I was ready for a great night of metal last Saturday when I arrived at L’Astral in Montreal. Sadly only 2/3 of the announced bands delivered on that premise. What exactly happened? I’m still not sure. But overall, it was still a great evening, with plenty of headbanging involved.
Opening the night was Long Island metal prog/blues machine, Moon Tooth. Now I had no clue who this band was before the show, but the videos I checked were very promising. A singer that was actually singing, a guitarist with riffs all over the place, and they just looked pretty emotional about their stuff, so yeah, very promising.
They opened the show with their brand new single “Trust”, off their upcoming sopĥomore album “Crux”. After a few seconds in I was blown away. These guys deliver. Vocalist John Carbone took center stage and owned it for the remaining of their set, with high energy and amazing pipes. Bassist Vincent Romanelli and Ray Marté (who produced said new album) locked in perfectly, but it was guitarist Nick Lee who stole the show for me. His tone was just huge and sounded so good. It was also impossible not to admire his skills that goes from brutal metal riffs to jazz and classic rock. I mean how many guitarists in the metal scene nowadays takes out a lighter to bust some slide leads? Monstrous guitarist. Make sure to check out that new album, that had a great team behind to board for their pre-prod, who included Machine (King Crimson, Every T
Talking about Mark, he was the guy we were all waiting for now. The room wasn’t exactly packed, but many die-hard metalheads were gathered to witness Mr. Morton, with a full band, as a solo act. Now his history as a founding member of one of the biggest metal bands of our generation is well known, so amateurs of the genre know that he is an amazing guitarist with great songwriting abilities. He proved it very well with his debut solo album, “Anesthetic”, a project that started back in 2017 when he wrote a song with the late Chester Bennington (Linkin Park).
Last year he finally announced that the full effort would be available in 2019, and would feature singers like Alissa White-Gluz (Arch Enemy), Jacoby Shaddix (Papa Roach), Josh Todd (Buckcherry), Myles Kennedy (Slash), Chuck Billy (Testament) and Randy Blythe of course (Lamb Of God). For the tour, Mark also surrounded himself by some pretty good musicians like Doc Coyle (Bad Wolves) on guitar, Art Cruz (Prong, Winds of Plague) on drums, Nick Villarreal (Sons of Texas) on bass, and Mark Morales (Sons of Texas) behind the mic, also featured on “Anesthetic”.
So back to L’Astral, it’s been now more than 20 minutes that Moon Tooth cleared the stage, and the soundcheck for Mark’s band is finished. Finally, he appears on stage, no guitar in hands, saluting the crowd alongside Montreal native, Alissa White-Gluz. She begins to explain that Light The Torch won’t be able to perform tonight due to an emergency, but that everyone is alright, and asks the visibly shaken fans if we’d rather go home or party some more. This got a great crowd reaction, but
The band then started to play the album in its entirety, and they pulled it off very well. I mean these guys are all experienced musicians and they were here to deliver straight up solid metal tunes. Mark seemed in good shape, playing his own signature guitar and just shredded his way through well-rounded songs, that had the Morton sound, but also some experimental twists here and there. Morales, a fair frontman, with a good voice for the genre, did the job alright, spitting other singers’ words in the faces of some excited fans front stage.
The peak of the show was definitely when Alissa came back on stage to perform “Truth is Dead”, her track on “Anesthetic”, that is one of the best tracks of the album if not, the best. This woman can command any stages on any big metal fests in Europe so, she just owned the place right away with her amazing voice and monumental metal charisma.
And that was the end. Although I did enjoy both bands, I was really hoping to see Light The Torch. I was a big fan of Howard Jones (vocal) since the Blood Has Been Shed days, and his run with Killswitch Engage was just legendary. Also as a big Bleeding Through fan, I was really happy to see Ryan Wombacher (bass) back on a stage, because this guy is a beast. Oh well, it wasn’t any secret that Howard ran through some health issues 3 or 4 nights before and had to cancel a gig, so we can only hope he gets better, and comes back to Montreal later this year.
Review + photos – Pedro Manu Riot
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