Portland Oregon’s historic Crystal Ballroom recently hosted Light The Torch, Avatar, and Trivium. Of course, Trivium’s Matt Heafy is on leave at the moment and RockRevolt was in the house to tell you how it all went down.
Light The Torch, recently renamed from Devil You Know, came to Portland with nothing but bad intentions. Guitarist Francesco Artusato, bassist Ryan Wombacher, drummer Mike Sciulara, and legendary vocalist Howard Jones hit the gas pedal and didn’t let up for the entirety of their set. Occasionally, in the right lighting and if you had just the right angle, you could catch Jones’ impish grin shadowed by his ball cap, hiding behind the microphone. Jones even commented about the Portland crowd and the rush of emotion he gets from performing for drawing him back to the stage time and again.
Avatar got to be the meat in this metal sandwich, bringing their unique circus sideshow flavored metal to the Portland faithful. In case anyone was disoriented, lead singer Johannes Eckerström reminded us that he was in Portland, repeatedly. Clearly, the Swedish ringmaster was crushing hard on our little paradise in the pacific northwest. By show of hands, many in the audience were seeing Avatar for the first time, but by the time we were hailing the apocalypse, everyone seemed to be acquainted with what Avatar was putting down.
Trivium closed out the show for us, but they came to Portland just a bit short-handed. Singer/guitarist Matt Heafy is on leave, expecting twins shortly. Howard Jones filled in vocally for 90% of the Trivium set with Avatar’s Johannes Eckerström pulling in a song as well. On guitar, Trivium brought in old friend Jared Dines which complemented the band nicely. Interestingly enough, bassist Paolo Gregoletto also noted that during sound check, his voice was failing him but that he was hoping the Portland audience would be able to fill in for him. Overall, I think we sounded a bit flat, but not too shabby. Trivium performed 5 songs from their most recent release “The Sin and the Sentence”, closing out their set with In Waves. Stand-ins Jared Dines and Howard Jones blended in seamlessly, giving us all the “heavy” we could handle. Overall, it was a good night to be in Portland.
We’re wishing Matt and his family well and reveling in the fact that we got to catch HoJo fronting Trivium, live.
