The Roseland Ballroom was packed on Thursday night with metalheads, drawn by the promise of a strong triple bill. The headliner was Lamb of God, a band of noisemakers from Richmond, Va. And toward the end of the night, D. Randall Blythe, the lead screamer for Lamb of God, found time to salute one of the opening acts. He shouted, “Give it up for Trivium!” And the crowd made a curious sound: a mixture of cheers, claps and — it was unmistakable — boos.
Despite all the musical fury that had come before, this was the most discordant moment of the night: proof of a culture clash within this seemingly unified crowd. Right after this mixed reaction, the room went silent. “We lost all power onstage,” Mr. Blythe explained. “We’ll be back as soon as we can.” And the fans, more patient than your average Carnegie Hall crowd or multiplex mob, waited for the silence to end.
Hours earlier the audience had cheered a savage set by Machine Head, the loudest band of the night. “Burn My Eyes,” Machine Head’s 1994 debut album, was full of propulsive riffs that hinted at hip-hop, and in the years that followed, Robb Flynn, the band’s leader, experimented with rapping and crooning; it sometimes seemed as if the band were trying to join the nu-metal mainstream.
Then, in 2003, Machine Head changed directions with “Through the Ashes of Empires,” which was heavier and scarier and rap-free; the evolution continues with “The Blackening” (Roadrunner), its new album, which arrives on Tuesday.
The set began with “Clenching the Fists of Dissent,” the 10-minute antiwar epic that opens the new album. As the band hurtled through the riffs, Mr. Flynn roared invective: “Terror, insurgency/Words used to scare conformity/It’s propaganda, it’s their hypocrisy.”
Compared with Mr. Flynn, who is 38, the members of Trivium seem like fresh-faced kids. Trivium is led by Matthew Heafy, a singer and shredder who turned 21 in January. (Mr. Flynn was playing in thrash-metal bands before Mr. Heafy was born.) In 2005 Trivium released “The Ascendancy,” which established it as one of metal’s most promising acts: the songs jumped from growled threats to emo choruses to dazzling displays of guitar virtuosity.
Perhaps Mr. Heafy was too eager to turn his band into the next Metallica, because the disappointing follow-up, “The Crusade” (Roadrunner), found him barking out lyrics as if he were aping Metallica’s James Hetfield. Still, Trivium may yet emerge as a major success story, thanks to those big refrains, those bold melodies, that unabashed enthusiasm. That’s precisely why some metalheads boo.
But on Thursday the old “Ascendancy” songs still sounded great, especially “A Gunshot to the Head of Trepidation,” which suddenly — and thrillingly — downshifts from growling chaos to swaggering (and radio-friendly) hard rock.
Compared with both Machine Head and Trivium, Lamb of God is a model of consistency. Though the band’s roots stretch back to the early 1990s, the story really begins in 1998, when a bilious band called Burn the Priest recorded a paint-peeling self-titled debut album.
Burn the Priest became Lamb of God, and although the tempos slowed slightly, the band’s commitment to screaming fury has never wavered. The band’s motto is “Pure American Metal,” and that phrase sums up its scruffy and unpretentious approach; it is, in part, a rejection of the artsy grandeur of some European metal. Lamb of God concentrates on music that is less ambitious than either Machine Head’s or Trivium’s, but satisfying and scarily precise. “Sacrament” (Epic), the band’s 2006 album, unloads one tantrum after another.
Sneakered and in shorts, the members played tight and clean and fast, driven by the virtuoso drummer Chris Adler. Meanwhile Mr. Blythe, the screamer, wandered the stage, often bending over his microphone to produce a sound that resembled static being fed through a wah-wah pedal. He’s a lead singer but not really a frontman: just one unassuming member of a band that finds nothing foolish about consistency.
