GloryHammer - Final gig of the year

After the rocking gig from Four Wheel Drive I was off to the Boston Music Room in Tufnell Park the very next day for a night of OTT cheesy power metal goodness courtesy of the Scottish warriors of GloryHammer. Actually I was quite looking forward to this as I've never been to this venue before and was intrigued to see what size it was etc. As I entered the place, I saw a large room basically with seating at one side and a bar opposite with the stage set at one side. It was quite a large room which would probably fill 300 or so before being full. The gig was probably attended by around 200 or so not too bad on the Saturday before Christmas. But power metal fans are a loyal bunch and the turnout was ok in my book.

We had a couple of support bands to get through. First up were Devil Inside. I think I heard these guys on youtube once. It's hard to describe their sound actually. They are sort of a modern melodic metal band with mostly clean vocals and some screams as well. They use the odd breakdown from the emo scene and the look is a bit emo too but they have a lot of keyboards and electronics and I do mean a lot. Their sound is drenched in spacy keys. The singer's voice is ok but nothing special. Their songwriting is fairly boring too. The keyboardist is a wiz on the ivories I give them that but I couldn't find much about them that I liked.

Next up were London based classic melodic metallers Neuronspoiler. Now these guys I like and have heard their previous album from 2013 and like it a lot. They have lots of awesome galloping riffs ala Maiden with high pitched vocals. Much more suitable indeed to the main band. They were very energetic live with the guitarist and bassist constantly switching sides. Special mention to the bass player for being very flashy and having an awesome sound mix so that his clean bass playing can be heard. I enjoyed their set although having not heard their album for a year or so I wasn't all that familiar with any of the tunes. They put on a very good show though with a fiery jumping bean guitarist to boot. I hope to see them again on a London stage and hopefully they'll release a new album soonish as well.

Finally at 9.30pm the GloryHammer team took to the stage complete with the usual stage garb, although with a Christmasy theme this time as the guitarist had a Santa hat and Xmas lights on his body! The party mood was in full effect as the band launched headlong into opener Unicorn Invasion of Dundee with full crowd singalong. Front man Angus McFife to use his band name was in fine voice although so were the crowd as everyone was singing along to every word. They actually played a new song which bodes well for the new album as it was very fast and melodic.

The in between shenanigans always raise a smirk or three from the crowd as it's so cheesy and laughable and yet we all play along like we are true warriors of London town ourselves! The songs continued thick and fast until the penultimate Angus McFife, their best song IMO, followed by the happy go lucky bonus song from the LP, Wizards and it was time to exit. The end was hilarious with the bearskin clad warrior bassist being crowned king with a traffic cone on his head as can be seen in the photos below. Time for a new GloryHammer album methinks! That raps up the gigs for 2014. I attended 25 shows in total which is much higher than the 10 I saw the previous year. Roll on 2015 and first up the mighty Sabaton!