At Geno's, September 12
By DAN CLARK | September 23, 2009
It's never easy saying goodbye to a friend.
For the last 10 years, Portland's Ogre have made a name for themselves as one of the world's premier vintage-style doom-metal bands, releasing three critically-acclaimed albums (to be re-released this year on special-edition vinyl from Germany's Iron Kodex Records), winning awards (including this year's Portland Music Award for best metal act), playing music festivals all over the US, and even staging a successful tour of Japan. Not surprisingly, the announcement a few months back that their 10th anniversary show would in fact be their last was greeted with much sadness.
Will Broadbent, Ed Cunningham, and Ross Markonish came together in 1999, three die-hard music fans with a taste for metal, particularly the post-Sabbath doom of bands like Pentagram and Saint Vitus, and the late-'70s/early-'80s British metal of Iron Maiden and Judas Priest. Combined with their reverence for all things classic rock, Ogre quickly developed a sound greater than the sum of its parts. For their final show, Ogre gladly laid those parts bare for all to see. The show opened with their epic single-track EP Plague Of The Planet, followed by a set of covers including Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze, the first song the trio played together. Their final set featured cuts from their full-length albums Dawn Of The Proto-Man and Seven Hells, and concluded with "Age Of Ice," the first Ogre song ever written.
It was a bittersweet night, with the band in fine form and the crowd only too happy to see their heavy metal heroes off in grand style. Farewell, Ogre. You will be missed.
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