A Wilhelm Scream / The Flatliners

live in Seattle (2007)

Derek

Monday night's show at Studio Seven was actually the first show where I've gotten bored just waiting for all of the opening bands to finish, the Flatliners aside. I'm no show veteran by any means, but one thing that I've learned is that I usually find a way to at least keep myself entertained while waiting to see who I paid to see. However, I just couldn't keep myself from checking the time on my cell phone every so often this time around. Three local bands got the stage first, starting with Down We Go, followed by Rough Chukar, and finally, the Damage Done. When it comes down to it, the only one of those three I could see myself listening to again were Rough Chukar. All that's really worth mentioning here is that the Damage Done's frontman looked like he was going to give himself a stroke on-stage, and his dance antics were mildly entertaining in themselves.

I hadn't given myself the chance to listen to the Flatliners before the show, but I found them to be fairly entertaining. The biggest knock against them was the fact that they kept dedicating songs to icons in Seattle…that weren't icons in Seattle anymore (think Shawn Kemp and "Frasier"). Take this aside, and they threw down a pretty solid set. Also, it was apparently their first ever show playing in Seattle, and they made sure to tell everyone that they were still looking for a place to stay the night and that they would "love some pot." Unfortunately for them, pretty much everyone was there to see AWS and no one really responded to anything they said. Sorry if anyone is looking for a set list from these guys; I think I caught the name of maybe one song and I've already forgotten it.

A Wilhelm Scream took the stage around 9:45, and much to the satisfaction of everyone in the venue, almost immediately kicked into their set. The atmosphere from the Flatliners' set to AWS was dramatically different --people were actually moving and singing along now. This was my first time seeing them since Chris Levesque departed from the band, but Nick Diener filled in nicely. Being it the second time he's toured as a fill-in with AWS, there was enough chemistry to where it really wasn't noticeable that he wasn't a permanent part of the band. One thing that really impressed me about AWS' set was how they didn't let tracks from Career Suicide dominate their set list. In fact, they kept the set divided somewhat evenly amongst Career Suicide, Ruiner and Mute Print. I was expecting to hear most of Career Suicide and a trickle of tracks from their previous two albums, but the variety was more than a pleasant surprise. In fact, they only played a total of five tracks from their latest effort. Overall, they balanced out their set quite nicely, rotated shorter songs with longer ones, and, from the looks of it, kept everyone pretty satisfied. Predictably, they closed the night with "The King Is Dead," but hearing the full intro is always a treat. I can only hope that next time AWS comes to Seattle, it'll be conveniently timed on another one of the breaks from school and that maybe, just maybe, they'll play "Speed of Dark" this time around.

Set list (I think it's complete, but I may have missed one):