As I sat in an overly packed train from Edinburgh to Glasgow I was wondering if everybody else was going to see Karnivool and TesseracT at The Garage like me, especially since the majority of the people on my carriage looked like music fans. I only realised when I got off the train in Glasgow that Queens Of The Stone Age, Arcade Fire and Hayseed Dixie were all playing gigs in Glasgow that night as well! This worried me a bit as that’s some big competition to get people to come to your show. Luckily when I walked through the doors of The Garage it became clear that the majority of prog metalheads couldn’t be bothered with any of the other big names as there was a big crowd waiting to give Karnivool a warm welcome for their 4th visit to Scotland.
Opening the night was TesseracT, an English ‘djent’ prog metal band who I admittedly only knew by name and not be music. Seeing their tight live set though made me realise I need to make up for this as they played a solid set of, from what I understood, old and new material. It was good to see a huge number of TesseracT shirts in the crowd, singing along with most of the songs, confirming TesseracT’s status as a big band on the British prog metal scene.
TesseracT
Then it was Karnivool’s turn. This is a band from Perth, Australia so they travelled quite a distance to get to Glasgow as part of their European tour to promote new album Asymmetry. I’ve followed this band for years now and I’ve always been very impressed with their blend of progressive metal, at times drawing comparisons to Tool. The new album has received mainly positive, but also slightly mixed reviews in the press and chatting to some fans before the gig also made apparent that Asymmetry is not the fan’s favourite Karnivool release.
They kicked their set off with two tracks taken of Asymmetry, ‘The Last Few’ (preceded by the short intro track ‘Amusia’) and ‘A.M. War’, before they played a trio of older songs, ‘Themata’, ‘Goliath’ and ‘Simple Boy’, and it was clear from the crowd reaction that these are among the fan’s favourites. It was hard not to see a person not singing along with the lyrics. The sound at this stage had turned slightly better as well. It was a loud gig, but from where I was standing I could hear everything fine and especially Ian Kenny’s vocals were clearly present in the mix. Also the backing vocals by both guitarists Drew Goddard and Mark Hosking were present quite clearly. The sound was quite bass heavy which wasn’t very surprising seeing Jon Stockman plucking away on various 6-string bass guitars. Drummer Steve Judd showed his many muscles behind the drum kit, hitting each piece of his kit as if it was his last gig ever.
After this trio of oldies, Karnivool got back into the new album material with ‘Eidolon’, with guitarist Mark Hosking showing off his skills as a xylophone player as well, before they played ‘All I Know’ of previous album Sound Awake. The band was visibly enjoying themselves, being impressed with the Scottish crowd and Ian Kenny admitting to his liking of the Scottish accent. At this point he also announced the new album Asymmetry under loud applause (so there must be plenty of fans there really liking the new album as well!), and they dived into ‘Sky Machine’ of said album with special guest drummer Jay Postones of TesseracT.
Karnivool
The rest of set consisted of ‘We Are’, ‘The Refusal’, ‘Set Fire to the Hive’ and ‘Aeons’, before the band had a little break and came back for two more songs as encore, ‘Alpha Omega’ taken of Asymmetry and a cracking version of ‘New Day’, one of my favourite tracks on Sound Awake.
I really enjoyed Karnivool’s set and it was great to see them play the new songs mixed with older favourites. The new material definitely works great in a live setting and fits well combined with the older songs. It was very worthwhile commuting to Glasgow for and to travel back in an overpacked train again listening to people talking about Queens Of The Stone Age and Arcade Fire.
