[DID NOT ATTEND: May 26, 2023] Avatar / Veil of Maya / Orbit Culture
I’ve seen Avatar twice. The last time was about a year and a half ago. They always put on a good show with lots of spectacle.
I thought my son would enjoy going to see them with me so I got us both tickets. I tend to forget that there’s a lot of growling and unclean vocals in Avatar because the parts I remember are more theatrical and campy/circusy.
This tour was for their new album which I didn’t know all that well. But it turns out they were playing from throughout their career and it seems like they played for two hours.
We were both feeling pretty exhausted this week, and were both kind of hoping the other didn’t want to go. So when he asked if he could bail, that was fine with me. Especially since the show wound up with some things I wasn’t that excited about.
The opening band was changed so they would go on at 6:30, which would be fine if I was leaving from work, but a real pain to get home and then drive back to Philly. On the positive side, this mean the show would end kind of early, but that was a small comfort.
I was intrigued by the opener Orbit Culture, a Swedish melodic death metal band. They are heavy and brutal and yet there’s something about them (maybe because they are Swedish) that I liked better than most of this kind of music. Plus you could actually understand the unclean vocals and when Niklas Karlsson sings cleanly he has a great powerful voice.
Veil of Maya is a metalcore band from Illinois. I think of all of the subgenres of metal, metalcore if probably my least favorite. This band has a lot going on with different vocals styles, lots of sound effects and some progressive metal time changes. Frankly, it sounded exhausting on a night when I was tired.
So, I knew I wasn’t going to make Orbit Culture. If I wanted to Make Veil of Maya, I would have to leave shortly after I got home and I wasn’t prepared for that.
As the time I’d have to leave to make Avatar rolled around, I thought about TLA. It’s a pain to park there most times. But a Friday night, arriving after 8PM? It just seemed like far too much work for only one band. So I was fine with blowing this show off. And if I they come back around I can always see them again if I want to.

The whole reason I as thinking about attending this show was to see Animals as Leaders again. They announced on August 27, 2021