March 12th, 2024
Toronto, ON @ The Phoenix
Photos & Words: Miles Leblanc
Gloryhammer brought the fun and the heat from Europe to Toronto on Tuesday night, with outstanding touring support from Sweden’s Twilight Force and local openers Ammo.
AMMO
The perfect local opener for this show blending in unique Toronto-styled heavy metal, paying homage to all of the bands from around the world before them but with modern flare, a Toronto edge, and lots of feeling. Ammo absolutely got the crowd ramped up right from the start, continuing throughout the performance, even gaining the acknowledgement of the most staunch metalhead in the crowd with fists in the air and headbanging all around. At one point, viewing the crowd from the back of the venue and observing things, after the first three songs, Ammo absolutely had the crowd in the palm of their hands.
Alex, the vocalist, has endless vocals for days and a barrage of stage banter to match the outstanding vocals, bringing in the same level of screams as heavy metal legends who’ve been singing for decades. Brett, the guitarist with the orange guitar, much like Alex, just screams away on the guitar with endless riffs, endless grooves, and a better head of hair than anyone else in the crowd. Jeff on bass just sounded so massive on the Phoenix sound system, just thumping away the whole performance from start to finish. Matt, the other guitarist and the newest member of the band, would absolutely blow your mind with how seamless he plays in the band, all business and compliments, playing back and forth with Brett all throughout the performance. Last but certainly not least, Struan plays like an absolute timepiece, effortlessly playing the drums to the point where, multiple times throughout the performance, having the time to provide faces that would express Struan is having fun rather than work behind the kit.
Speaking of Struan, mid set it was brought to the Toronto crowd’s attention that it was Struan’s birthday. With the request from Alex, the Toronto crowd delivered all the happy feels to Struan on his special day, coming together and singing happy birthday.
Together, this five-piece local Toronto heavy metal band put on a consistent, headbanging, and just flat-out fun performance. I can’t wait for the next performance, which thankfully is later this month at the Bovine, as proclaimed by Alex mid-set, and most importantly, can’t wait to see the new music from this fully-loaded, well-polished, and standard-setting Toronto heavy metal band. Bravo!
Setlist
Tombstone City, Into Death, Street Metal Werewolves, Doomsayer, Mortis Rex, Empire, Too Metal For Metal
TWILIGHT FORCE
This concert is my first time even hearing this band, and it’s music live and in person. This band, full of story-telling through songs and in-between songs, was in full LARP (Live-Action Role-Playing) style costumes and caused a lot of crowd-going members to dress up as well. Each member came out one by one, to the roar and delight of the Toronto crowd, and at the end of band introductions, new vocalist Kristin absolutely burst out onto stage horns first, seemingly with the same amount of energy someone would need to run a marathon.
Within the first minute of the first song, the Toronto crowd was deafeningly loud, singing the songs word for word and creating a lot of vibrations with movement and stomping feet to the degree that the floor was vibrating, which is not an easy feat in any venue. Twilight Force cruised through the setlist, getting to the first part of addressing the crowd, to which Kristin let the uninformed know that the main vocalist, Allyon, was MIA for this tour due to family issues. To this point in the performance and to the end of the performance, I was hard-pressed to believe that this band had a missing vocalist. Seriously, that impressive. Kristin absolutely belted through the songs, singing in all the ranges from the most gentle operatic voice, so something more fitting of the horns on their head, growls from down below.
Both guitarists, Aerendir and Lynd absolutely brought a new flavour of guitar work and symphonic power metal throughout the performance. Trading off rhythms, riffs, and melodies back and forth absolutely hooked me in. Born, the bassist and no argument here, the most photogenic in the band complemented the strings throughout the performance, genuinely expressing a lot of happiness in the reception from the Toronto crowd. De’Azsh, on drums, just brought the sound of a dragon, roaring through as easily as the loudest member of the band. Last but certainly not least, Blackwald plays the keyboard backing vocals and also fills in the blanks with stories in-between songs. For someone who is standing in one spot almost the whole performance, Blackwald easily did the most work.
A highlight of this performance was ‘Dragonborn’. Kristin, and the band threw an inflatable pool dragon into the crowd, and the Toronto crowd played with it too much, causing it to deflate by the end of the performance. There was lots of joy and laughter over this from the Toronto crowd. Twilight Force definitely played its part as the supporting band for the main event, Gloryhammer. It definitely opened my eyes to wanting to check out more symphonic power metal, and I hope they come back to Toronto again. Swords, dragons, and LARP, oh my!
Setlist
Dawn Of The Dragonstar, Twilight Force, Dragonborn, Thundersword, Flight Of The Sapphire Dragon, Sunlight Knight, At The Heart Of Wintervale, The Power Of The Ancient Force, Knights Of Twilight’s Might (outro)
GLORYHAMMER
“Magical and cosmic” power metal, has a nice ring to it. The reason for this Red, White, And Hoots tour. Seemingly simple, but Hoots has somewhat of a cult following with this band and their interactions with the crowd. One of the stage hands dropped off a cut-out of Tom Jones, and on the p.a. ‘Delilah’ cranked through the speakers, a sign of the performance to come, as this crowd was laser focused and ready for this venue-sized karaoke session with Gloryhammer. High energy overtook the stage after the second intro, and the band was on a warp-speed path to deliver this set.
Right out of the gate after the first song, the comically large Gloryhammer came out with a goblin, who was easily defeated by Angus McFife on vocals, took the large hammer, and did lots of victory poses throughout the rest of the song, much to the delight of the Toronto crowd and me as a photographer selfishly. Vocally speaking, the new version of Angus McFife (the third) brought such energy, passion, and charisma, and it would be hard to say this is the new version and/or incarnation of the vocalist for Gloryhammer. Absolutely blended with the band as the newest member, and I would challenge any die-hard Gloryhammer fan to see if any errors were made.
The Hootsman on bass duties, an ominous figure on stage that absolutely commanded everyone’s attention with presence, costume, and sheer power of pounding the bass notes, I genuinely felt bad for the bass towards the end of the set for how much pounding happened! Ser Proletius on guitars, crazy how this band can sound like two guitarists are on stage, but Ser Proletius commands the guitar by themselves, playing everything to the letter and delivering the goods. Zargothrax on keyboards, evil, dark, and more evil than ever before, with five years away from the last Toronto performance, something really took over them from the last viewing; maybe it’s just the corpse paint. Last but certainly not least is Ralathor on drums, another drummer who makes it look easy; seriously, he looks as though he didn’t miss a note, didn’t have a care in the world, and just smashed through all the music.
The most surprising moment for me was the little break of hearing ‘Also Sprach Zarathustra (Richard Strauss song)’. If you are a wrestling fan, you know why, and of course I had to get a woo chant going, which worked from where I was standing in the back and traveled all the way to the front. Speaking of chants, multiple times through every song, random pockets of the crowd bellowed “HOOTS” (almost akin to random people screaming Slayer in the same vein).
Surprisingly, mosh pits happened during this performance, and while the band touched on every album in their discography, I would have lost money on no moshing at this show. The goblin also made a return by the end of the set, with a big, awesome hammer in tow, and got brained for troubling Angus. Good fun all around. This five-piece performing a near 90-minute set was the perfect set for a return to Toronto, who definitely believes in The Red, The White, And The HOOTS!
Setlist
Delilah (Tom Jones song) (Intro #1), Incoming Transmission (Intro #2), Holy Flaming Hammer Of Unholy C, osmic Frost, Gloryhammer, The Land Of Unicorns, Fly Away, Angus McFife, Questlords of Inverness, Ride To The Galactic Fortress!, Sprach Zarathustra (Richard Strauss song), Wasteland Warrior Hoots Patrol, Fife Eternal, Masters Of The Galaxy, Sword Lord Of The Goblin Horde, The Siege Of Dunkeld (In Hoots We Trust), Keeper Of The Celestial Flame Of Abernethy, Universe On Fire, Hootsforce, The Unicorn Invasion Of Dundee, The National Anthem Of Unst
It may have only been a Tuesday night at the Phoenix Concert Theatre, but for the over 75% capacity crowd who no doubt enjoyed the days seasonally above average March weather temps, this line-up was bullet-proof, performed on multiple levels, and would satiate even the most ridged concert goer. Shout out to Inertia Entertainment, who recently celebrated a 28th birthday being in the business, for being one of the leaders in southern Ontario’s extreme and heavy music experiences.
Remaining dates on the Red, White, And Hoots Tour are as follows…
March
16 – Omaha, NE @ The Waiting Room
18 – Denver, CO @ The Oriental Theater
20 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Metro Music Hall
22 – Seattle, WA @ Substation
23 & 24 – Portland, OR @ Hawthorne Theatre
25 – Roseville, CA @ Goldfield Trading Post
26 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Regent Theater
27 – Mesa, AZ @ The Nile Theater
29 – Austin, TX @ Come and Take It Live
30 – Dallas, TX @ The Studio at The Factory