I caught Norwegian Black/Viking/Progressive Metal band, Enslaved at BB Kings last night. The night was a total fucking wash until the they came on. One of the opening acts, The Agonist, has to one of the most depressingly shitty, pretentious, weak-ass bands I’ve ever seen live. Fucking shit generic sound, prancing around the stage and swinging their guitars around like total douchebags. It was embarrassing to just be there in their presence while they played. At least the band name was appropriate, since it was agonizing to suffer through their set. They need to retire, shoot themselves or whatever—just go away.

Another opening act, Arsis had a pretty good sound, but their bass player kept weirding me out. First off, the guy looked to be wearing woman’s jeans, which was fairly creepy. Second, every time before the band kicked into a song, he spent way to much time arranging his hair to hang in the appropriate Metal style. Third, he wasn’t a particularly great bassist and he’s got this huge six string, showing it off, posing and tapping the strings over the top of the neck with his right hand, something that from what I saw from his finger positioning etc., would pretty much sound like drivel, but sure did look spiffy. Still, they were a fuckload better than The Agonist.

Enslaved was awesome. Once they came on the night went from being a rip-off, to a good time. I have all of Enslaved’s albums and while I really liked them, never counted them in my top list of bands. After seeing them live, my impression of them is greatly raised. They sound fucking great. I took a good amount of photos and posted them to my Flickr stream for all to see.