Sunday, May 14 2006, 4:03 PM

It starting seem that I'm destined to fail every time I try to see Nevermore live. The first failure was due to a misinterpretation of the stage schedule at Gigantour, but this time I was where I should have been! Well, apparently their singer, Warrel Dane, either wasn't able to perform, or wasn't even in the place. I couldn't make out what they said over the PA from where we were standing. In either case, I was pissed. They were the band I was looking forward to in this show, and they ditched. Lame.

Evergrey played first, much to our surprise. I would have placed them just before the headliner in that lineup, but I don't plan concerts. They might have been doing a rotating opener thing too, who knows. Since they were the first opener, their set was pretty short. I think they may have only been able to play 6 or 7 songs. They played some older ones, such as Blinded, She Speaks to the Dead, A Touch of Blessing, and maybe another one. They also played a couple songs off their new album, which I have yet to acquire. They sounded good - tight, clean, and in control. The volume on the keyboards was a little high, and it overshadowed the guitars in a lot of the verses, which is a drag. Both of Evergrey's guitarists can really shred, so they should always be front and center in my book. Overall, they were solid, even with the short set. Grade: B+

Nevermore... yah. After a 30-minute stage change, they didn't play. Grade: F-

The next band up was Throwdown. I saw them once before when they opened for Fear Factory, and they were pretty much what I remembered. They have a testosterone-laden vibe that's comparable to Pantera's "Far Beyond Driven" and "Vulgar Display of Power" albums, but they don't have the powerhouse on guitar that was Dimebag Darrel. I can't say that I was overly impressed with these guys, but at the same time, this music would be good to listen to if you were pissed off, or as workout music or something similar. The only member that was really impressive was the drummer. Jon commented that he should find some other bandmates to play with, because he was by far the most talented in the group. I agree. Since they had extra time to play due to Nevermore's absence, they threw in a few cover songs to extend their set a bit. They played "Roots, Bloody Roots" by Sepultura, and they sounded pretty good at it. That's not saying that much though, because it's a damn easy song to play. The other song they played was "A New Level" by Pantera. They played it in tribute to Dimebag, who was murdered on-stage about a year and a half ago. Jon and I both wondered how well they would pull it off. They did fine for the first part, which is just heavy rhythm. They cut the song off and went into one of their songs at the point in the song where the solo is played, which is probably a good thing. We could forsee nothing but a guitar abomination in the future if that guitarist tried to play a Dimebag solo. Overall, they weren't horrible, but not really my style. Grade: B-

In Flames headlined the show, and they were pretty good. I only have three of their albums, and my lack of knowledge about their catalog was really apparent. They played a good number of songs, probably in the 14-18 range, and I only recognized four of five of them. It didn't really matter though. They rocked out, no two ways about it. Their set was energetic, and the crowd matched it. The equalization on the guitars really bothered both Jon and myself, however. Both guitars seemed to be exceptionally mid-heavy, and their leads were almost inaudible during the first half of their set. The sound guys seemed to balance it out a little in the second half, but the treble was still too low. In Flames sports two very talented guitarists, and to barely be able to hear them flexing their muscles is a travesty. Overall, their show was quite good, and it will probably inspire me to go buy a few more of their CDs to fill in the gaps in my collection. Grade: A-

Although In Flames and Evergrey were good, I would still consider this show a disappointment. Nevermore was the band I wanted to see most, and they were AWOL. I was also disappointed with the order in which the bands played. Throwdown should never have a higher billing than Nevermore or Evergrey. I can see Nevermore or Evergrey competing for or rotating through the second and third opener spots, but neither one should be playing first opener. Had they played according to my ideal arrangement, Evergrey could have an extended set, which would have been great. I did have one cool experience though. About half way through the In Flames set, Tom, Henrik, and Jonas from Evergrey came out into the crowd where Jon and I were standing, toward the back. I partook in a little hero worship and shook Tom's hand, and thanked him for a good set. It's pretty insignificant in the whole scheme of things, but it was neat nonetheless. For the record, Tom is not 6'6"-plus like Jon and I had guessed the first time we saw Evergrey, but he is 6'3" or 6'4". I guess the stage adds a few inches.

Edit: I just came across this news post, which states that the reason Warrel Dane couldn't perform was an unspecified illness. I suppose that's more acceptable than just not being there, but it's still frustrating.

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Thursday, August 18 2005, 1:48 AM

It would seem that I've been lax on my site updates again. It's easy for me to tell that I need to update more when my mom tells me that I need to post something.

