Published Thursday, June 30, 2011 By amanda_caines. Under Editor : Amanda Caines, Show Review, Uncategorized, Writer: Amanda Caines Tags: alternative metal, Amanda Caines, Chattanooga, Dangerous New Machine, Hard Rock, Mighty Sideshow, Shutter, southern rock
Shutter, Dangerous New Machine, and Mighty Sideshow | Rhythm & Brews | 6/25/11 (Chattanooga, TN)
Photos Here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shutter16mag/sets/72157627080353184/
Thanks to inconsistent website information for which I hurled numerous curse words at Chattanooga’s downtown music venue “Rhythm & Brews,” I arrived in the middle of the band Shutter’s penultimate song—and they were the primary band I came to see. The song and a half of their set that I witnessed sounded absolutely stellar, and the band members were full of passion and energy. When vocalist Scott Plante announced that the next song would be their last, I had a major outburst of “WTF?!? Luckily, guitarist Cody Cass handed me a CD to review so I didn’t totally miss out. Of all the hard rock bands I looked up in Chattanooga, they were by far my favorite, and I look forward to sinking my teeth into their new CD.
Following Shutter was a wildly entertaining band called Dangerous New Machine from Atlanta, GA. When they first came on stage and started playing, the vocals were that really unmelodic, aggressive sort—of which I’m not a fan—and I was thinking, “oh, noooo!” I happily learned that not all of their songs sound like that and breathed a sigh of relief as I sat back and let them entertain me.
While most of their songs were pretty post grunge/southern rock-ish, there were some metal-inspired guitar moments, too, akin to Avenged Sevenfold or Ozzy. What impressed me most was not as much the flares of nifty riffage from guitarist Billy Gray as the awesome vocals—both lead and harmony. Lead vocalist Erik Rogers (formerly of Stereomud) definitely has the pipes to keep up with the big dogs in the underground music scene and can go from channeling the gravelly angst of Sully Erna (Godsmack) to belting emotional power-tones like Brent Smith (Shinedown) at the drop of a hi-hat.
He’s also a really big fan of the “F” word and hit the nail on the head when he said something along the lines of, “I bet you guys all think I’m an angry little dude with a Napoleon complex.” This came after his rap metal-esque, crowd-participating tribute to the soldiers who killed Bin Laden. Dangerous New Machine’s music is really angry a lot of the time, but the fans definitely get into it—Erik can really work the crowd.
As for the rest of the band, the bass and drums were nothing flashy, but really tight and polished. The stage show was very animated; all of these guys are really physical with their music and interact with each other in some very humorous ways at times. Erik even finished off the set by jumping off one of the huge side stage PA speakers at the end of their Framing Hanley-inspired cover of hip-hop hit “Low” by artist Flo Rida. It’s hard for any band to follow a “full-contact sport” of a show like that.
Headlining the show was Chattanooga’s own Mighty Sideshow, who had a lot of eye candy in their set props. Draped behind the drummer’s cage-like overhead cymbal rack was a huge banner with a drawing of a woman’s face with an orb set in her forehead that spun and changed colors via a hidden projector. Chains hung from the sides of the stage and adorned the foot of the drum platform that also bore the band name. While the stage set-up was impressive, I can’t say that the band’s stage show was all that exciting. The bad thing about an awesome stage set-up is that it creates a sense of anticipation that something exciting is about to happen—which is a lot to live up to for a musician.
Music-wise, not every song sounded the same, but I did notice some pervasive trends in chord interval choices across their set. A lot of the songs blended together to me, and many of the riffs consisted of only three to five chords without dynamic vocals to fill in the space. Vocalist Alan Whitener had a pleasant voice with some decent strength and he had a charming way of moving about, but he seemed to write his vocal lines within a narrow comfort zone melodically and rhythmically.
Steve Swanson’s guitar solos were drowned in Wah-pedal effects instead of boasting technique, and both guitarists tended to play the rhythm part together instead of branching off into something more complementary. There were a few gems, though; I got excited every time they started off with a heavier riff—partially because of the bad-ass sound emanating from the full-stack Peavey JSX amp that one of them plays. They also had one slower song that stood out as well, but the rest of the songs were largely unimpressive in comparison. Despite claiming the metal and Southern rock genres, I thought they sounded a little more post grunge—kind of like a slightly heavier Smile Empty Soul.
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