong... The place was packed! Was it a sellout? I don't know, but it had to have been damn close.

There were six bands on the bill (which is a common thing for Jaxx), and the lower tier national band (36 Crazyfists) I had hoped to see when I arrived at the club had already played, so that kinda sucked. But if nothing else, what was a shitty, snowy night that looked to make for a dead club, turned out to be a festival instead.

When the lights went black for Walls of Jericho, Jaxx went completely apeshit. I had no idea WoJ had that kind of draw. The speakers began to play that "Thou Shall Not Kill" song from the "Lost Boys" movie, you know that one with the children singing... Anyway, the crown was on a mission. You could feel their tension. It turns out the singer of WoJ was in a mood to go apeshit as well, because as soon as the lights flashed and the band kicked in, she instantly dove atop the crowd, surfing and wailing, "Open this pit up motherfuckers!". The singer was sporting a 'Red Chord' shirt and a ponytail. She was also somewhat short, so to make up for that fact, she spent the whole set standing on top of the monitor wedges, bounding across them from one side of the stage to the other.

One of the challenges of the evening was to actually see band members in any of the bands. It seems that a Chewbacca convention must have been in town and all the wookies had the night off, because they were all lined up across the front of the stage and you really couldn't see shit. Once I found a spot I could peek through, I saw that the band just looked like regular dudes. Seeing the band was made especially difficult because the members did the "bent over, lookin at the floor" style headbanging and would occasionaly switch to the "doin the splits" method, which didn't increase their height either. The guitarists were playing Les Paul's and the bass player was slinging a standard Fender. The music had a hardcore edge to it. There were no solos and the music itself really had no complexity, but it did the job.

The crowd was on the edge of out of control at times. The Jaxx staff had lots of surfers and divers to deal with, but did one hell of a job keeping the loonies under control, and as always they did it respectfully. During all of the WoJ set, the crowd was an angry mob. The pit was huge start to finish. The singer was a very chatty lady, who laid heartfelt thanks upon the crowd after every song. The audio mix was loud but not painful, and the sound was clear enough to make out what was goin on.

Would I like to see Wall of Jericho again? Absolutely. The only thing I hope would be different is that I would want them to be the headliner. Though I didn't know it at the time, the WoJ fan support kicked the Kittie's fans asses. At the end of the set the crowd begged and pleaded for one more song, which you could see thrilled the band members, but no no... Kittie was waiting for their turn. I rate Wall of Jericho 8 of 10 as a live band. Simply said, their singer owned the show.

Before Kittie began I wasn't aware that I had just seen the best part of the evening. Kittie took the stage and right off the bat you could pretty much tell that the audience had already spent all of their energy. The crowd stayed to watch, a few dozen people were energetic, but there was no pit the rest of the night. While they were a polished, professional band, their set wasn't a whole lot of fun. The audio sounded good and the band was tight, but overall no one in the audience really cared.

Kittie's singer was a platinum blonde, who oddly looked like a young Joan Rivers. She played what looked like a too big Gibson Flying V. During most of the set she played and sang at the same time which was pretty boring to watch. Her singing vocals were good, but her death metal crooning was somewhat weak. At times she made tuff-guy faces like you would see on Phil Anselmo, but it made you chuckle more than it frightened you. As the night went on she seemed to lose accuracy in her voice and the singing got out of tune by the end. For the one song in which she put the guitar down, she was much more entertaining to watch.

The guitar and bass player (btw-the newest members of the band) were the more entertaining members of the band. Nothing really stood out, but they at least moved around, thrashed a bit and interacted with the fans. The guitarist who was the most fun to watch, looked like Lindsey Lohan's twin sister and the bass player was a cute little oriental girl. Watching Kittie I found it very hard to "feel their pain" because they were just too damn pretty, ya know? It just didn't look and feel "metal".

The oddball of the bunch was definately the drummer. Don't get me wrong. She was very solid and kept perfect time, but she operated in her own little world. Her presence reminded me of watching the the drummer from the Rolling Stones or the drummer from Cheap Trick. Like them, she was more of a drum machine than a band member. She did the job but she was not "in the club" so to speak. It was also the drummers task to do all of the backing vocals, which was unfortunate because the effort level wasn't there. It was just fillin' a role.

Another drawback to their show was that the new Kittie album (Funeral for Yesterday) comes out in two days, so they spent a lot of time playing stuff the crowd didn't know. While a band must progress, throwing in so much new material really killed the crowd. Another bullet to the crowd was the slow songs. It was so obvious that the crowd just didn't care about those.

Once the end of the show arrived they finally touched on their 1st album. From what I gather they hate to play those songs and two of the band members weren't even on that album. They slapped together a sloppy medley of the 1st album, in which they kinda played all the songs in three minutes. You basically got a "Spit" verse and chorus, a "Brackish" verse and chorus, and a lot of other little odds and ends thrown in. Needless to say I found that to be a huge letdown. It was at this point that the old member who sang backups became sadly missed, because what replaced it was horrid. While I write this article, I now frown at the title of their new album, 'Funeral for Yesterday', because I now realize that if they are indeed discarding "yesterday", they just might be discarding their careers.

While this article sounds harsh, their show was actually average. Any huge Kittie fan would have had a blast. Kittie tried very hard, but just didn't connect. They were smooth, sounded good, and they were polite. For a casual fan like myself, I just didn't dig it too much. But after the show I saw something that improved my view of the girls. Three of the four of them came out into the crowd and talked to anyone who wanted to talk. They took tons of personal photos with fans and signed anything that anyone put in from of them. Hell, even I got pix with 'em. They were actually very nice people who cared about their fan base. It was their post-show actions that made me respect them. It was because they really gave an effort and because they opened themselves up to the fans that I score them 7 of 10. I think the thing that hurt Kittie the most was that Walls of Jericho opened for them and sucked every drop of energy out of the crowd. Kittie should consider getting a more relaxed band to open up for them.

Coming this weekend I hope to give you a review of the "SOLD OUT!", All That Remains show on the 23rd.

Go to the BGR gallery (CLICK HERE) and check out my pics from last night's the show.

BE SURE to check out our new friends at JAXX NIGHTCLUB! WWW.JAXXROXX.COM

If you would like to attend a Jaxx show please let me know. I might be able to drag you along with me.

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And oh yeah...

Peace and Metal Grease!

berube