Adema

Adema Livestream 4/16/21

I saw Adema once back in 2002 at a tiny place in Portland due to my love of their first album. Singer Mark Chavez decided to bail after two albums and with that my interest in Adema waned. It had waned so much that I did not realize they continued on with multiple singers after Chavez’s departure. Not knowing about other singers and a misleading email from Bandsintown left me incorrectly thinking this stream was going to be a reunion with Chavez so I purchased it. When the band began the stream with “Unstable” I thought the singer kind of looked different but I had not seen them forever so I went with it but then he sounded different once he started singing. Then I realized it was Ryan Shuck, who used to be one of the guitarists in Orgy. This guy did great but is a more polished singer, which didn’t work as well for the songs as the grittiness that the original singer had. Disappointing to say the least but I paid for it and like the songs so I decided to stick around. 

This was the first of three streams I was interested in to be broadcast this evening so I initially went into it not knowing if this one would finish before the next two started at 6 pm. The singer change and screen fade out between songs confirming my suspicions that this stream was pre-recorded instead of live made for an easy decision to watch the Weezer stream live if this Adema stream was to run over. The stream only lasted 45 minutes so this turned out to be a non-issue anyways. The band sounded great and it was good to hear the songs again but the change in vocals just threw it off to much for my personal tastes.

SETLIST: Unstable, Close Friends, Everyone, Do What You Want To Do, Ready to Die, Immortal, Codependent, Freaking Out, The Way You Like It, Trust, Giving In

Adema 1/11/02

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I first heard Adema because they were playing the crap out of the song “Giving In” on KUFO. The fact that the singer Mark Chavez is the half-brother of Jonathan Davis from Korn was made a big deal of. It certainly didn’t hurt anything seeing as how Korn pretty much ruled the earth in this window of time, but Adema actually had talent. I wasn’t impressed with them based on “Giving In” but became a fan the instant I heard “The Way You Like It” power its way out of the speakers in my Jeep CJ-5. I had purchased the self-titled album and was pretty much obsessed with it by the time of this show. The B-Complex is essentially a small warehouse that was turned into a music venue. I would say there might have been 200 people at the show tops. The energy of their music translated to a small venue very nicely. I’m pretty sure it was just Lucinda and I at this one but I found out later that my soon-to-be good friend Marcus was also in attendance. They rocked through every song on the first album without missing a beat. The one thing that surprised me was how large one of the guitar players was. He seemed like a giant compared to the rest of the band.

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