(hed)PE / OPM / Weapons
October 27th, 2006 at 01:04
Last night I went to see rapcore band (hed)PE with JD. Yeah, he’s the folk loving musical elitist friend of mine. And we were there to see a genre that combines “rap” and “hardcore”. I’m not entirely sure why I even thought that he’d enjoy it.
Excellently, one of the two support acts was OPM. Yes, that OPM. Of ‘Heaven is Halfpipe’ fame. I was surprised when their set was more than one song long, as I assumed they were one-hit-wonders. They played ‘Heaven is a Halfpipe’ second, and got the whole audience singing along. Nobody sung along with any of their other songs though, as no one could quite believe they’d written any more. The most frustrating part of OPM’s performance was that I couldn’t figure out if I was watching them and enjoying their music like an ironic student, remembering 2001 with rose-tinted glasses and remarking about how retro it all was, or whether I was genuinely enjoying what they do.
The other support band were rap/metal 5-piece Weapons, who are from the capital of cool: North Wales. I thought they were really good, having never heard any of their stuff prior to yesterday. They had three dedicated vocalists, so on some songs one of them just disappeared for the duration as they didn’t seem to have a purpose. One of the vocalists looked as if he was trying too hard to be Zack de la Rocha (of Rage), as he had the hair, clothing and tried to dance around the stage in a similar way.
Hilariously, at one point the lead from one of the microphones fell out, so they spent one song looking a bit confused, fiddling with the equipment, having not noticed the mic was not actually connected to anything. A little baldy sound man ran on stage eventually whilst the band were going as wild as they could be given the circumstances. He didn’t really fit in with the band’s image, I think.
(hed)pe eventually came on stage and were the best receieved of the evening… apart from by JD, who looked ready to slash his wrists had the opportunity arisen. They played a few songs that I recognised- I only own the first album, so some of it was lost on me.
The lead singer’s stage banter was interesting to say the least: at one point he tried to sound inspirational, telling the audience that they’ll be able to achieve their goals, and nobody can stop them. I daresay he should have had a look at my CV before judging that I will undoubtably become an astronaut.
Bizarrely, and annoyingly, the woman standing to the right of me seemed to constantly try and engage the band in conversation. Everytime the singer said “make some noise!”, as you might expect someone at a rap gig to say, she would scream back “…and why not?!”, every time. In between songs she seemed to be constantly shouting “Manchester five years ago! I was there!”, seemingly suggesting the band would remember her. Mental.
One of the best bits was the partial cover of Rage’s ‘Wake Up’. After doing the first bit of the song, the band stopped, whilst a few members of the audience continued to sing- I got the feeling that the band would have joined in again if they’d learnt to play it in its entirety.
It was a good gig though- I enjoyed it. JD certainly didn’t. But it doesn’t matter- lets face it, my enjoyment is what really counts.
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