By Shawn Hoult
Lately, there seems to be a rash of planned encores. Last Saturday during their sold out show at the MacEwan Hall Ballroom, Finger Eleven were guilty of a planned encore as they annoyingly saved their two singles until after their first set had already ended. This seems very insecure; they basically forced the crowd to act as though they loved the concert just so they could hear the one or two songs they came for.
Annoying encore aside, Finger Eleven performed a decent show; they played loud, hard rock. As they have only two post-Rainbow Butt Monkeys albums to pull from, they played a fairly long set of about an hour and a half. However, that hour and a half was also how long it took for Finger Eleven to set up after openers Cold had finished their mercifully short set-list.
Although Finger Eleven did play well, using lights and banter with fans to the best of their ability, the show still fell flat. There were several factors that led to this being a forgettable rock show, including the energy-defusing long set-up time.
Concert goers get this weird let’s-be-hardcore vibe when you pack enough of them in a room and fill their heads with rock. Sometimes this is good, as seen at the Chixdiggit 10th anniversary concert, but often, it just leads to a bunch of kids doing their own thing in a little circle, ignoring the band. The band feeds off the crowd and even if they rock their hearts out, as Finger Eleven always do, the concert has no chance if the crowd doesn’t give it one.