December 9, 2019. Adelaide, South Australia. American rockstars Halestorm grave the stage of The Gov, a venerable local venue for live music.
Fronted by an true rock goddess, Lizzy Hale, Halestorm is a barrage of attitude, sound, and pure madness. Backed by her spastic, charismatic, brother Arejay Hale on drums, a Rob Flynn lookalike (Joe Hottinger) on guitar and energetic bassist Josh Smith, the complete band delivers a live show that is powerful, exhausting, frenetic, and fast paced.
There's an unacceptable level of energy thrown from the stage into the audience at a show like this.
An excellent mix of new, old, and live specials, the performance was that of a studio quality album. With a dramatic build up, the band ceased just before the real, hard riff was about to hit - "Gotcha", before dropping into a shredding cacophony of sound, louder than everything that led up to that moment of the show.
I was in the second row, and managed to capture the following images. I used my phone, as I was not able to get a photo-pass for the gig.
I didn't know the concert was happening until the night before - thanks to Google Play Music for notifying me that the concert was even happening. An awesome night out. My ears are still not back to one hundred percent.
Everyone got a solo part - and as usual, Arejay managed to engage and enchant the audience just as much as front woman and rock goddess Lizzy did. Hottinger was ... well, hot on the guitar, shredding the fretboard of his instrument like no tomorrow. The audience, I felt, did not truly appreciate his skill.
From my position, I did not see much of the bassist, as he was mostly isolated on the opposite side of the tiny stage, but for the $90 I paid as admission, every single moment was great.
I was a little disappointed that the "moshpit" never really got going, but for a Monday night rockshow - there was no better place to be.
Regarding my photographic imagery from the night: shutter speeds could've been a tiny bit faster to better freeze the motion, but I'm pretty happy with what I managed to capture considering the entire workflow for these three images was completely done on a mobile phone - Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ , and Mobile Lightroom.
What's the best band you've seen live recently?