eff_ess_oe

So last week, the sis and I were in Montreal for the Amon Amarth + Dethklok + Castle Rat show. Biggest venue I've ever been to, and we weren't in standing room. Our seats were still quite good, though. Great view of the stage even from an angle. (unfortunately my phone cam shoots like I'm capturing Bigfoot footage so... maybe it doesn't reflect it?)



Special shout-out to The Giant Rat Who Makes All Of The Rules making an appearance, as well as some yuri-tastic stage fighting at the end.





Can't name any of the songs off the top of my head bc I'm still kinda new to Castle Rat, but I did recognize a few of them because I'd watched their KEXP live a few days in advance. If I rewatch and recognize shit, I'll link it here, but unforch I have no standout songs yet. Not saying they suck tho. Far from it. Very far from it.

Amon Amarth's set was next, and I'm pretty sure they had the best set of the night. They had enough old stuff that I recognized, but also mixed it with more of the new stuff that I wasn't as caught up on yet. Best moments of their set had to be:
- Cry of the Black Birds. Just... all of it.
- The stage fight immediately followed by a "We're still friends, don't worry" hug during Death in Fire
- One Thousand Burning Arrows. Again, just... all of it.
- We Rule the Waves, which I'd heard for the first time and enjoyed (even though at the same time it kinda sounds like a diet version of Embrace of the Endless Ocean... which is in my top 5 Amon Amarth songs, so this isn't as much of a complaint as it sounds like)
- The seated boat-pit during Put Your Back Into the Oar (which me and the other seat people participated in, but weren't as able to get the full experience as the gen-admission ppl... Still fun tho.)





Finally, Dethklok took the stage and... I was a little less impressed since for most of it, the band was barely visible and they were relying more on MVs than the actual musicians to carry the show. But as my sis explained when we were coming back to the hotel, Brendon was not only doing more "character" type vocals by death-metal standards (as multiple charas at some points), but also guitar, so maybe there was a little more reason to focus moreso on performance than stage presence. Plus the MVs were also pretty decent, so there's that redeeming factor. Also they brought out BATMETAL when they were doing Face Fisted, so that was a fun throwback. Bit sad that they didn't really do many of my faves, but they did do The Duel. And that's awesome. 

Standout moments:
- The opening sketch with Charles
- Dethsupport + the associated MV. Really hits post-Mangione.
- The "drugs" sketch in the middle with Facebones 
- The aforementioned Duel. Bonus points for my sister poshly air-guitaring at me during the pseudo-Baroque section and me making conducting gestures at her. That was fun. 
- The Cyborg Slayers with Brendon voicing both Nathan and Pickles
- The live voicing near the end with Brendon alternating between all the charas he voices, plus the slap-bass solo that was implied to have been done with Murderface's dick like in the show (no actual dicks were shown tho. Sadge)





Didn't have much time to mess around in Montreal the next day because my train was due to leave at like 2 pm, but we did end up going to this cute lil cafe that had cookie decorating stations (even though we didn't know about it at the time and were only coming in for iced coffees), as well as this Y2K-tastic thrift store that I got some jewellery at. And a goth shop where I got more clothes, but unforch neglected to take pics of. 

 


Bonus pic from the train where we were stopped in the middle of nowhere at one point for some reason.



So yeah, that was what I was up to last weekend... Now i have to do a bunch of room-cleaning to make up for it. Oh well. It happens.