Tim Ripper Owens – Hard Rock Cafe, Rio De Janeiro, 18/10/09
By: Daniel Croce English version: Maila-Kaarina pictures: Daniel Croce
I do believe destiny can be ironic. Especially now that I accepted to become a columnist for this website, and I have to say that to begin wasn´t easy since my first jobs were to cover 2 big events of great responsibility: the concert of a titan such as Tim Ripper Owens and, 48 hours later, take a trip to São Paulo to do the same with the Finns from Stratovarius.
What should be ironic here? Well, before the concerts I was really sure, and I do mean SURE, that I would be at least astonished by this giant´s performance, who is Mr. Ripper, 8 years after watching him with Judas Priest at an anthological concert, where he sang several classics from the band´s career plus songs from his equally amazing phase with the album “Jugulator”.
In other words, I was expecting A LOT from this concert.
Tim Ripper Owens also has 2 albums with Iced Earth in his résumé and both deserve the highest grades: “The Glorious Burden” – considered American/vainglorious by those more annoying fans, since it was recorded during the period of September 11th, a fact that made the vocalist Matthew Barlow quit with the excuse of "doing something better to his country".
The space was free to Tim Owens and “Framing Armageddon” came out - the first and great part of 2 albums that were to be a complete trilogy - starting with “Something Wicked this Way Comes”.
His abrupt firing from the band in order to give the place back to Barlow made Mr. Owens become the new singer of Yngwie Malmsteen´s band, with whom he recorded the great “Perpetual Flame”. Great, actually, because it´s HIM, Tim Owens, singing. And this without mentioning the album from his, let´s say, "own band", BEYOND FEAR, recorded in between the 2 Iced Earth albums.
This year he released a solo project: “Play My Game”, with high level special guests such as; Bruce and Bob Kulick, Rudy Sarzo, Jeff Loomis, Simon Wright, Billy Sheehan, Doug Aldrich and others.
Of course I thought: “a man with such a heavy metal CEO résumé won´t be able to do a mediocre concert. It has to be at least close to perfect.” But as I started this review saying that I believe in Irony, on that Sunday, the 18th of October, 2009, I not only saw it in front of me but also filmed and took pictures.
It´s normal in Brazil to bring a solo artist, paying him to play with hired local musicians, usually competent, to be the back up band. Some people think it´s questionable, others that it´s a good and cheap solution to bring mid or low proportion artists to do shows. Well, I really have no opinion about it and with Tim Ripper Owens it wasn´t different; his hired band was TEMPESTT, from São Paulo, and I have to say the musicians are great and impressive, extremely competent.
Ok, you are reading and still trying to find the irony? Well, the SET LIST was the problem. I honestly felt as if I were at a cover band concert just like those who perform things such as “Battle of the bands: grunge VS metal, metal VS new metal”, but with such a singer like Owens as a frontman, a singer with the best résumé, PHD in Heavy Metal, just like I said in the former paragraphs…
Well, besides being a sacred monster, Ripper is also kind, full of charisma, loves what he does and sings A LOT. The band playing with him was equally amazing, but the set list, for the love of god....what the hell was that?
I was expecting the following Math: 20 songs, 50% of the set list containing Beyond Fear, his solo album “Play My Game”, real Ripper Owens albums. The other 50% I was expecting to listen to a miscellaneous from his recent album with Malmsteen, the songs from the 2 other ones he recorded with Judas Priest and the 2 he did with Iced Earth. Anything that could have happened besides this would have been a great profit.
My friends, if I had bet on this horse, I would have lost everything, my home, my guitars, my bass and my drums…
None of these things happened and I saw Tim Ripper Owens singing cover music just as any free lance hired musician. To start with, he opened up with "Painkiller”, the most absolute Judas Priest classic, but sorry, legitimated by the voice of its original singer: Rob Halford. From that moment on he played a set of covers such as “Flight of Icarus” (Iron Maiden), “Highway Star” (Deep Purple), “Symptom of the Universe” (Black Sabbath), “Rising Force” (Malmsteen), besides “The Green Manalishi”, “The Ripper”, “Living After Midnight” and “Breaking the Law” from Judas priest.
Here is the problem: when he was the Judas Priest singer, he had to do it, and he really did it perfectly. However, if it´s a solo concert, I believe it isn´t ok to play these songs. And what about the other covers? I couldn´t see any sense in watching him singing those songs. An artist with so many good songs, so many good bands and good records released doesn´t have to use such a “clutch” playing classics from other bands.
Among all his songs he played only Beyond Fear, “And... y will die”, one from his solo album (the touching opening track “Starting Over”), one from Jugulator, “Burn in Hell”, which was perfect, and one from “Demolition”; One on One, the album´s hit. He didn´t play anything from Iced Earth and neither from Perpetual Flame.
About Iced Earth, it´s clear that the broken up wasn´t friendly between him and the boss John Schaffer: I wasn´t drunk so can say that I saw when somebody threw him a T-shirt of the band and he just stepped on it. I think it explains well why he didn´t play any of their songs.
Even though he doesn´t want to do it and I can perfectly agree, he surely had several other options to be played that night for those 200 or 300 people who paid to see him.
As a frontman he is really a SHOW MAN, his singing is amazing, he knows how to make the audience go crazy, this part was perfect. The band was also very good, but this set list full of "kid stuff", I have to confess that made me sit down (sitting at a heavy metal concert?) and watch that without believing, questioning myself if that was really Tim Ripper Owens playing those songs.
I don´t know if what happened there was a bad suggestion somebody gave him, a tip coming from some stupid promoter, producer or manager, I don´t know, but my average to this concert is 50%: the band was excellent, the singer perfect but the set list was extremely poor. In every school I studied the average was 70% so....he failed...
And what would the big irony be? Well, Stratovarius concert, my next review…
Thanks a lot
Hard Blast thanks the production from Rio de Janeiro who did the event and, in special, to Felipe Hell for all support and partnership.
