by Mark Coxon

So this was the first round of Metal to the Masses for North Wales and one of the ones I was looking forward to the most as I knew little about the three bands playing, bar what I had researched earlier the day before, 2 new bands to me and a revamped line-up of a band I had seen before, but with new members and a completely different sound I was told, so great! Bring it all on!

So I arrived early to meet fellow Judges Pete Bailey and Don Jackson Wyatt to discuss scoring methods and what we are looking for/expecting from the bands. This year is much more organised and a lot fairer than last years unorganised chaos which caused a lot of negativity with a lot of the bands that played. This year it will be fair, the scores split between the three judges views/scores and the audience votes. Bear in mind the audience is likely to be biased depending on what bands they have come to support so there's your first lesson to any bands playing... BRING PEOPLE.

Ok onto the bands... now bear in mind, I AM going to give my opinions here, and these are MY opinions, I'm not going to sugar coat shit, you can be offended by me if you want but if I criticise remember it's only what I personally think/feel and if I have written it down here it's in my belief/hope it will be beneficial to any of the bands that read it to give reasons as to why the scoring (mine anyway) went the way they did. Just no throwing rotten fruit at me in the street or anything... I hate that.

All the bands tonight were actually local Wrexham bands which was quite nice and first out of the bag were 'Scars in Design'. It's always shit being the first band of the night; you have to warm the room up etc, get people going and to be fair these boys gave it a damned good go. They were enthusiastic and had good energy, the guys bounced around on stage, the lead guitarist in particular pulled out some stunning riffs, this is a good sign indeed. On the down side however the guys seemed very unorganised on stage, too much time talking to each other between songs, and not interacting with the audience enough, also the style of music seemed to very quite drastically between the songs, this is a band I feel that is still searching for it's own identity and taking five minutes out of a twenty minute set to introduce band members in a band competition? Really? I'd near given up on them except for the second to last song (I didn't hear what it was called sorry) actually got a fair few in the audience going and indeed I believe if you stick to more songs like that guys, you may well be one to watch out for in the future.

Next up were 'Blood For Betrayal' and in musical preference terms, for me this was the band of the night, I saw them getting ready to go on stage and sorry but seeing how young they all were I was really dubious, well they soon proved me wrong, my god the singer has some power in his voice, over all the band were much tighter, the crowd reacted well, they even got the first mini pit of the night (well ok three guys one of which that I think forgot his medication - but hell it was a start!) They had a great stage presence, but still there wasn't enough crowd interaction with the frontman, guys if I have any criticisms about your performance really it's just that, with your kind of music and this whole genre of metal it's about getting the crowd pumped up and crazy, getting them involved, but that is something that comes with experience. The last song of their set 'Good bye for ever' had the whole audience nodding heads and tapping feet, I reckon if those guys had starting moshing about again at this point a lot more would have joined in. I will definitely be going to watch this band again; I have no doubt in my mind there is much more to come from you.

Last but not least were the newly renamed 'Spires' the most experienced band of the night and you can tell in the performance they pulled off, they had the best stage presence by far The singer (while not my favourite vocalist of the night) had great audience interaction, getting them to shout and dance and generally go crazy, even going amongst the crowd getting them to sing bits, something they could do it seems as they sold the most tickets of the nights so half the room were there for them, and no this wasn't just friends they had dragged along to make up numbers in case any cynics out there are thinking that, I was sat by the stage the whole night and the majority of the first few rows were singing along with certain songs, they had the biggest pit of the night, even had fans climbing up the side of the bloody stage. Now while I'd never approve of fans doing that and indeed I'd have given him a telling off were I closer for being an ass you can't knock their enthusiasm. The songs/music were consistent and powerful it did make you want to jump about and wreck stuff and you can't fault the performance at all. They made the most of the twenty minute slot they were given and used it well, well done boys.

After all the bands had played Pete, Don & I all disappeared into the back to discuss our scoring system, to collect the audience votes and to rally our totals. Surprisingly, and in a good way which I was pleased about, all our thoughts/scores/responses were pretty similar which gave me hope that this would indeed be a fair competition with no personal bias coming into it. Despite some reactions when the winners were read out, it was simply decided fairly and my congratulations to 'Spires' the voting was unanimous, you really did deserve to win, as I said not my personal favourite group of the night, but by far the best performance. I wish you all the luck in the final in July.

Bring on Heat 2 - 27th March featuring 'Befall The Aftermath', 'Apollyon' & 'Entity'. See you all there!