Apocalyptica

I know it's been a couple of days, but I cannot get out of my head just how good the Apocalyptica show at The Phoenix was on Wednesday night. I found out afterward, Perttu Kivilaakso played cello with a finger broken the night before. I cannot imagine how much pain he must have been in.

But highlights of the show were the crowd singing along to the instrumental cover of Seek and Destroy as well as members of the audience stopping to slow dance to the very mellow cover of Nothing Else Matters. Overall the band just rocked. They were swinging the hair and were not up there to just sit and play. They came to rock.

There were guest appearances by Adam Gontier of Three Days Grace and Toryn Green of Fuel. I'm not putting them down, but I felt as if their appearances took away from the show and the impact of Apocalyptica. I understand Apocalyptica has a new record to sell and that includes non-operatic or heavy metal vocals and more of a mainstream sound. I'm not a fan of the new record, but won't write them off as sell-outs the way I did with Metallica many years ago. I see Apocalyptica as just trying something different and respect it even if I don't like it as they are true artists.

One other slightly disappointing thing with the show was a lack of material from Apocalyptica's all-original and sublime 2003 album Reflections. I guess they had a new album to sell, fans know them for their covers and stuff in the middle had to get cut.