Ozzy Osbourne - Live at Citibank Hall, Rio de Janeiro, 7th April 2011

In the latest issue of Road Crew, Brazil's most popular metal magazine, the editor defended the image of the country of being a place for aging rockers collecting their last run of paychecks. Fair enough, as the editor claims proudly, the country does recieve some acts in the youth of their careers (erm, Avenged Sevenfold!?), but the percentage of gigs played by international artists that are over the age 50 is significantly higher than in Europe or North America. My gig calender reads to confirm this - Iron Maiden last week, Ian Anderson on 15th May, and in between Ozzy Osbourne.

Say what you want about Ozzy appearing in multimillion dollar adverts with Justin Bieber or Sharon's seemingly sovereign control of his career, if he can keep getting the reaction he did from the Brazilian crowd on Thursday, he can keep touring "until he dies" (as he said he would in a recent interview). The Citibank hall was packed full of punters who, like at Iron Maiden last week, pogoed around to the tunes and sang each and every lyric almost without fail.

The setlist was a pure nostalgiafest, only one song from the last twenty years worth of studio albums was played, the gaggingly commercial single off the latest record, Let Me Hear You Scream. This made for pleasent listening, seeing as songs like "Bark at the Moon" and "Crazy Train" are classics, but personally I was disappointed at the total dismissal of the "Diary of a Madman" album - one of the two albums recorded with legendary guitarist Randy Rhodes.

Anyone who's still interested in Ozzy's career (a gradually diminishing number) will be keen to see how Ozzy's new backing band are doing, particulary the most revered spot, lead guitar. It seems fairy ironic that former guitarist Zakk Wylde's much maligned use of pinched harmonics was one of the reasons fans were happy to see the back of him, yet Gus G is fairly liberal in his usage too. Other than that, the Greek guitarist stays faithful to the Rhodes/Lee/Wylde originals, with the exception to the occasional fill to give his own spin on the old songs.

On stage, Ozzy, nearly 45 years into his career, still acts like a child who's eaten too many haribos, but for him it seems hardly incongruous. The man still has an puerile grin on his face throughout the show and took great pleasure in dousing the crowd in water at regular intervals. Although it has to be said, Ozzy really needs to learn more stage banter - "I can't fuckin' hear you!!" in between every song grates after a while. His voice held up for most of the gig, partially aided by an extended instrumental jam, including a rather tedious drum solo (90% of drum solos are boring for me, admittedly).

Overall, a good night's entertainment, not sure quite worth another £45 spent, but as is the standard in South America, you pay a lot of money for musicians 20/30/40 years past their peak. A final note - the playing of War Pigs and Fairies Wear Boots made me realise again how important a Black Sabbath reunion would be...fingers crossed.

Vader - Live in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 13th November

After nearly four months, the wait is over. I set off from Rio de Janeiro at 8:30am on a seven hour bus to the large unremarkable interior city of Belo Horizonte in order to get an extreme metal fix, and see some old friends and a new city in the process.

It's remarkable how heavy metal remains so popular here in Brazil, as it's very expensive to be a metalhead, or a fan of foreign music in general, in this country. For example, a pack of strings is three times the price as back home, and an effects pedal I bought a year ago in England is over twice the price here. If you want to buy an instrument that isn't stocked here (quite possibly), you have to pay 60% import tax, plus shipping - a lot of money. This protectionalist economic bloc policy may (or may not, I really don't know much about it in all honesty) have a myriad of advantages in the trade of other goods, but it's undoubtably surpressing musicians here. Then there's the cost of gigs. Unless you're lucky enough to live in a big city in the south of the country, you'll probably have to travel for hours, if not days to see an international act. Even after the expenses incurred by the bus/flight, the gig prices are more than expensive back home - for example, Vader (the band I saw in Belo) played Leeds in March, charging £12 for tickets, yet I paid 50 reais to see them in Brazil, which is over £20. However, most metalheads here justify this by the fact that gigs with international acts are few and far between - you could watch a quality metal band almost every week somewhere in England, whereas Brazilians have to wait sometimes months between shows.

Belo Horizonte is probably the metal capital of Brazil, the equivalent of Birmingham in England. The similarities are apparent - both are large, fairly bland and landlocked industrial cities. It's the place where Brazil's favourite metal sons Sepultura originated, as well as underground legends Sarcófago (whose original singer/guitarist Wanger Lamounier, in a rather bizarre twist, is now an economics professor at the main university in Belo, where my friends are studying). For this reason Belo is not often ignored by international bands touring the country.

Although I've been to many better gigs this year, this one will be remembered fondly nonetheless. Opening were a fairly cringeworthy generic local Black Metal act, who I didn't actually see, given the advice of my Brazilian friend who I went to the show with. Needless to say, a band whose drummer labels himself 'Guardian of the Forest' (in a non-ironic way) puts me off before even hearing their music. Following them were Ragnarok, who played fairly straightforward old-school Norwegian Black Metal, which was enjoyable if only for the fact that it was the first time I'd heard a blastbeat live in 5 months. Taking the stage at 12:30am were headliners Vader, who 27 years into their existence are still going strong. They hammered out some of their finest Eastern-Bloc metal, with plenty from classic album De Profundis (ranked by Terrorizer as the 20th best Death Metal album ever), which mixed well with the more groove-orientated newer stuff. Having played for an hour that was that and my first Brazilian metal gig was over. Kudos to frontman/guitarist Piotr Wiwczarek, who is the only surviving original member of the band and still has a great amount of passion and gusto for his craft - whether you think playing a small club in Belo Horizonte is worth over a quarter of a century of work or not, you've got to admire the dedication, or insanity, depending on your point of view.


Jack

Sepultura, Gama Bomb and Taint, live at the Millennium Music Hall, Cardiff, 16th July

Two gigs in the space of 24 hours, this time heading for the Welsh capital...

Local lads Taint play to a sparsely popultated crowd, and it seems once again that their awesome unique music will once again slip under the radar of the masses. Jimbob is a master of the riff and although some may be dissapointed that the bands magnus opus, The Ruin of Nová Roma, is largely ignored.

Next in line are Irish thrash metallers Gama Bomb. One cannot fail to be enamoured by frontman Philly Byrne's enthusiasm and the songs are the enjoyable party thrash you would expect from a band like them. No boundaries broken, but smiles all around the venue.

Finally Brazil's finest export Sepultura take to the stage and give a heavy as fuck lesson in metal. The band have been controversially selling this tour as a celebration to celebrate 25 years of the bands existence - only the bass player has been with the band throughout its existence. Much has been written about Max Cavalera's acrimonious departure from the band, but one must bear in mind that he has done more albums with Soulfly then he did with Sepultura, and that Derrick Green has appeared on more Sepultura records than Max. Time to move on then? Well, not really. This evening is all about endulging in the past, consisting of an undeniably awesome set featuring all the classics from Arise, Chaos A.D and Roots. Derrick has a prodigious stage presence and has the banter to go with it.I was particularly impressed with the new sticksman Jean Dobalella, whos job of replacing Igor Cavalera, one of the most innovative and intense drummers of the 90's, is no walk in the park. The crowd, although featuring its fair share of idiots, lapped up the performence and for moments it was as if the Cavaleras never existed.

Soulfly are playing the same venue on 3rd August, its a shame I'm not around to go to the gig as it would have made an interesting comparison.

Jack