Written by C. Daniel Thursday, 03 October 2013 15:54
Their two-hour performance was a thrilling, yet exhausting, emotional journey.
The Pageant, St. Louis
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club opened their 2013 tour in St. Louis at The Pageant to a sea of fans, most die hard supporters of the band formed in 1998.
The band is touring in support of their sixth studio album Specter at the Feast, an album with as much emotional tenacity and grit as the road worthy rockers.
The band's label says, Specter at the Feast ventures into diverse sonic territory, delivering their most ambitious offering yet. It's an album of impossible dichotomies; opposing sounds amalgamate into a seamless, entirely coherent package that rumbles with driving rhythms, and soars with skyward-arcing guitar howls."
The journey from Santa Cruz to Studio 606 was a two-year process that BRMC calls "the most difficult of their career." During their 2010 tour, Michael, Robert Been's father and BRMC sound engineer, died backstage of a heart attack. The band finished the tour, but afterward the pain and grief started to seep in. "The only thing that felt good was just getting together, plugging in, and turning up loud as shit," Been says. "It was kind of this therapeutic process, playing really loud and just feeling this energy; letting that be a release. It really helped us pull out of that darkest place that we were in."
The St. Louis set opened with "Hate the Taste" — Been knelt down behind his bass guitar in the shadow of dark red spots, stage right. Their raw, frenetic sound was amplified by the intensity of the lighting and how it hid the faces of the band for most the night. You could feel BRMC slowly opening up as the show went on.
"Beat The Devil's Tattoo" signaled a charge in the performance with Been (bass / vocals), Peter Hayes (guitar / vocals), and Leah Shapiro (drums) all coming alive with a cacophony of verve. Their two-hour performance was a thrilling, yet exhausting, emotional journey. The set list (below) included songs dating back across BRMC's 15-year history culminating with a two-song encore of "Shuffle Your Feet” and “American X." | C. Daniel
Set List:
Hate the Taste
BTDT
Let the Day
Rival
Fail Safe
Stop
Ain't No Easy Way
Berlin
Returning
Screaming Gun
Conscience Killer
Whatever Happened to My Rock 'n' Roll (Punk Song)
Weight of the World (acoustic)
Lullaby
Shade of Blue
Sell It
Six Barrel Shotgun
Spread Your Love
Shuffle Your Feet
American X
Photos: C. Daniel
