Powerglove

Live at the House of Blues in

Los Angeles, CA

April 24, 2010

Powerglove are an interesting concept that at first I sort of dismissed as a novelty. They basically make metal renditions of songs and themes from video games and cartoons. Their name is based on the video game controller for Nintendo from nearly twenty years ago and many of the songs they adapt are from that same era of console gaming.

Their stage show is far more entertaining than I expected however, as they dress up in large warrior costumes designed by the same person who does the GWAR outfits. They do not do the full face and head makeup endeavor that GWAR goes through but the outfits do add a lot of flare.

As a band they are talented metal musicians that take the source material quite far, especially for some of the older material that was made with extremely limited technology and hardware. They started the set off with “Tetris” which is nearly unrecognizable, by me anyways as I have not tried a hand at Tetris in many years.

The bassist bounces around the stage keeping the momentum up and at times will sing or at least shout a word or two. They introduced the next song by asking if everyone was ready for some “Mortal Kombat” and threw inflatable swords into the audience for the crowd to play with. Part way through the third song I got nailed in the back of the head with one and picked it up as a souvenir. I personally thought the Mortal Kombat song was one of the cooler pieces, I liked the dual guitar work and where they took this one.

I lost track of the order but they did the “X-men” cartoon theme song, which was funny but I do wish they would have sang the words to it too. They also did the “Transformers” theme song and talked a moment about Optimus Prime, a character from the show. Again it was a good rendition but wish they would have done the words metal style, it would have been even more fun.

They did, I believe, “Storm Eagle” form the Megaman games during which the bassist pulled out a toucan puppet and at parts of the song would instigate the audience yelling “Fuck that Bird” which was pretty hilarious.

They did some song that was Mario related, not sure what, I never really got into Mario beyond his role in the original Donkey Kong stuff.

The last song of the set was the theme from the "Power Rangers" cartoon and the bassist had the audience participate. He would shout “Go! Go!” and the audience would respond with “Power Rangers!” for the chorus which was a pretty good ending to their set.

They made me smile quite a few times and the rest of the audience as well. Throughout their show they won seemingly everyone over, which is not always easy for opening bands in Los Angeles to do.

I do wish they had more vocals to their songs as they are pretty much all instrumentals and I like my metal with lyrical presentation but their concept does not lend itself to many songs with lyrics and they are still fun to watch.

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