On Friday, the 18th of June, Alice Cooper brought the Skool’s Out party to Oslo, Norway. He and the arrangers didn’t settle with one support act, but three. So Silver (N), Brides Of Destruction (USA), and Turbonegro (N) were given the task to make the night something extra before the rock and roll grandfather, Alice himself, entered the stage.
SILVER
Norwegian shoe-gazer rockers Silver started the Skool’s Out party with a 30-minute act, focusing on the material from their debut long-play album White Diary. To them, it must have been a blast being given this gig, prolonging an already successful half-year of album promoting in Norway. Existing for several years, they have been playing on quite a few stages all over Europe, but I doubt they were very familiar to concert halls the size of Oslo Spectrum. But the band, led by the charismatic Blanco Summer on vocals, performed their set as if they were fueled by experience.
BRIDES OF DESTRUCTION
What more people had come to hear was Brides Of Destruction. Not because their album Here Come The Brides has put the world on fire, but primarily because the Bride’s guitar player is Tracii Guns from L.A.Guns, and because Nikki Sixx from Motley Crue plays the bass.
London LeGrand sings, and Scot Coogan beats the skins. Dressed like a mix between the stone age, the eighties, the nineties and 2004, the band entered the stage and kicked off their set with the first single track from their CD; “Shut The Fuck Up.”
Their whole approach sounded at first a little reserved, but they tried as hard as they could, and good old Nikki and Co. proved at last, by running and jumping all around the stage, that they physically were in impressively good shape.
Even though “Natural Born Killers” is a great song, the Brides didn’t really get anywhere until they played “I Got A Gun” about halfway through the set; probably the best song on their album. The song builds up to include a very cool riff, and at this point, Tracii Guns seemed (at last) to fully get into what he was doing. After this, all reserved behavior was out of sight. Guns looked very happy (… a “trigger happy” Guns… ), in knowing that he never would have played for this amount of people if he had stuck with L.A. Guns!
Nikki Sixx, however, will get this size of an audience whenever Motley Crue chooses to reunite. Still, he seemed to do the best amid this current situation, while whatever amount of water runs through whatever river before the timing is right for a new Crue tour.
Towards the end of their 45-minute set, Tracii Guns introduced “Revolution” ( not L.A.Guns “Revolution”…) with a guitar improvisation that never successfully replaced the very cool guitar intro the song has got on the album. All of these efforts never really caught the attention of this Alice Cooper and Turboneger-longing audience. Not even “I Don’t Care,” the most Motley-ish track the Brides have penned, succeeded in pulling off a more than average party. However, at this point, the band was totally dedicated to their stage duties.
Finally, when they closed their set with some “old school shit” (as Nikki himself introduced it), things truly started to become special. “Live Wire,” from Crue’s 1981 debut album, kicked it off — a song pretty tough to not make sound great. The crowd gave the response the song deserved. The drumming was great, and even thought London almost got in a bit too early on one of the verses, this was definitely the evening’s highlight. The next and last song, “Shout At The Devil,” never managed to top the previous, but as the number reached its end, everybody seemed to wake up to what was going on, recognizing the old classics.
Then the time had come for Alice Cooper’s third support act, Norway’s own Turbonegro. See review here.
Check out Metal Express’ streaming audio interview with Nikki Sixx and Tracii Guns here.
Setlist
Shut The Fuck Up
Natural Born Killers
Brace Yourself
I Got A Gun
Revolution
I Don’t Care
Live Wire
Shout At The Devil
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