Tuesday night’s show at the Culture Room was incredible. The three bands on the tour all take different approaches to heavy metal and progressive music, and I think there was a good overlap in their fanbases.

First up was a death metal band from Saskatchewan called Into Eternity. They have lots of melodic riffs and intense drumming, but what really sets them aside is the mix of vocal styles that lead singer Stu Block effortlessly belts out, sometimes going from guttural Montreal-style death vocals to a Rob Halford falsetto to a black metal screech all in one verse. Their sound mix was weak compared to the night’s other bands, but you could tell everybody was playing/singing their balls off. They started with a new song and it seems like a good omen for their upcoming album. I was gladly surprised to hear people in the crowd singing along to tracks like Severe Emotional Distress and Endless Winter, the token ballad.

Symphonic gothic metal from the Netherlands was brought to us by Epica. Although they were short a lead singer due to a nasty bout of MRSA for mezzo-soprano Simone Simons, they had a great replacement in longtime vocal collaborator Amanda Somerville. In addition to the lush orchestration, the interplay between operatic female vocals and the growls and grunts of guitarist Mark Jansen helped temper beauty and aggression. The group used a lot of backing tracks for the orchestrations and choir stuff, and it even seemed like there were a few moments when all the strings and vocals were coming from the tape. Amanda was dead-on except for one or two places on the early material. She was great with the crowd and even headbanged a bit, though not quite as vigorously as Simone. The last time I had seen drummer Ariën Van Weesenbeek, he was playing with God Dethroned, and I was glad to see how well he handled the Epica material. Here’s Amanda’s tour diary from that night and a fan-filmed clip of The Obsessive Devotion.

The American progressive power metal band Symphony X was almost note-perfect musically, and singer “Sir” Russel Allen’s vocals sounded better than on the albums. Their set was heavily weighted towards the new album Paradise Lost, with all but two songs from it. There was lots of first-rate shredding from guitarist Michael Romeo and the rest of the band were also pushing the envelope for technicality and power. After Russel told us about some older folks that thought they were a classic rock band, they then proceeded to play the first half of the Immigrant Song. Although my chant of “Odyssey” caught on before the encore, they declined to play the 24 minute epic. There are a couple of youtube clips out there including the first half of Paradise Lost and a chorus section with an audience singalong (including a key change!)

It was great to see three different and diverse bands in a small club like the Culture Room where you can really appreciate all that’s going into the performances. Most of the musicians were cool enough to be hanging around the venue after the show. My neck still hurts, which is usually an indication of a great concert experience.