Picture Book & Live Review: SciaticA, Permanent Waves at The Local at Sidelines, December 17

Review & photos by Ken Lackner

Full gallery at the bottom of the post.

I’ve never been a fan of cover bands. As with most rules, this one has an exception. Two exceptions, actually.

It takes a very talented and impressive voice to recreate the vocal styling of Geddy Lee. Matthew Trautwein — better known to some as String of the Renaissance rock ‘n’ roll group The Lost Boys — has the necessary talent. His newest band Permanent Waves covers the early career of Canadian rock legends Rush, from the ’70s through the early ’80s. The set opened with “Working Man” off Rush’s self-titled debut album. Near the end, fans were treated to the entire Side A (anyone still remember what that even means?) of “Moving Pictures.” Permanent Waves closed with one of my all-time favorite Rush tracks, “Subdivisions,” from the 1982 album Signals. I can never get enough of that record.

Permanent Waves was an excellent treat and a great warm-up. But we came to thrash. And thrash, we did. The headliner of the evening was Atlanta’s own “Big Four” thrash metal cover band, SciaticA. These guys definitely know how to keep metal alive. Their set consisted of covers of Anthrax, Slayer, Megadeth, and Metallica. Personally, I’m not particularly familiar with the former two. It’s not that I don’t like them, I’ve just not listened to them much. (Actually, I saw Megadeth open for Slayer last year and both bands were pretty incredible.) But the latter two are two of my favorite bands. As a fan of this music, standing there watching and listening to SciaticA perform was about the next best thing to watching the bands they were covering. Highlights of the set for me were Peace Sells and perhaps my all-time favorite Metallica track, “Master of Puppets.”

If you missed this show, you can catch SciaticA as they return to The Local on February 11 with fellow thrash tribute band, Ressurection. If you dig metal as much as I do, you won’t want to miss this!

Permanent Waves: