Photos and Review by Jeff Palmucci
Galleries: Apocalyptica and Nita Strauss
Apocalyptica came by the Orpheum last Saturday on their Plays Mettalica Vol 2 tour. I haven’t heard these guys before, and I have to admit that the opening act, Nita Strauss, is what originally drew me to the show.
Nita is and insane guitarist that can shred with the best of them. In 2018, she released her first solo album, the instrumental Controlled Chaos. This was the same year, incidentally, that she got her own Ibanez signature guitar, the first female to ever get one.
The first half of her set was all instrumental and it was amazing. About halfway through she brought out Kasey Karlsen of Deadlands to do the vocals off of her second studio album The Call of the Void. That album has vocals on most of the track from a diverse set of singers including Lzzy Hale, David Draiman, Dorothy, Alice Cooper, and Lilith Czar. They started off with Victorious and Digital Bullets, both awesome tracks off the new album.
At one cute point in the show she introduced her drummer as her new husband. Here’s a picture of the happy couple.
Apocalyptica took the stage next. The Finnish cellist group’s first album Plays Metallica by Four Cellos has a new update after 28 long years, Plays Metallica Volume 2. In between there were 8 other studio albums and there was some joking onstage about how people think they are always playing Metallica.
Despite the name of the tour, they didn’t limit themselves to playing songs off of volume 2, but played a bunch of Metallica’s greatest hits in a way you’ve never heard before. They used an appropriate amount of distortion to give the classical instruments a heavy metal feel, and just absolutely shredded. It was amazing to see riffs you are used to being played on much smaller instruments being belted out on the cello. Listen to their video of Battery (which they played that night) for a perfect example. Another cool tweak that an all cellist group needs to do is play the vocals in lieu of a singer. Listen to Nothing Else Matters and you’ll see that your brain just substitutes in the words for the melody.
One funny part of the show was when Perttu played a riff on his cello behind his back. Hard to do with a guitar. Much harder to do on a cello.
If you are a Metallica fan, go out and see these guys on this tour. They put an interesting and exciting spin on some of your favorites.