Live Review: Black Sabbath Heaven and Hell/Megadeth/Down, Ottawa Civic Centre, March 28, 2007

Wednesday night, this tour wrapped in Ottawa, playing the Civic Centre to a not-quite-sold-out but considerably well-attended house. Not calling themselves Black Sabbath, for reasons that remain unclear, this lineup focused on material from the "Heaven and Hell", "Mob Rules" and "Dehumanizer" albums, with a couple of lumbering new tracks from next week's "Black Sabbath: The Dio Years" thrown in to keep things fresh, as Ronnie James Dio, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Vinny Appice delivered the goods for an hour and fifty minutes.

The good about this show? Well, it was Sabbath. The sound was unbelievable, as Geezer's bass knocked your ribs together, Iommi's playing was spot on, Appice's beats were powerful, and Dio's 64-year old voice showed no wear and tear - at all. Things started off with "E5150" and then went into "After All", which was an odd choice because it's not a very quick-paced track with which to lead off a show. ("Turn Up the Night" would have been a much better choice.) Perhaps the slow pace of "After All" explains why the next track, "Children of the Sea", dragged a little. By the end of that tune, it sounded like they had lost almost a full beats' worth in comparison to the studio version, but from the beginning of fourth track - "Mob Rules" - onward, it was full-on Sabbath. Highlights of the set for me were "I", "Falling Off the Edge of the World" (after which someone threw a bra up on stage at the very perplexed, 5'4" Gollumized, Rhea Perlman look-alike Ronnie), "Die Young" and encore "Neon Knights". Even the floors underneath us were jouncing from all of the headbanging going on.

The stage was very cool, with the fellas playing in front of what looked like a castle or a dungeon with moving lighting trusses and background graphics. Certainly, they did not skimp on laying out the cash to do things professionally. Unfortunately, that included the piping in of keyboard backing tracks on some numbers, but alas.

I have one overarching quibble about this affair, that needs to be mentioned. Fans of math rock like Yes and Emerson Lake and Palmer may disagree with me, but there's no doubt that in metal circles at least, this is a supergroup. The problem with that is that there was zero interaction between the band members. They didn't look at each other for the whole show. While the musical chemistry was there, I got no overall vibe from these guys as a collective unit, which, I suppose, isn't that suprising considering how this lineup dissolved in acrimony after the 1992 "Dehumanizer" tour. That's not to say it sounded forced or that they were going through the motions - not at all - but it's clear that these guys are certainly not going out for beers after work together.

As for Megadave Megadeth, they put in a solid 50-minute set with "Hangar 18", "Countdown to Extinction" and "A Tout le Monde" all sounding good. As I have written before, I'm not that much of a fan, nor will I be after seeing them last night, but you gotta give credit where credit is due.

Openers Down were nothing special. Of the six tunes my buddy and I saw, there was one guitar solo among them. I'm not a fan of nu-metal, but this band has their devotees as the kids up front were violently moshing. So was the 16-year old behind me with the punishing body odor.

To summarize, this show was good, very good - but I have a couple of "buts".

I suppose you can't please everyone all the time.

Overall ratings:

Heaven and Hell: 8.25/10
Megadeth: 7.75/10
Down: 5/10

Overall rating: 7/10

Live Review: Nickelback/Daughtry/Puddle of Mudd/State of Shock, Lynx Stadium, Ottawa, ON, July 5, 2007

About 14,000 rockers blew the cobwebs right out of Lynx Stadium for a quadruple bill this evening. Despite the threat of rain, the washed up and incoherent legendary Bob Dylan playing across town, and the fact that Nickelback plays here about once every 18 months and hasn't had any new material for two years, that's very good.

We didn't see the first band, State of Shock, but I hope for their sake that they have as little in common as possible with the circa 1984 Michael Jackson/Mick Jagger duet of the same name.

Next up was Puddle of Mudd, a band left over from the post-grunge era which isn't fading away gracefully. Every second word was an F-bomb, their between song banter didn't make a lot of sense, and they referred to the crowd as "Canada". Someone should remind them that it's a country, not a town. The audience could have pretty much either took 'em or left 'em, but I have to admit that I did enjoy their bastardized version of "Summer Nights" from Grease, one of the gayest tracks ever committed to vinyl, which came in the middle of set closer "She Hates Me".

Daughtry then played for about 40 minutes and thankfully blew the previous act off the stage. They sounded pretty much the same as they do on record, and lead vocalist Chris Daughtry was spot on pitch wise while demonstrating a very poised stage presence for a rookie.

Once Daughtry left, we heard Def Leppard, Quiet Riot, Dio, Rob Zombie and the Scorpions, among others, over the sound system while the crew was getting ready for Nickelback. Great stuff. Then, at 8:45, the boys from Hanna, Alberta, arrived to the sound of massive explosions, launching into "Animals". For the first four or five tracks, pretty much every tune was accompanied by pyro or flashpots. Frontman Chad Kroeger started off with some pro-Sens banter, which the crowd ate up, and then he said that since he was in Ottawa, he had some legislation he'd like to propose - that every time Nickelback comes to town, it ought to become "Legal Marijuana Day". (I wholeheartedly concur.) Reminiscing about gigs at smaller Ottawa venues like Zaphod's, and hoping that "the six people that were in attendance that night were here", the band pretty much played every single hit that they're known for, sounding exactly like they do on CD. They also threw in a short little version of Metallica's "Seek and Destroy" and Kroeger even ad-libbed Joe Nichols' "Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off" at one point. Also of note was a video tribute to the late "Dimebag" Darrell of Pantera and posthumously, Rebel Meets Rebel. All around, it was good times from a band who doesn't take themselves too seriously, which was demonstrated later on when Kroeger screwed up the words to "Rock Star", laughing at himself, and they concluded after an hour and 45 minutes with dry ice and tons of effects.

The only negative besides the omission of "Never Again" and the $8.50 price for a tallboy of Bud was the configuration of the stadium. The stage was at the infield line and the soundboard was on the pitcher's mound. They could have moved it forward at least 100 feet because it seemed like there was the general admission crowd, and then the rest of us who were sitting about a kilometre away despite no one being on the field from the backstop to the rubber. However, it was still one hell of a great big fun rock show, and I say that fully realizing that I'll never be considered hip enough to be a Rolling Stone writer - which is just fine with me.

Overall ratings:

Puddle of Mudd: 4.75/10
Daughtry: 7/10
Nickelback: 9.25/10

Overall rating: 8.5/10