Concert Review: Prong and Rwake

I dragged my lazy carcass off the couch during a rainstorm last night to make it out to local joint Juanitas in Little Rock for another dose of metal, since my ears (and ribs) had fully recovered from KoRn and friends last week I guess. I can't seem to get a good night's sleep lately anyway, might as well stay out until midnight on a Monday night... beats staring at the ceiling.

Opening the show was Little Rock "doom metal" band Rwake. They've actually developed quite a following across the nation and don't play that many local shows anymore, so I was glad to catch their short set. They have 6 people on stage... 2 guitarists, a bassist, drummer, singer and a girl who plays a keyboard set-up with samples and does vocals as well. Her and the lead singer basically assault vocally while the band plays something between early Black Sabbath and maybe Iron Maiden all the way through to death metal. It's a pretty brutal beat down that's a of combination of doom, sludge and swamp rock. Their songs are almost like a jam band, seeming to run songs 7 or 8 minutes at times, maybe longer. It's an intense show and these guys have that look of anger, like they're not the guys your Mama might have warned you about... but the sort of guys that the bible warned you about. My ears felt like a Colorado hotel room with Kobe Bryant on the stage.

Up next was the band I came to see, metal pioneers Prong. I'd only seen them 1 other time a few years ago in St. Louis, but have been fans of the band for over a decade. With their unique style of groove/industrial metal, they are cited as major influences on bands like KoRn all the way to Nine Inch Nails. The current incarnation of the trio is Tommy Victor, Monte Pittman and Aaron Rossi. Tommy is pretty much an icon all to himself, having worked with legends of the rock world, including Rob Zombie, Marilyn Manson, Glenn Danzig and Al Jourgensen’s band Ministry.

They erupted on stage with with their trademark crunchy, stop-start riffs and snarling vocals from Tommy and blasted through tunes like Rude Awakening, Face Value, Looking for Them, All Knowing Force and Spirit Guide before a small but very rowdy crowd of head bangers. It's easy to see that Tommy is having a good time with the band as they're all smiles and are very appreciative of the reception, reguardless of the size of the audience. They play like they're playing a packed Alltel Arena instead of a small club. At one point they do a nice dedication to their former bass player Paul Raven, who passed away over the weekend... toasts raised in the air. They end up the set with the double shot to the ribs of Whose Fist Is This Anyway? followed by their metal anthem Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck and I'd guess about 90% of the crowd is moshing by that time. The place was really alive, as you gotta figure anyone who'll come out on a rainy Monday night to see a band is a diehard fan. I thought they'd be done but they decided to finish it off with their new video and title track to the new CD, Power of the Damager, which sounded really good live and Monte Pittman just works his ass off on the song. They still had one more song in them even and surprised me a bit with a song they said they told somebody they'd play for them, which was KISS' Parasite. Their version sounded more like the version Anthrax did of the song, but it was very cool to hear an old KISS track gain some balls. After plenty of high fives and fist bumps, they disappeared off the stage and on the tour bus. Great set from a great band that can still get it done.