Requiem For Rage

I’m at the point in this journey where I have a lot of people asking me to come out and cover their shows. That’s not a flex, just the reality. I always say yes if I can. I don’t care what the band is, where the show is, or anything else. As I always say, a show is a show, and I am thrilled to have so many people getting into what I’m doing to the point where my calendar fills itself. That being said, I still have some nights where I don’t have anyone asking me to cover them and there’s nothing happening that I have to see. At the end of the day, my concert-going obsession is a passion, not a job, so even on those nights, I like to go to a show and tend to lean towards ones that I may know nothing about other than it’s at a place that I feel comfortable. That’s how I ended up at Zhora Darling on Wednesday night. I didn’t know anything about any of the three bands performing, but I knew that I could get a good drink, feel comfortable, and experience some live music, so… surprise Waar Party, Blame the Witness, and Dead By 50– you get a Girl at the Rock Shows review whether you wanted one or not!

Local trio Waar Party was the first to take the stage. I was intrigued as the three members of this band took the stage looking like they were ready to give me the most extreme Swedish black metal show of all time with the face paint they had on, but after just a couple of seconds, I realized that is absolutely not what I was going to get. As the band put it, they may look like a death metal band from the forests of Finland, but, really, “we’re just Native.” I kind of loved that and loved how their performance was proof to never judge a book by its cover. Sure, it wasn’t the intense black metal I expected, but what they gave me left me in love with them. It was a soulful radio-ready rock sound. Okay, I know what you’re thinking; you know I hate radio rock and typically call it butt rock. You are correct, and Waar Party’s sound definitely bridges into that butt rock vein of things, but there was something different about the three men in this band that had me hooked. They performed every song with such a sense of conviction, heart, and soul that it was impossible to leave their set dissatisfied. Their sound was ridiculously polished, and it came as no surprise as they introduced a song as the one that got them some airplay on the local hard rock radio station, 93X. Their sound may not have been my thing, but Waar Party had me sold, and I would go see this act any chance I get just to feel the passion they have radiate into my soul.

I won’t say that the next band, Blame The Witness, lacked passion and soul, but I will say that it didn’t hit me as hard as Waar Party did. There was just something about Blame The Witness’ set that almost rubbed me the wrong way. I can’t tell if it was just the music (which, again, wasn’t my thing as it bridged a bit too heavily into the hard rock vein of things with a slight rap metal influence) or if it was the personalities on stage but something was off on this set. That being said, they were tight when it came to their performance. They had a few blistering riffs that caught me off guard and a few moments where the vocals left me intrigued and like there was a lot of potential, but overall, Blame the Witness just didn’t do it for me. I know that sounds harsh and, truthfully, it probably is, but, like my dad always says, they’re great at what they do; I just don’t like what it is that they do.

By the time the final act, Dead By 50, took the stage, I felt a little out of place. Clearly, this wasn’t quite my kind of show when it came to the style of music being performed. Sure, I was comfortable and really enjoyed the soul that I got from Waar Party but, seriously, had I made the wrong decision? I started wondering if I should even review this show because, again, it wasn’t for me. That’s when I noticed that the vocalist of Dead By 50 had a tattoo that matched mine. It’s the Doomtree No King’s logo, and it’s a common one to have as Doomtree was a massive player in the Twin Cities hip-hop scene for a very long time. Something about seeing this tattoo changed everything for me. Yeah, I was out of place and out of my usual scene, but here I was watching a vocalist who clearly, at one point, ran in the same scene that I did. That seems dramatic, I know, and maybe I’m overthinking this since, as I mentioned, this is a common tattoo to have, but something about seeing it changed my mood for the night. Well, that and the sound of Dead By 50.

Out of all three acts that played on Wednesday night, this final act was the one that got the closest to my normal listening. It was thrashy, it was abrasive, it was metal, it was intense. I loved how the vocalist barked at the audience while the rest of the band got lost in their own little worlds of riffs and power. There was nothing overly complicated about their sound. There were no dizzying guitar solos or super fast blast beats, but, instead, there were a couple of guys on stage who clearly had a passion for music and were just excited to present it to an audience. As I stood there completely lost in Dead By 50’s world, I realized that maybe this was the point of Wednesday night’s show. It wasn’t three bands trying to hit it big or trying to clobber over each other to reach the next level. It was three bands full of guys who just love making music and were thrilled to have the opportunity to do it on a stage. I was honored to be there to experience it.