THENEWO2, Hearless Bastards and Wolfmother hit The Fillmore

On Tuesday November 3rd, The Fillmore was buzzing with energy. The Fillmore is a fairly large venue in Charlotte NC where bands by the name of Blondie, The White Stripes, Eric Clapton, Johnny Cash and Prince have played. Big names perform here and, if they're lucky, smaller bands perform in hopes of getting to the big leagues. Last Tuesday two smaller bands were lucky enough to be on the same touring list as the one only Wolfmother from Australia. These two bands were thenewno2 from London/LA and Heartless Bastards from Cincinnati OH. Thenewno2 is a small band of five guys with haunting and trance-inducing melodies. The music behind them is strong and catchy enough to cover the fact that their vocals aren't up to par with their beats and tunes.

They recently played a gig on Late Night with Conan O Brian. There was a swirling blue light on the screen behind them, and it would be right about then that anyone would be convinced that thenewno2 has some subliminal messages in their songs if you run the songs backwards. They're influences seem to be from before their time, seeing as if you listen to a couple of their songs on their myspace page (www.myspace.com/thenewno2), you'll get the feeling that the James Bond 007 theme is bound to pop in at any moment. This is good for them because it shows that they aren't all into today's pop scene and that they're trying to make a path of their own, but any band would be happy to vouch for the fact that going as far back as the 70s for your inspiration is not your golden ticket to a large and ever-growing fan base.

Heartless Bastards from Cincinnati OH are composed of three solid guys and one powerhouse female. If you just look at Heartless Bastards onstage or online without really listening to them, you'll figure that you're just looking at a typical band that has a female lead singer just so they can have a chance of looking different or attracting a broader male fan base. You might even move on after looking at their photos or just glancing at their myspace page. However, once you take a good listen to Heartless Bastards, you'll see that they mean business. Their sound is very tight and stable. It's like they're anticipating every move and sound that will be made and there are no mistakes. The lead singer, Erika, manhandles the tunes with a strong and raspy sounding voice that leaves the audience with no doubt in their minds that she knows what she's doing and she knows that she came to The Fillmore to perform not to point out the already visible fact that she's a girl and she can sing too. The guitarist and bassist, Mark & Jesse, are very in tune with each other, practically moving with similar movements and feeding off of each other's energy. Dave the drummer is crazy energetic and all smiles, showing that not only is he enjoying playing for a large crowd, but he truly loves what he does and wouldn't consider doing anything else. Heartless Bastards is the band to watch out for during the fall/winter season. As Andrew Stockdale, lead singer from Wolfmother, says: "They aren't Heartless Bastards…they're very nice people."

Now comes the main event: Wolfmother. A band of four guys from Australia; the land of relaxation, koala bears, and kangaroos. Their set was the best of the whole night since they probably played a whole show times three. They played their set which consisted of numbers like "California Queen" and "Mother" among many other crowd favorites and new songs that soon became crowd favorites. And for all of you true blue guitar hero fans who are just stuck on those games and don't know the artists who come up on that television screen, yes Wolfmother did perform Mother live at The Fillmore and yes, they are completely capable of playing every note live on the expert level, and yes it is amazing. It'll put all of you guitar hero gods and goddesses to shame. After about an hour or more of crazy musical prowess they left the stage leaving the audience screaming for more. Just when everyone thought that the night was done, Andrew Stockdale and Ian Peres came out to give a stripped down performance, bringing them closer to the fans and giving the audience a subtle hint of what's to come. After the emotional crowd pleasing performance, the rest of the band came out and part two of the Wolfmother extravaganza began. They came onstage guns blazing and they really tore the roof off The Fillmore. Near the end of the show, Andrew Stockdale went hardcore by breaking one of his guitar strings on purpose then crowd surfing for a bit into the middle of the audience. He let tons of fans strum his guitar when he was onstage and made sure to let people get up close and personal with him by taking some pictures. At the end of the most amazing set ever, the drummer came out from behind the set and threw his drumsticks out into the crowd. Security guards had to stop a pretty intense scuffle between a small young woman and a young man fighting over this one drumstick. The young lady eventually got the drumstick holding it close to her chest beaming over the fact that she won the drumstick AND she kicked the guy in the balls. That's the way it goes down at a Wolfmother show.

After the show, the smaller bands, aka thenewno2 and heartless bastards, loaded their vans and headed for home quite quickly, while Wolfmother came out to say hi to everybody, sign tickets and other items, take some pictures, and then get on one of their two large tour buses and call it a night. Overall, Wolfmother had an amazing night at The Fillmore as did thenewno2 and Heartless Bastards and it's recommended that anybody catch any one of these bands whenever it's possible. It will be the best night of any music lover's life.