Audioslave, or four bands for the price of one
Saw Audioslave in the old Helsinki hockey arena. And quite a gig it was.
The warm-up band was “… and you will know us by the trail of the dead”. Played quite unannounced, even today’s ad in hesari was missing a reference to them. I skipped them in march, and clearly it was no great loss to mankind. Very loud, but mostly boring. Art rock, with nods towards both progressive and regressive wings. Marred by the volume and unoptimal sounds. Fortunately they played only for 40-odd minutes. But then, they might have been vastly better in a smaller environment. Or not, considering the amount of noise the seven (two drummers, most of the time) guys on stage managed to put up. Some of the songs were interesting, so if a cd shows up cheap, I might just be persuaded to buy it.
The main event was greeted by a huge audience response. The crowd was shouting and singing from the very beginning. Set covered both Audioslave as well as the root bands’ products: Killing in the Name Of and Sleep Now In the Fire by Rage Against the Machine, and Spoonman and Black Hole Sun from Soundgarden. At least one of the unrecognized songs I guessed to be from Chris Cornell’s solo album. Altogether a great show, although not all of the songs are a great match - Cornell just cannot match the fury of Zack de la Rocha, and the ex-RATM rhythm section is somewhat wasted on the slow-paced Soundgarden songs. Played for a solid 100 minutes, which is a very respectable duration for a show. Played songs from both Audioslave albums, to which I clearly need to devote more attention to. As well as dig up the old RATM albums, had forgotten how effortlessly cool Tom Morello’s playing is.
A setlist is bound to exist somewhere in the web, I failed to recognize enough of the songs to be dissuaded of not publishing one.
Seen both originals once. Soundgarden in the great Helsinki alterna-rock fiesta of ‘95 (with Blind Melon and White Zombie among others), and RATM supporting U2 in the Salt Lake City olympic stadium in ‘97 on the PopMart tour. Today’s concert was not as good as either of them, but pretty damn good nonetheless. And the audience earns an extra bonus for hefty participation. Clearly there’s a lot of pent-up desire for both original bands long after their disbandings.
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