Dethklok/Mastodon/Converge Live @ The Washington Avenue Armory in Albany, NY 10/25/09

The dudes in Converge are not nearly as scary as their new horror-music video Axe to Fall might suggest. In fact, their singer even made sure that a fight was broken up during their set. Peace and love, everyone. Converge's heavy as hell guitar intro pumped up the crowd for a pretty unrelenting set of heavy heavy and low low for the next 40 minutes...or so. The band's stage presence was a highlight of the night showcasing a real display of music in motion. A couple of songs from Axe To Fall were played and greeted with about the same mid-level enthusiasm as the rest of the set. They aren't quite metal, but this wasn't your average metal show by a long shot.

Mastodon's set was culled heavily from their new album Crack the Skye, with seemingly the entire release played through before they did a strange non-headliner encore and came out to do some of their older, more lively stuff. Their set was long and although it was enjoyable, it would have benefited from more variation from song to song and a more robust performance from the musicians themselves. The trippy videos and graphics displayed on a giant screen behind them and their moody, blue stage-lighting did, however, provide a heavy dose of atmosphere to go along with the music.

Fake, ultra-violent, ultra-stoopid metal band Dethklok is really quite genius if you think about it; They take the extremes of the genre and all its wild misconceptions, turning it into a lyrically amusing yet musically epic masterpiece of comic metal. If you haven't seen the Adult Swim show Metalocalypse that marks this cartoon band's origins, then you may want to see what the fuss is all about. If cartoons aren't your thing, but you enjoy the occasional heavy metal jam, then get one (or both!) of their albums. The actual band is made up of frontman (and Adult Swim legend) Brendan Small who created the show, does some of its voice acting, performs the vocals live and writes the music. The other guys (who seemed to be touring musicians) owned their parts with perfection. Dethklok's music translated really well to a live setting and the guys rocked the tunes into oblivion. The brutality and comedy of this was super-enhanced by the amazingly animated Metalocalypse-themed music videos (specially made for the live shows) for each song and in between by some cartoon shorts and a fake look at what day-to-day life is like for Dethklok's touring crew. Overall, a great metal show completely out of the ordinary.

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