Gig Review: Coheed And Cambria, JR Ewing

It sucked to hear that the show of Thrice and Coheed And Cambria together was canceled, but luckily both bands still were planning to come to Amsterdam. I just hoped the support acts of the bands would make up for the bands not playing together.

The support of Coheed And Cambria was JR Ewing, a hardcore band from Norway. Their site looked very emo and the users of Last.FM mainly tag the band as hardcore and screamo, so I kinda knew what to expect.
JR Ewing definitely delivered the goods. It was an energetic show. The sound can best be described as screamo/post-hardcore with a Scandinavian twist. I'm convinced that all band members have The Shape of Punk to Come from Refused in their CD collection. We liked them enough to buy their cd, they were a good replacement for Thrice.

We had seen Coheed And Cambria at Pukkelpop in 2005. We left before the end of the show from Saybia to see them from the start, just to see their sound crew have technical issues. When they finally started playing, suddenly all music stopped. Seeing a guy in the back of stage looking very guilty with a plug in his hand was very funny, but it didn't really help the show. After that it seemed the guys from Coheed just wanted to finish the show as quickly as possible.

Enough reason for us to have high expectations from this show, their latest album is really good, and we still didn't know if they could prove themselves live. Luckily they gave one of the best shows I've seen in a while. It's still weird to hear vocals like that coming from a guy looking like that.
I have no idea why people seem to call Coheed And Cambria emo, and after seeing them live I still have no idea. I'd call it progressive metal, with some punk/hardcore influences and with vocals I actually like (although they did need some getting used too). The only part of the show I didn't really care for was the extended jam they ended the show with. If I want to hear bands play endless long jams without anything really interesting happening, I'll go see the Mars Volta.

Overall a great show! (I just hope no-one tells my friend Raoul I like a prog rock band).