Fu Manchu and Valient Thorr came into town this weekend to play at the Hawthorne Theatre. I had only heard of Valient Thorr in passing and was looking forward to hearing them live. To say the least, I was blown away by the energy of these guys! More about Valient Thorr after the jump.
I was trying to think of a band I could make some sort of comparison to, but I really don’t think it would do Valient Thorr any justice. Head on over to their Myspace . Give their songs a good listenin’ and check out the tour dates. I have to throw in that their live sound dwarfs the clips they have on Myspace.
Valient Thorr’s set was super tight and packed with energy. I don’t think Valient(singer) ever stopped moving through the entire show. You could hear and feel the passion in his voice whether he was singing or just talking. Its always good to listen to a band that believes in what they are saying and really feels the music down to it’s core. There were points in the show where Valient was amongst the crowd, running around but never missing a beat. A bunch of jean jacket wearing, jumping and kicking jackals is what they were. It was good to see someone get a crowd riled up around these parts, instead of the usual “folded arms” crew.
In between a couple of the songs Valient managed to get everyone to quiet down enough to listen to some good advice about following through with your aspirations. It was pretty cool, and he really didn’t come off as too preachy.
Talk about commanding the audience. He actually got everyone to kneel down on the ground! Valient spoke about getting off your ass and accomplishing something worth a crap. If he weren’t passionate about what he was saying then it could have come across badly, but he was full of inspiration.
How many shows have you been to where they have a board toss? I can say this was my first.
This guy was stoked to be the lucky one to catch the board. The deck was from Volcom I assume and had “Youth Against Establishment” across the bottom of it.
Click Here for a slideshow of Valient Thorr at the Hawthorne Theatre.
2 comments
chompy
I’ve been a huge Fu Manchu fan for a long time, and they were pretty disappointing to say the least. They had no dynamics at all, everything was at the same volume level the entire time. Artimus Pyledriver and Valient Thorr made the show awesome though.
Kilwag (k.ed)
Yeah, I noticed their videos have a Volcom credit, they must have paid for the video, which is.. weird. How was Fu Manchu? I’ve never heard them but I did notice a skateboard on their album artwork.