Originally posted on Valkyrian Music.

The golden age of glam & sleaze rock may have officially been the eighties, but there are a handful of bands capable of convincing you that such age is now. CRASHDÏET is one of them. After the “Rust” tour being cancelled due to the heinous pandemic in 2020, the release of “Automaton” late last month provided a payback in spades.

I believe Gabriel Keyes was somewhat sick, or at least tired. Wait, let me rephrase it – his voice might have been tired, ‘cause the way he rocked that stage through and through was evidence of a powerful energy. It was the first time I was seeing him live, but I’d seen videos – including the Quarantine Thrills – so I know what his voice is capable of outside a recording studio. Changing the higher pitches into lower ones in order to not go out of tune was a bit disappointing at first, but eventually I got used to it and had to appreciate the effort (one CRASHDÏET gig cancelled was enough in my book). I’m still bummed that they didn’t play “Shine On”, though, as it’s probably my favorite song out of “Automaton” and I know they had played it in the previous dates of the tour. But listening to so many “oldies” such as “Tikket”, “It’s A Miracle” (dedicated to all of us, for being there after all the world’s been through in the past couple of years), “Breakin’ The Chainz” and “Queen Of Obscene” (yes, and “Riot In Everyone”, of course, but that one is mandatory) certainly made up for the absence of my most recent fav track. Curiously enough, despite being the “Automaton Tour”, they’ve only played two songs off it – “Together Whatever”,which opened the show and made everyone go wild right from the start, and later on “No Man’s Land”. And from “Rust”, the first album featuring Gabriel, only “Reptile” came up. It’s great to see he feels so comfortable singing all those songs he didn’t originally record – they’re CRASHDÏET songs and he’s their current (hopefully last!) lead singer. Period!

More or less in the middle of the show, he stepped off stage (maybe to rest his voice?) and let guitarist Martin Sweet sing a NIRVANA song (“Territorial Pissings”). What an unexpected blast, and I don’t even like NIRVANA that much! What I wasn’t expecting either was to see both KING ZEBRA and SHIRAZ LANE members getting on stage and singing “Generation Wild” at the end of the show That’s the kind of thing that usually happens when wrapping up tours so it’s quite an understatement to say I was really glad that these bands don’t go by “the usual”.

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Stage invasion!

Gracias, Madrid!