Evil Scarecrow at The Globe in Cardiff rates as not only one of the best gigs I’ve been to this year. But one of the best gigs I have ever been to in my twenty-odd years of seeing live music.
Joy is not a term you usually associate with heavy metal, but there is a sense of glee to an Evil Scarecrow performance that is hard to deny. As the band state on their website, they are probably the finest parody metal band from Nottingham to have written a song about a robot. I don’t think there’s any probably about it.
At the Globe in Cardiff, I saw probably one of the craziest shows I have ever seen, and I loved it.
Bounding onto the tiny stage done up to look like a ‘dojo’, the Lincolnshire metalheads cut an imposing figure, all studs, spikes and immortal style face paint. As the crowd cheered, Evil Scarecrow launched into Way To Die, probably the band’s most straight-laced song, so long as you don’t listen too hard.
Next up was Skulls of Our enemies, which saw a pair of skeleton warriors invade the stage playing tribal drums. After that, the madness didn’t let up.
To say Evil Scarecrow put on a show is an understatement. Like the bastard children of Garth Marenghi and Dethklok. Every song had something else happening on stage or an element of audience participation.
It’s clear this is a band on the top of their game (and desperate to get rid of their old live DVDs.)
There were many chances to win a DVD during their set. The first chance came during their latest single, Master of The Dojo, which saw a member of the audience try and catch a fly with a giant pair of chopsticks. Another during Huricanado, for whoever fell over from spinning around too much, and many more.
You can’t blame the band for pushing the merch, though. At great expense Evil Scarecrow had Dave Mustaine from Megadeth come on stage to hit the anti-gravity button during Space Dementia. Okay, he was in a spacesuit, and I couldn’t see his face, but it was definitely Dave. Why would they lie?
That humungous unicorn dropped on the pit from the balcony during Last Battle of the Unicorns couldn’t have been cheap either.
These antics would be little more than a distraction if the band weren’t superb.
Led by the charming Dr Hell, Evil Scarecrow mixes influences from thrash to prog and everything in between. It’s impressive stuff. The band can seemingly change things up on a dime too. To call them masters of metal would be an understatement.
There’s a mischievous glee to their performance that is spell-binding. It’s impossible not to join in with the fun as Dr Hell commands the audience to spin in circles, get out their lighters and phones during the prog tinged Brother Pain, and for one final trick, get them to scuttle like crabs.
As Dr Hell quipped: “We can play whatever we like so long as we play the song about a Crab at the end.”
He’s probably right, everyone went batshit as the chants of Crabulon started, and the robotic crab lord herself appeared.
If you haven’t seen Evil Scarecrow live, you owe it to yourself to check them out. Witty, accomplished, and with an element of audience participation on a par with the Rocky Horror Show at times.
Just get tickets. Go, now, have you, why not? Just do it. Now!
Oh, and make sure to raise a claw for The Crab Lord!