Lordi In Paris

Written by Jason Hraynyk Monday, 18 December 2006 08:33

Kicking off the festivities was Snake Eye, a French rock band in true 80's style, with hints of Europe and Van Halen in the old school melodic rock sense. Their mediocre songs, all similarly structured, were at least entertaining thanks to lead guitar wizard Xavier Paladian. He outshone the whole band and unfortunately seems to be wasting his talent with Snake Eye.

Unfortunately the crowd hype and energy started to fade as stage setup dragged on from 8pm until 9pm and people were left standing around for an hour. Thankfully as the Monsters took the stage they brought things back to life, kicking off their set with "Bringing Back the Balls to Rock" from their new album The Arockalypse. With a cemetery/haunted castle set, LORDI make their show a theatrical feast. Sure it is gimmicky but how can it not be when they're dressed as monsters! Each member of the band, including new comers OX and AWA, go through a painstaking 2-3 hrs of makeup and costume prior to each show and appearance.

"Get Heavy" and "Who's Your Daddy" finally had the crowd warmed up and having fun after the long wait. Mr Lordi stepping back on stage through the castle doors in his 16th century butchers apron for "Pet the Destroyer" encouraged the crowd to clap along and join him in chanting OIY OIY OIY.

LORDI brings to mind the stage shows of KISS, King Diamond, and Alice Cooper ,with each song becoming a small theatre performance. By the time the band headed into "Rock the Hell Out of You" and "Bloodred Sandman" there was a zombie cheerleader mannequin on stage and there had been a snowstorm. "Biomechanic Man" found Mr LORDI in a flashing-lights costume, battle axe high in hand. Newcomer OX churned out heart thumping bass lines while zombie bride AWA added eerie keyboard layers over each song as well as some hauntingly beautiful backing vocals, proving that the loss of two former members was no hindrance to the band.

The biggest laughs of the night came when a large jukebox appeared as drummer KITA, looking like Predator behind his drums, started to bang out a small solo. As the sounds of switching records was heard he was joined by guitarist AMEN. They then entertained the crowd for the next while with minute-long interpretations of influential rock songs. The humour was in seeing the true rock fans (which was only around 20% of the crowd) separated from the rest. As the two rolled through "Wild Side", "Youth Gone Wild", "Billion Dollar Babies", and "Beautiful People", plus tunes from Metallica, KISS, and Judas Priest, most of the lost crowd just stared, trying to figure out the song, as those who knew the songs happily sang along.

Kita is actually quite talented, with impressive speed and patterns considering the rather large outfit and mask he has to deal with. Guitarist AMEN provides nothing too spectacular in terms of riffs but it's good enough for LORDI's fun rock. After “name that tune” Mr LORDI's bat-like wings were spread out from his back during set closer "Devil Is A Loser". He certainly is an entertainer and does a good job of getting the crowd involved. On the down side, the OIY OIY OIY he uses to get the crowd participating gets extremely annoying after the third time you hear it.

The band's first encore found a baby in a crib spraying water into the crowd during "They Only Come Out At Night" and "Would You Love A Monsterman". By the second encore, "Hard Rock Hallelujah", we had almost seen it all. On top of the curfews in Paris, there are also many other restrictions and regulations. In this case LORDI, who usually have a major pyro show, were not even permitted to hold a lighter. Despite all the other theatrics, the LORDI's pyro adds to the whole experience and was sadly missed.

Despite some of the negatives of the night, namely pop fans at a rock show and lack of pyro. LORDI is pure entertainment. The music is nothing cutting edge, it may get a bit repetitive after a while, and sure, there is the whole monster gimmick. However, what they do achieve is entertainment and every now and again we all need a bit of fun to go along with our music.