On a whim I went to go see Celtic Frost and Type O Negative at the venue formerly known as Irving Plaza.Celtic Frost was about 1,000 billion times better than when I saw them headline BB King's last fall. I think it had everything to do with them being an opening act. Some of the best sets I have seen are when bands come out hungry trying to win over someone else's audience. The two best times I saw Children of Bodom were opening for Iced Earth and Slayer. Sure their 90 minute headlining sets are great, but when they came on stage in front of Iced Earth's audience knowing most people neither knew nor cared who they were there was a fight in them that was positively intoxicating. Celtic Frost had this last night.
They came out in shockingly effective corpse paint and rocked through a very bare bones stage set up. Check out the awesome camera phone pic above. Yay, Motorola! Most of the songs were old, going waaaay back to Morbid Tales. They just got in front of the audience and kicked ass. No bullshit. No muss, no fuss.
Type O kinda sucked. I've seen them a few times in the last 13 years (damn!) and I really like the new record, but there was something off. Pete Steele's voice wasn't that great, the band didn't sound that tight, and the sound mix wasn't very flattering to their legato sustained notes. What sounds sublimely taut and tense on record was pretty boring at Irving. Even the punchy opening of Magical Mystery Tour into We Hate Everyone was a bit of a snore. I left after about 30 minutes. I know I have a knack for leaving shows early, but that had to be a world record. On the way home I listened to the new Symphony X and started getting pumped to see them at BB's in a couple of weeks!
