coliseum / quest for fire / asile
22-05-2011
cafe dekcuf,otawa

(when i get back to the alter-reality, something else will appear in this space.)

i can't say i have a lot of memories of this show, either leading up to or following it. i think my head was mostly stuck in my own projects that spring...

i do remember thinking that it wasn't quite loud enough, but this was probably partly a venue issue. for the fuzzier moments, you want the distortion to hit you in a way that saturates the air, but you also want the reverb to hit you in the same way during the spacier moments. it didn't quite accomplish that task, because it just wasn't quite loud enough...

i had seen them about eight months before this in the same venue and the volume was a lot higher at that time, allowing for a better experience. i'm not sure if the band turned down or the sound tech decided he didn't want to crank the stoner rock, but it kind of just didn't work out on that visceral level the way that it did the last time. i don't doubt that the set was competent, though.

i didn't stay for much of the coliseum set, either. i had not heard of them going into the show, but i did check out some samples and was turned off by it; my first impression was that it's some kind of sludgy nascar rock and that the show was going to be full of bikers, which is just 'yuck' for me, personally. i gave it enough of a chance to realize that this wasn't quite right, that it was a bit more punk rock than that, but i've never felt entirely safe in this venue, which is in a small upstairs space in ottawa that always feels like it's going to cave in. now, i admittedly have very little faith in architecture because i met plenty of aspiring engineers while studying pure math and was simply not impressed by them. so, i'll admit that i can get a little paranoid, especially after putting myself in the mindset i like to be in for shows of this sort. but, all of these things considered, i have enough of a hard time in this venue when the volume merely increases; i can't handle moshing of any sort without feeling like the floor is going to go. so, i actually scuttled out halfway through the set in fear of the architecture being unsound...but i would not have left early if i was legitimately into it. coliseum are just legitimately outside of my sphere of interest.

i don't have footage for ottawa, but mostly complete sets of both bands from within a month of the date exist below: