Written by:	Bas
Published:	September 19, 2010
Galleries:	Best Of Monsters by Bas (26)

Best Of Monsters

After a couple years of visiting a concert once or twice every month I kind of lost the motivation for it. That's why I hadn't been to any concert since Hellfest '09. Of course I didn't want to become all too rusty in this department and certain circumstances led me to wanting to visit this particular one. The z7, easily the best-known metal venue in Switzerland, regularly organizes theme concerts, this includes occasional shows of multiple high-quality cover-bands of some of the genres greats. Tonight's program included such bands of Deep Purple, KISS and Iron Maiden, the last being the one I was looking forwards to most.

Shortly before things got started, I arrived at the venue. As the only certainty of the evening was, that I'd be hearing 'Smoke On The Water' before it was over, I made sure to have an open mind and entered the concert hall. Just a few minutes later the show began, always a good thing when you don't have to wait for half an hour.


Shades Of Purple

First up was a local version of the hard rock legends Deep Purple, a band I admittedly was never really interested in. The crowd was pretty small for this first band and consisted mostly of older generations of rock-fans (and even quite a few young children of "rock couples"), this would stay true for the whole evening, but was most noticeable during Shades Of Purple. Although most of the audience stayed far from the stage, they were obviously enjoying it from the get-go.





While the authenticity of the show wasn't on the same level of the other two bands, these guys showed us some rock-solid musicianship. In general it was much heavier than the original, which was something I welcomed with wide-open arms. The vocalist had a great voice and an impressive range, although I would've liked it better without the echo during some songs. The keyboardist was playing on a real Hammond-organ that looked about as old as time itself and definitely knew his handwork. It was also a pleasure to watch the drummer playing because he didn't only do it pretty well, just by looking at him you could tell he was having a blast.
Unfortunately the guitar work often ruined the atmosphere for me. Although I can't say he did it badly from a technical point of view, it seemed to me that especially his solos were devoid of any feeling.

Funny enough, the lights were kept in shades of purple, blue and red during most of their set. And of course we also 'Smoke On the Water', although they added their own twist to it with an alternative ending including a key-solo.




Kissin' Time

This version of KISS came from Germany and obviously put a whole lot of work into the visual-aspect of things. With authentic looking make-up, costumes, hairdos and even stage-acting, they tried to get as close to the original as possible, although this band's Gene Simmons' tongue wasn't quite as long as the real thing.



Musically they were the least convincing band of the evening, but they certainly made up for it with other sides of the concert. Their crowd interaction was great, making jokes in-between songs and even prompting the crowd into dancing with mild success during 'Crazy, Crazy Nights'. That wasn't all of course. Other memorable moments include a couple of pyro-effects - once from a guitar, fire-spitting (although that was a rather weak attempt) and "Simmons" "biting his tongue", which resulted in fake blood dribbling down his chin, over his bare chest and bass guitar. Speaking of the bass guitar, half-way through the show it was replaced by a hellishly bad-ass looking giant axe.



A negative memorable moment was when the "Space Man" sang '2,000 Man'. I always think if one can't sing, he just shouldn't sing. Seems like some people disagree. Apart from that there isn't very much I can say about the music. It wasn't really bad, but not outstanding either. The show on the other hand was great and very entertaining. Iconically it ended with a fake guitar being broken in two on stage.
I don't have the complete set-list, but I remember they also played 'I Was Made For Loving You'.


Eddie's Revenge

As Iron Maiden's 'Best Of The Beast' was actually one of the CDs that got me into rock/metal and I never managed to catch them live yet for various reasons, I was looking forwards to at least see a cover band of them. That said, Eddie's Revenge certainly didn't disappoint. It seemed like most of the younger metalheads, like myself, were here mostly for the Iron Maiden songs, the front rows bustling with teens that weren't there before, sporting Maiden shirts.



Where the music was concerned, Eddie's Revenge was definitely the most enjoyable band of the evening. The musicians were all very good and with a few exceptions their playlist was great too. Nonetheless they seemed to have much more difficulties animating the crowd than Kissin' Time did. Naturally their show wasn't quite as convincing either, but they did have a couple of goodies in store for us.

The vocalist was running back and forth throughout most of the set and wove around an England flag while dressed as a British soldier during The Trooper. During the spoken intro of 'The Number Of The Beast' the grim reaper himself made a guest appearance and later on during 'Iron Maiden' a very tall Eddie (walking on stilts) did the same. Of course the band also animated the crowd into singing along to some of metals most iconic anthems ('Fear Of The Dark' anyone?).






All in all it was a great concert by all three bands and this evening was about the closest you could get to a Deep Purple, KISS, Iron Maiden show for such a low price.


Thanks to the z7 for the accredition and the photo pass.