At The MCM Expo With Bentley Jones & The Gang

I’ve just come back from the MCM Expo in London, and apart from vowing never to go again and getting a goody bag the size of a small house at least myself and Echo got to hang out with Bentley Jones as well as TRiPPY, Vger, Dan Dyer, Dreadknux, T-Bird, Nemain and Sonic Yoda. Umiyuri (I think) ran past us dressed in a black and white something – completely ignoring us, cheers Umi. Heck I even bumped into my former SEGA Community cohort Martin, Turtlegirl from GirlGamers and even Alzari himself the irrepressible DC!

I won’t bore you to death over the cosplay details, we did see a Sonic, a small Shadow (who was later seen adorned with a Hollow mask from Bleach and a samurai sword in what must be the worst crossover idea in the history of forever) and Bayonetta and photos of her and Sonic will be going up on the SOE Blog next week courtesy of T-Bird.

But yes sadly the MCM Expo was a bit of a let down, ignoring the fact that the amount of people there was RIDICULOUS I’ve actually learnt a lot as to how NOT to do a convention. The “host” for the stage area bored everyone to death, delayed everything and people began to leave. Luckily this meant we worked our way to the front where we patiently waited through a couple of interview panels. It was coming up to the Guinness World Record attempt on DS play… which everyone needed to sign up for. Now myself and Echo had left our DS’s at home, so we were really pleased when we and anyone else who didn’t have a DS were essentially asked to GO AWAY.

Yup, we were actually asked to leave whilst they did this. We obliged, half way out in a throng of people the idiot got back on the mike to hurriedly tell people if they were waiting for Bentley then they could indeed stay, which I think was Dreadknux’s doing. Thankfully for Expo Idiot he wasn’t looking directly at me because the look I shot him as I turned around WOULD have killed him, Svend WAS looking at me and flinched. In fact I did vocalise my desire to shove the lighting gantry up the chap’s rectum. Ahem.

Eventually Bentley came onstage and it soon became apparent that whilst the guys on stage were rocking the stage set-up was rocky. In fact we felt a bit sorry for everyone concerned really, the set was monkeyed around with, whoever was working the levels really did a piss poor job, they were supposed to announce the tracks and they didn’t. The big thing was the levels though which were shot, with Under The Gun louder than Bentley was and the feedback was non-existent to the stage so they were essentially performing blind. Way to go MCM. In fact T-Bird, who is a close friend of Under The Gun actually went up to the guy half way through to ask him what the hell he was playing at and who apparently gave him a don’t-really-care like response. Awesome.

Myself and my posse then went behind the scenes after the set to chat to Bentley and UTG which was awesome – Echo and Bentley had a proper chance to hang out and chat face-to-face which they sadly weren’t able to do at Summer of Sonic 2009 which was cool.

So what did we actually learn about WE R ANIMADE? Well we learnt that the sound is MUCH more rocky and heavier than previous, Nick Jennison and UTG appear to be much more involved following their appearance on “So Much More” – which featured in the set and got a surprisingly big reaction.  Some anime themes look like they’ll be featuring, a version of the Macross Plus theme was played in the set – and I know for a fact that a reinterpretation of another well known and popular anime series theme will likely be on it (mainly as I’ve had an early mix of the track for ages) but I won’t tell you want that is – its a surprise.  We know that fan involvement will play a part and we know that TRiPPY’s art is awesome. Bentley was actually wearing Studio Imagni badges on his stage gear in a really nice and classy touch. Bentley also styled his hair all anime-like for the performance. I don’t think its gonna stay that way somehow…

Its a pity I can’t go back tomorrow to be honest as everything will be sorted and it ‘d be quite a performance but regardless of the organisational faux pas on the Expo’s front, what we gathered from the actual sound is that WE R ANIMADE is gonna be awesome. Its just a pity the Excel Centre wasn’t.