On November 11th I went to the Priestess concert at Mavericks bar in Ottawa. I guess it was one of the first shows of a new tour to support their upcoming second album.

Unfortunately, this concert was not good.

It started with the same old trick. Listing the starting time as much earlier than the time the concert actually starts. I know this trick, it's to get people to the venue and leave them nothing to do but drink overpriced drinks. We left and returned when the first band was actually going to go on.

Barn Burner opened the show. It's really too bad the volume was set too high. It sounded like their music was interesting and the lead vocalist actually did sound like he could sing. Not always the case in metal bands. I would have liked to hear them. Unfortunately with the volume as high as it was, all the instruments and vocals all became a blur of sound such that it was very hard to distinguish anything. You were just left with the feeling of noise.

The second band was Crash Lightning. They seemed a little out of place in this lineup. They were not a metal band. They sounded more like Big Sugar for those familiar with that band. Kind of a bluesy rock feel. I actually quite enjoyed their set. They also got the volume perfect, we could hear their music and vocals clearly.

The third band was BC Bison. I can't really review them because from the opening vocals we decided to leave. Screaming metal a la Motorhead is just not my thing. I can't say they are bad because I am clearly biased to their style, but it was not for me.

So we returned for Priestess. From the opening notes I knew it was going to be bad. Like Barn Burner and BC Bison Priestess had the volume way too high. All their instruments and vocals were all blurred together in a jumble of noise. You couldn't really make out what they were playing. It's pretty bad when they play songs from an album you played so many times and you still have trouble recognizing the song they are playing. They did play a lot of new music, which I can't comment on because really I couldn't hear it. When they did play some older material it took me a long time to recognize it, and even when I did, I couldn't enjoy it because it was so distorted.

It would be easy to blame the venue or speakers, but Crash Lightning sounded fine, but they didn't put the volume up as high. I can't really blame the band directly either. That's not really their job and they stand behind the speakers so I'm sure they were oblivious.

So I lay the blame squarely on their sound guy. He was sitting about six feet from me. Why he didn't notice they were a distorted mess is beyond me. I figure either he is incompetent or already deaf from being their sound man on too many shows. Either way, he ruined this concert for me.

A note to bands, louder is not always better. I have heard many a concert ruined by bands setting their music too loud. This is not coming from some prude either. I've been known to knock things off the shelves at home with the music set to loud. The difference is that at home my music is loud AND clear. Loud and muffled is not good.