God Is An Astronaut -- New York, NY -- August 5th, 2011

ShatteredFlame · #1 08-06-2011, 07:17 AM

August 5, 2011
Bowery Ballroom, NY

Opener: Monogold

God Is An Astronaut was actually the first post-rock band I got into, way before I was ever into post rock and only listened to alternative metal and electronic-industrial. So they will always hold a special place in my heart. Their album "All Is Violent, All Is Bright" is one of my favorite post-rock releases. It was great that they finally decided to come back to America, IIRC I think they were robbed during their last tour a few years ago which is really unfortunate.

Monogold - They were local support. A 3 piece indie band from Brooklyn. They sounded like Arcade Fire with some post-rock influences and had this sort of tribal/tropical sound. I enjoyed them for the most part but honestly around the 4th song it sounded like they played the same song twice and then around the end of the set it sounded like they played another song again

.

God Is An Astronaut - After a very quick setup GIAA came out exactly on time for their 10PM set time. Well what can you say about post-rock live, it's fucking amazing! The sound was incredible and they put on a great performance. They are a 3 piece band on CD but apparently they just added a touring keyboardist, that dude was awesome and you could tell that he loved performing. Around the 3rd song Torsten announced in tears how great of a crowd we were and how it was worth sacrificing everything to come back to America, really emotional stuff. The crowd got wilder each song. There was this foreign raver guy who had his own little pit right in front of me and a bunch of other people, it was pretty funny watching him. When "Suicide By Star" came on, he got up on stage and whispered something to Torsten, got back in the crowd and a whole mosh pit of frat boys started. It was funny at first but then it got annoying as they moshed to every song after that, even the very slow ambient parts. Still the band actually enjoyed it. I for one was starving and couldn't handle it. I was in the second row during the majority of the performance then by the encore I was somewhere along the side of the venue

. At the end they gave out high fives and the band did so to so it was all good. Setlist wise it was pretty good. I just wanted to hear a bunch of AIVAIB songs and I got like 4 or 5 of them. In terms of stage performance they had a projection screen with a bunch of weird images, nothing there to keep my interest though. Merch was disappointing. They had all of their CD's for $10 but just 2 crappy designed shirts for $15. I got a white one that just has the band name in plain black text as well as this sun symbol. The other shirt was black with their name in red text and I honestly couldn't figure out what the hell design was on that one, some really dark red thing. So anyway if you're a fan of post-rock than I don't see why you shouldn't go see them if they hit your area. They are really awesome guys and deserve the support.

Remaining Light
Fragile
Age of the Fifth Sun
Echoes
Remembrance Day
Shadows
Worlds In Collision
Zodiac
Snowfall
Suicide By Star
Forever Lost
Route 666
All Is Violent, All Is Bright
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Fire Flies And Empty Skies

jd091 · #2 08-06-2011, 08:31 AM

Moshing... to post rock? What? Idiots.

GarageMetal468 · #3 08-06-2011, 08:50 AM

It was like the tool metalheads at MDF moshing to Ghost

But I see that they're coming to Chicago this Thursday... hopefully if I have that day off work I'll be going for sure.

dcmetal108 · #4 08-06-2011, 09:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GarageMetal468

It was like the tool metalheads at MDF moshing to Ghost

But I see that they're coming to Chicago this Thursday... hopefully if I have that day off work I'll be going for sure.

What venue? Bottomlounge? Reggies?

DementedX14 · #5 08-06-2011, 09:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dcmetal108

What venue? Bottomlounge? Reggies?

It is at Subterranean. Never been there either.

GameFreac · #6 08-06-2011, 03:26 PM

Thanks for the set.

I'm so fucking pissed this isn't coming to Atlanta. I'm not a huge fan of their new album but my favorite is their s/t and they're playing a lot of stuff from it. Fuuuuuuu.

idrinkwine732 · #7 08-06-2011, 08:34 PM

An extremely standard set. I want a lot more from End of the Beginning....

Too much from S/T too...

ShatteredFlame · #8 08-07-2011, 01:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jd091

Moshing... to post rock? What? Idiots.

Quote:

Originally Posted by God Is An Astronaut

Wow. That's all we can say. Wow. New York, you were absolutely incredible!!! We had mosh pits, crowd surfing, it was insane!! Possibly one of our favorite gigs ever!

haha! Well it wasn't as bad as it sounds. What helped is it started toward the end of the gig and was like this spur of the moment little joke type thing. I mean most of the crowd is just standing around the whole show with some soft headbanging, it was fun to get a little kick at the end. The band had a bunch of touring buddies from Ireland in the crowd and they all participated too. I just wish they wouldn't have moshed during the calmer parts.

Natrlhi · #9 08-08-2011, 09:29 AM

I am disappointed beyond words that I had to miss these guys, as well as Explosions, Mogwai, TWDY and GY!BE this year. So sad about that.

Glad you had fun, though.

bt11763 · #10 08-08-2011, 09:55 AM

wish i coulda made this