Monthly Archives: November 2008

More on the Spiritual Warfare brigade

Posted on November 3, 2008 by Tim Hall

Just in case you though I was exaggerating when I talked about “spiritual warfare” advocates taking credit for the death of Mother Theresa, read this:

“Our assignment from God was to take down the foundations of The Great Babylon, the harlot over many waters, who supported the false systems of the world. God clearly showed us where we should go for our main prophetic act by revealing a large, brown stone formation, completely surrounded by walls of ice resembling a castle and shaped exactly like an idol of the Queen of Heaven! This seat of the Mother of the Universe was 20,000 feet high, and to get there we had to cross the ice fall, the most dangerous par of the Everest ascent, with no guide but Him and no help from anyone else other than the angels.”

OK, so far it reads like a particularly weird scenario for some RPG, perhaps a twisted version of Mage: The Ascension, or perhaps Call of Cthulhu run from a weirdly fundamentalist perspective. But apparently this was an account of a real “spiritual warfare” mission into the Himalayas.

It then gets a lot darker and more disturbing.

Within two weeks of the expedition, other things happened which I believe are also connected: the huge fire in Indonesia, the largest Muslim nation; an earthquake destroyed the basilica of Assisi, where the Pope had called a meeting of all world religions; a hurricane destroyed the infamous temple ‘Baal-Christ’ in Acapulco, Mexico; Princess Diana died, a representative of the British throne, to which Sir Edmund Hillary dedicated Mount Everest; and Mother Theresa died in India, one of the most famous advocates of Mary as Co-Redeemer.”

This isn’t Christianity. It’s a cross between Voodoo and the Manichean Heresy. And it’s not a fringe cult; they have their tentacles deeply embedded in American politics, and claim huge numbers of followers. Sarah Palin is one of them.

(Thanks to Making Light for the link)

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Karnataka, Crewe Limelight, 26 Oct 2008

Posted on November 2, 2008 by Tim Hall

Two days after seeing Panic Room I found myself back at Crewe Limelight to see the new-look Karnataka.

Following the dissolution of the original band back in 2004, bassist and original bandleader Ian Jones put together a completely new incarnation of the band, including Lisa Fury on vocals, Enrico Pinna on guitar, and Gonzalo Carrera on keys. Some people seemed to object to the mere existence of this band, some hack scribblers dismiss them as ‘a glorified tribute band’, which I feel is a bit harsh.

When I first saw them at Crewe last year I thought they put on an impressive show, but I had a nagging doubt that what I was really seeing was Ian and Lisa plus some hired hands. Having seen powerful live performances by The Reasoning and Panic Room earlier this month, I felt they had something to prove this time around.

Typical of Sunday night gigs at Crewe Limelight, things started bloody late, and it wasn’t until ten o’clock before the band came on stage. Unfortunately the start of the set was marred by technical problems which rather spoiled the impact of the opening instrumental ‘State of Grace’, and caused intermittent problems later on as well. After that rather shaky start, though, they recovered momentum, and it was soon apparent that this was a far, far better band than I’d seen back in 2007. Although the set included plenty of old favourites, a good proportion of the set was new material, and the new songs had enough of the same feel and mood to justify keeping the name. They’ve gelled as a band now; confident enough to reinterpret the older songs and make them their own rather than the sort of note-for-note reproductions that you’d expect from a tribute band. Enrico Pinna played some amazing guitar, striking the right balance between fluid virtuosity and restraint where appropriate. Lisa Fury’s vocals were as impressive as last time. It’s probably not easy to take some very personal songs written by another singer and sing them as if they were hers.

Strangest moment came partway through the set when a Dutch fan dragged his girlfriend on stage in order to propose to her. That’s something I’ve never seen happen at a gig before.

A good gig, despite the technical gremlins. It’s a pity the sheer number of gigs by various bands in October meant I didn’t get the chance to see Karnataka more than once on this tour.

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Panic Room, Wolverhampton, 24 Oct 2008

Posted on November 2, 2008 by Tim Hall

Gaul was divided into three parts
– Julius Caesar

All three of the female fronted prog (or gorp) bands that grew out of the ashes of the original incarnation of Karnataka have been touring in October, making it a busy month gig-wise for those of us that actually like all three. I’ve already reviewed The Reasoning, who were on tour at the beginning of the month, the second part of the month was the turn of the other two bands, Panic Room and the new incarnation of Karnataka.

First was Panic Room at the Little Civic in Wolverhampton. I hadn’t seen this band since their very first gig at Lydney back in April, not counting the ill-fated gig at The Peel where I didn’t actually get to see them play because of a power failure. The Little Civic is one of those slightly tatty but loveable small venues, walls covered in posters. It’s basically just the upstairs room of a pub, with the stage at one end of a long narrow room. As is normal for this sort of gig, the place contained an awful lot of familiar faces, from the infamous HippyDave to Mostly Autumn’s Andy Smith, who was doing the lights.

Support was Quecia, playing with an acoustic lineup consisting of two female vocalists and two acoustic guitarists. I’m afraid they didn’t really do a lot for me; their lead singer has an excellent voice, but none of their songs were strong enough to be memorable, at least for me.

Panic Room have definitely grown as a band since I saw them last. They’ve got a very different sound live than on record; rather than the complex multi-layered approach of their album Visionary Position, on stage their music is harder-edged and more guitar driven; for instance, on ‘Apocalypstick’, Paul Davies’ guitar replaces the absent electric violin. They’re not resting on their laurels when it comes to material; the set included no fewer than five new songs written since the recording of the album. A couple of those, the quite poppy ‘Into the Fire’ and the very spiky ‘Go’ had been in the set in April, but the others were completely new, including the vaguely industrial-sounding ‘Black Noise’ written by Alun Vaughan. The strength of the new stuff is such that they could afford to leave out a couple of songs from the album.

High spot was the first encore, a full band arrangement of ‘Blood Red Skies’, a song from Anne-Marie’s solo album “The Contact”. This was a powerful song when I heard it 18 months ago performed as a solo acoustic number; backed by the whole band it’s an absolute barnstormer. The small but enthusiastic audience wasn’t prepared to let them get away with just one encore, and they were back again for their take of Led Zep’s ‘No Quarter’.

That was definitely a good one. Paul Davies was in fine form on guitar, completely recovered from his hand injury that caused him to miss the end of a gig last month. And Anne-Marie Helder, despite apparently suffering from a really bad lurgy, still gave a fantastic vocal performance, and looked extremely sexy (if I’m allowed to say something like that in these politically-correct times).

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