[Photos on flickr: Lordi / Kaledon / Hostile]
Despite the best efforts of the traffic around Edinburgh, we finally made our way to the Picture House. I mean, seriously, the last time I made the jaunt was for Shinedown in October last year and they still have temporary traffic lights where they’re working on a traffic island by a new Sainsbury’s or something. Pathetic.
And if it’s not that, it’s the delays caused by the works for that sodding tram nobody wants.
Sort it out, Edinburgh. It’s a mess.
The reason for so much spleen being vented is that despite a nice early start from Glasgow, we missed about half of Hostile’s opening set. This is a shame as they’re pretty damn good. In fact, they were expressing all the anger I felt via some pretty noisy tunes. As we ordered our overpriced drinks, they kicked into a cover of Judas Priest‘s “Breaking the Law” which had a decent sized pocke of the crowd hopping about.
At least this wasn’t the ABC with a 6:00 doors time so we did get to catch half their set, which they pumped out with the energy and ferocity of an early Pantera. They did a good job of warming up the growing crowd, and left the stage (after a brilliant piece of set-ending posing) to a very decent amount of applause.
Next up were Italy’s Kaledon, a power metal band with a good grasp of music and a poor one of geography. After his third time referring to the audience as English, singer Marco was gently informed that he was in Scotland and he somehow escaped with his life.
They made it through an otherwise impressive set unscathed and left with, I think, more fans than they arrived.
And then the wait for the arockalypse began…
At around 9:30, the earth tore asunder and there rose up from within… four men and a woman dressed in silly latex horror outfits who would rock the hell out of us for the next two hours. ittedly it took them about five minutes to come on stage as they played a recording of KISS’ “God of Thunder” right through first (why do bands do that?!), but when they did they they didn’t mess around.
Three tracks blasted out before Mr Lordi paused to address the crowd and then the band launched into “Who’s Your Daddy?”.
The set flowed really well, with tracks from all their albums. Every so often we were treated to a little Alice Cooper-esque showmanship involving some stage blood, prosthetics, and a large dollop of humour. Kind of like Gwar, but without having to change clothing before getting into the car afterwards.
Lordi (Photo credit: Iain Purdie)
There were some nice set pieces and even the guitar and drum solos didn’t outstay their welcome. Once the set got going, the band didn’t keep the crowd waiting between songs or costume changes. They really know how to put together a good set and make a joke of wardrobe malfunctions!
The highlight was undoubtedly “Hard Rock Hallelujah“, the song that won them that silly Eurovision competition a couple of years ago. It wasn’t the end of the show, though – there were a couple of songs after it – but when the set did end, it was to a huge roar of fist-raised approval from the crowd.
Big, silly, overblown, loud and fun. A great way to spend a Thursday night. And we only had the extortionate car park fees and diversions on the way home to entertain us afterwards.
That and the memory of a belter of a show from one of Finland’s finest exports.
