Strapping Young Lad

Opening for Fear Factory was Strapping Young Lad. I'm still not into death metal or grunt metal or any of that. That being said, every once in awhile when I shoot a band that may fall into that category by my classification, comes a band that catches me offguard in a good way. Opeth was one prime example of that. I actually loved that show, Strapping is another band that got my attention. I'm not saying I liked them per se but dammit they were fun. Fun to shoot and actually had a interesting sound.. somewhere in there lay talent and not just speed and grunted vocals, they had those but there was more in there. Let me start at the beginning. If Ted Nugent had an evil twin brother and he mated with the guy on the aqualung album cover you'd have the lead singer of Strapping Young Lad. Throw in Lee Ving style abuse at the audience and the picture is complete. Yet despite the abuse, the head banging, the grunts. there was some genius behind this band. He gets it, he really understands what he's doing. It's a show, it's larger than life it's rock n roll. He's not making fun of it all directly but he's seemingly aware of the absurdity of the "rock n roll excesses" and is meeting with a sense of humor and satire. I'm not sure most of the audience is in on it, which made it all the more humorous to me. All in all it made the evening shooting bands I'm not into the style of, somehow worthwhile.

Shot the first part of this show with my newest lens, the sigma 18-50mm f2.8. I'm still not sure I like it but it did well enough given the circumstances.
Satyr
11/19/2005