Thursday night Ryan and I went way down south to the town of Mokena, IL (yes I know you’ve probably never heard of it, most haven’t) to see Kittie play. I have a couple of their earlier records and liked them but until now I never got to see any of their shows.
The Pearl Room is a club inside of a strip mall. It has a pretty good sized stage and a pretty good sound system. They appeared to have a good light rig, though it wasn’t really being used very well for the show half the time which meant I had to bust out the flash for some fill light. I was surprised a venue of this size didn’t have a barricade in front of the stage. If they had, it would have saved security having to toss out a couple of kids for climbing up on the stage and doing stage dives. It also would have meant I would have had more freedom to shoot photos. Since there was no good place that was protected, I simply climbed on the side of the stage near the monitors and shot from there. No one seemed to mind and I appreciated that.
Blessed by a Broken Heart
Blessed by a Broken Heart
When we got there, the first band, Blessed by a Broken Heart, were already playing. I walked around the not very full club to get a feel for the layout of the place and figure out where I was going to take pictures from. I don’t remember much about their style of metal since I was more concerned with finding a spot to shoot from so I’ll admit I wasn’t really paying attention.
Bring Me the Horizon
Bring Me the Horizon
Next up were Bring Me the Horizon. They took forever to get on stage and get going because a couple of their members were missing. Way to be responsible guys! Once they all got on stage, before they even played a single note, the singer started pleading to the crowd to start a pit. Lame! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it is bush league maneuver to ask the crowd (or demand them) to move around. If your music is good the crowd will react. One other thing I noticed was they seemed to have a pretty good amount of fans in the audience, and they were dressed more like emo kids than metal kids! Does this mean there is going to be an emo-metal movement now? The band played with a ton of energy and the crowd were way into it.
After they were done, the crowd seemed to thin out a noticeable amount and it was the emo looking kids who were suddenly absent. I guess they saw what they came for and didn’t care to stick around. The place wasn’t very crowded to begin with and now there was even more room to move around. It did seem that just about everyone in the place was smoking. Sadly the smoking ban doesn’t extend to Mokena, IL.
Silent Civilian
Silent Civilian
Silent Civilian
It didn’t take very long before Silent Civilian took the stage. They were more of an old-school thrash metal band and were very good. They gave me flashback to the late 1980’s listening to this style of music. The singer talked a pretty good amount between songs mentioning their plans for recording, how all the bands on this tour are broke, etc. They played for about 45 minutes I think and there wasn’t a dull moment in the set.
Kittie
Kittie
Kittie
This just left Kittie. The crowd pretty much packed in up front in anticipation of them. After a little bit of smoke machine filled the stage they came out and immediately started playing. They were a bundle of energy from the first note and they played their asses off. Hair was flying all over the place and they were smiling a lot and seemed to be really having a good time playing up there. I immediately noticed they had a guy up on stage playing bass though! There are no guys in Kittie! It turned out their bass player was sick and unable to make the tour so this gentleman filled in for her.
Kittie
Kittie
Their guitarist, Tara, was pretty excellent and she was smiling a lot and moved all over the stage. At one point while I was shooting pix of Morgan, Tara leaned right up on me while she was playing. It took me by surprise and Ryan got a kick out of it. I tried to snap a picture of it but she moved away before I could. It was at this moment that I now have a new rock-girl crush on Tara! Please come back to IL so I can take you out for some drinks!
Kittie
Kittie
While Tara crafted fine noise from her guitar, so did Morgan while also mostly shrieking her head off. I swear that woman can rival many men in the growling and shrieking vocal department. They played a lot of newer material and sprinkled some old favorites in there. I much prefer the older material for the fact that in those songs, Morgan alternates between singing and screaming while the newer songs are mostly just thrashy screaming numbers. I think she has a good singing voice and liked the contrast of the two different styles and wish they’d do more stuff like that. They played one of my all time favorite songs of theirs, “What I’ve Always Wanted” and that alone made up for the long drive and inhaling all the second-hand smoke.
Kittie
They played about an hour to an energetic crowd. Morgan did a fair amount of talking between the songs. I like when bands talk to the audience instead of silently just playing songs like they are on auto-pilot. She mentioned the band had now been together 11 years this month which I had no idea they had been around that long! When they were done, that was the end of the show and there was no encore. I thought they put on a pretty energetic and entertaining set, my only complaint was they didn’t play “Paperdoll”!
Additional (and larger) photos can be found on MXV’s Flickr Stream.
I refuse to go to any shows at the Pearl Room because of all the gestapo security bullshit they pulled the one time Anthrax played there. I witnessed completely unnecessary, all out beatings by those goons in the orange shirts on kids who merely bumped into them. Hell, I was trying to slither past one to get closer to the stage and I was literally put in a sleeper hold and told to “calm the fuck down.” This was after being pulled away from the edge of the stage for absolutely no reason.
Fuck the Pearl Room. I sincerely hope you didn’t pay to get into this show.