[Concert Review] Scale the Summit @ Greene Street

    To start things off, Friday was quite fast paced for me. One of my buddies is a huge fan of progressive metal. He’s sortof gotten me into that genre, and so when I heard that Scale the Summit was playing in Greensboro and that he was gonna go, I decided to say “eh, what the heck, I’ll go”. I bought a ticket in advance and failed to look at my work schedule.
    Because I go to NC State for my schooling, which is in Raleigh, I had an hour and a half drive to get to Greensboro. That’s a cakewalk for me. However work had me scheduled until 5:30, so I had a problem on my hands. I begged and pleaded to get off early, and the most I could get was 15 minutes. So I booked it out of there, stopped by my room and brought out all my stuff that I was bringing home for the weekend, and pretty much floored it down towards Greensboro.

Flooring it means you still can't engage the flux capacitor in this thing

    Anyways, one wrong turn and a stop by home later (I wasn’t about to leave the truck in a parking garage with an $800 laptop, a 360, and a game that I was borrowing), I finally made it to Greene Street Club at 8:00, an hour after doors opened. And thus begins the actual review.

Escher
    I actually came in right as these guys were finishing. As a result, I can’t really give a truthful opinion on them. However, because my friend thought they were good, I’ll assume they killed it and give them a 10/10.

I’ll also link to their facebook page because I’m a nice guy: https://www.facebook.com/escherband

Again I’m really sorry I missed you guys, please forgive me.

Lower Cases and Capitals
     Must. Resist. Urge. To. Alternate. Caps. And. Lowercase. These guys were the first ones I got to hear, and overall I liked them. I could see why they were playing at this concert, as their sound definitely fit into the sub-sub-genre that houses Scale the Summit. They had two songs that were notable for me. Their first song started off very atmospheric and built into the rest of the song well; however, the rest felt like it was good, but a bit “generic” at times I guess. The other song worth noting was the last one. For no apparent reason, it just stood out to me as amazing. One of the things I liked about this band was that although they used a lot of effects, they used them to complement their playing ability rather than hide a lack thereof.

You know what I mean.

    I will say there were moments where they played something and it didn’t sound quite right to me. I don’t know if it was just the way the sound setup was, if it was a progressive thing that I can’t really pick up on (I’m more of a sludge/stoner metal kind of guy), or if it really wasn’t right, but it makes me want to listen to their album and find out. I’ll be sure to pick it up.
    So, what’s the verdict? I’d give them a 7/10. They were good, but sometimes they seemed a bit “generic” (if that’s even possible in progressive metal) in the sense that it didn’t really feel like they were bringing anything particularly new to the table most of the time. It definitely sounded good.

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Lower-Cases-and-Capitals/162836027137676

Trioscapes
    So I had no clue who these guys were other than the fact that their bassist was Dan Briggs from Between the Buried and Me. So at first I was thinking it was going to be something similar to BtBaM, which is why I was particularly skeptical when I saw a Saxophone on stage. I was wrong. Once I saw the pedal board that the mic was connected to, I knew shit had gotten real.

Sexy sax man approves

    Their gig was unfortunately riddled with some mic troubles for Walter Fancourt on the sax. He wasn’t able to touch or move it without a terrible noise piercing through everybody’s eardrums. Aside from that, they had me by the first song. I particularly liked how groove oriented they were. Their drums (played by Matt Lynch) were very interesting as well. The most notable song for me was the third one they played, which started with a pretty sick Arabian part by Dan. Eventually it got to an amazing heavy part that I am very surprised didn’t lead to moshing. A little bit further in that song, there was also a rhythmic sax part that had me drooling. However, there were moments that I wasn’t quite sure if the saxophone was just being very technical and fast, or if he was just mashing buttons all over the place. I’d have to listen to an album to really get a good idea.
    Their positioning on stage was unique. The drummer was where drummers always are, towards the back and facing forward to the crowd. However the sax player and bassist were facing each other from opposite sides of the stage, rather than facing the crowd. I’ll admit though, that it made for a unique stage presence. It almost looked like they were “battling” each other.
    I’ll give them a 9/10. These guys are proof that there is a strong tie between jazz and metal that nobody wants to admit. However they weren’t perfect, for reasons that I can’t really figure out.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/trioscapes

Scale the Summit
    I don’t really have much to review here, but I will say that they were as awesome as I expected and that everyone that likes this very technical stuff (or at least doesn’t mind it) should go to a Scale the Summit concert at some point. I’m not even going to leave a rating.
    One thing that was particularly cool was that they had Walter come up and play a song with them, and there were some moments in there that were fucking amazing. They also played an encore and had the most awesome “Big Rock Ending” I’ve ever heard. I had to buy a shirt.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/scalethesummit



Overall it was a great concert and well worth the $15 it eventually cost me to get in.