By Jonny Bakes
I followed the strong scent of cheddar down Sauchiehall Street as I legged it to The Garage on Saturday night to finally catch Beast in Black in the flesh. Having completely sold out The Cathouse for this tour date, a change of venue was necessary to meet demand… which subsequently sold out again pretty quickly! So I knew that I was going to be in for a pretty big night and, with the promise of Firewind in support, things could only get better…
Unfortunately, as I’m sure many of you are aware, The Garage is primarily a nightclub which meant that the gig was being squeezed in with enough time to clear the room and ready for the night ahead, but with a 7pm doors time I thought I’d have plenty of time to get there in time to catch at least some of Firewind after making my trek across the border after a long Friday at work. I couldn’t have been more wrong though, as Beast in Black took the stage at the unexpectedly early time of 8:15pm (shortly before I managed to get to the venue) which means that I’ll have to wait to see Firewind another time – shame really as I was looking forward to see if they’d crack out the cover of ‘Maniac’.
I found myself a spot at the back of an absolutely packed out room where the crowd were already getting into the groove of Beast In Black’s combination of power metal and catchy synth pop. The first thing that struck me is that the vocals of Yannis are almost indistinguishable from the album recordings which makes those falsetto wails all the more impressive! The whole band was completely radiant with energy that rippled throughout the crowd as they blasted through track after track of their catchy headbanging tracks. There was hair metal theatrics, synchronized guitar moves – the whole works that brought together Beast in Black’s stage presence (although I’m not entirely sure who the strange caged mannequins were… perhaps I missed that explanation at the start!
It really was a whistle stop tour of all of those hits that have been part of my pre-night out ritual for years, with ‘Die By the Blade’, ‘Unlimited Sin’ and ‘Sweet True Lies’ all making an appearance for maximum party. There’s a brief interlude to experience the gentle ballad that is ’Oceandeep’ which was accompanied by countless phone torches swaying in unison while caught up in the emotions of the song. But this really marked the beginning of the end of the regular set, and the band were determined to finish with a real crescendo with ‘Hardcore’ and ‘Blind and Frozen’ seeing the band through to a natural end. Yet, of course, this wouldn’t be the end of the show for this mad Glaswegian crowd continuously chanting “Here we, here we, here we fucking go!” The encore carried one big hit from each of their three albums, which included one of my favourites from the latest album, ‘Dark Connection’ – the incredibly groovy ‘One Night in Tokyo’ which had the whole room bouncing and dancing along, it really ended the gig on a high note!
The only problem was, by the time the band left the stage it wasn’t long past 9:30 pm and we were all just starting to get in the party spirit! While the timing may be great if you want to squeeze in a gig before you head out for a big sesh night, or if you’re an old fart and want to be in bed by 10 but, for people like me, we felt a bit caught in the middle and settled for a quiet pint before heading home afterwards. That aside though, Beast in Black absolutely showed that they should be headlining bigger venues than small clubs by now, and I think the success of the ‘Dark Connection’ tour will result in bigger things to come! It was self-indulgent and cheesy in all the right ways, and I have no shame in dancing the night away to Beast in Black, and I would do it again in a heartbeat! Let’s see some ÜK festival dates soon…please?
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