The past week has actually been somewhat eventful, unlike the weeks before it. Last wednesday the Gigantour came into town, bringing much sweet music our way. Three of my favorite bands were there - Fear Factory, Dream Theater, and Megadeth - plus a few others that I wanted to see. We arrived at the show at about three, and after a short time we found that we had missed Nevermore's set due to a misinterpretation of the scheduling between the two stages. We were rather pissed, but we got over it I guess. Symphony X was pretty sweet, and all of the main stage bands were awesome except Dillinger Escape Plan. I thought they sounded like a steaming pile of dung. Matt says they're a lot better on CD. I hope he's right. They didn't impress me at all live. Fear Factory was sweet, as usual. Dream Theater was awesome as well, but to me their mix was too loud before the amplification, and it was causing their sound to be overdriven a bit. Megadeth was totally on, and Dave Mustaine sounded great. In the previous Megadeth shows I've seen he's always seemed to struggle with some of his more snarly vocals, but this time around he nailed them all. Excellent show all the way around.

My friend Annie got married this weekend as well. Unlike last year, where I lost nearly a dozen close friends to marriage, this wedding season has been rather tame, which is good. It makes me feel old when people my age bow out of the game. Anyways, I'm normally somewhat bummed when I go to weddings, because it seems like I'm always one of the slim minority of single people. Everybody is always so happy at weddings, but it always seems to remind me that I'm single, and have been single for a loooong time. Well, this wedding turned out different! I'm not going to go into detail here, because it involed me dancing, and nobody should ever hear a detailed description of said events. It's just too traumatic. Regardless, I had a *great* time, and who knows, there may be more great times in the future!

I've been on the midnight shift this week, which is never fun. I think the only good thing about this shift is that I don't have to wake up to an alarm clock. Oh well. I volunteered for it to help a buddy in a bind, so I have nobody to blame but myself. I'm dragging ass right now because I went out to the Peanut Barrel with Kate before work and had a few beers. Mental note: Drinking before a night shift is bad. You tend to want to sleep, and that can't really happen at work.

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Monday, April 18 2005, 12:05 AM

Shit, I meant to write up this post like two weeks ago, but Galeon ate it about 2 minutes before I was done writing it up, so I just said "screw it" and went to bed instead of typing it all up again. I guess I forgot to retype it. Well, here it is.

This summer looks as though it will be sweet for concerts. Ozzfest has a lineup that I definitely want to check out. Iron Maiden, Shadows Fall, Mastodon, and Black Label Society will be there, along with a few other bands that I want to see. I've never been to Ozzfest before, so it should be interesting. Dave Mustaine of Megadeth is putting together a similar show this year called "Gigantour", and its lineup excites me even more than the Ozzfest lineup. Dream Theater and Fear Factory will appear with Megadeth, which means 3 of my favorite bands will all be present in one place. It should be quite awesome.

I recently picked up a few albums that are worth mentioning. I grabbed "The Art of Balance" and "Of One Blood" by Shadows Fall. They're both really good, but the production quality on "Of One Blood" is a bit worse than "The Art of Balance." You can tell they hadn't hit it big yet. The good thing is that the songs have been better and better as the band matures. Lots of bands tend to lose their creative spark after a few good albums, but, thankfully, Shadows Fall doesn't seem to have done that. They've done nothing but get better. They give me faith that good metal isn't an art that has been lost upon my generation.

The other two albums I picked up were "Hatebreeder" and "Hatecrew Deathroll" by Children of Bodom. Their vocals still suck pretty bad, but they still seem to mix the albums so they're not as prominent as they could be, which is good. They're both sweet albums musically, with tons of energy and some crazy solos. The latter album is better in my opinion, but the former jams too. COB also is following the pattern of improving with each album released, so I can hope that the best is yet to come.

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Monday, October 11 2004, 2:50 AM

I'm up and I can't friggin sleep, so I guess I'll write this up now. Technically there were three other bands at the show, but Fear Factory and Children of Bodom were the bands we went to see. I went with my metal-concert-buddy Matt, and his friend Anne from LTU.

The first band was pretty bad to be brutally honest. I think they were a local band, because they weren't listed on the bill anywhere. They looked like they were going for some sort of gimmick, because they had three complete drum kits out on the stage, and there were always at least three guys beating on them. A few times, the guitarists and bass player would put down their instruments, and grab some drumsticks and start beating on a floor tom or something... It was really lame. Other than the lame drumming thing, the rest of the music was pretty lame too... totally simplistic riffs, lame vocals, just really not that interesting. I give them credit for getting out there and trying, but that's about it. Grade: D.

The next band that played was called Throwdown. They were all right, much better than the asshats in the first band. They were a hardcore rap-metal band, but weren't really anything special in the grand scheme of things. They got my foot tapping a bit, so I guess they must have been doing something right. Grade: B-

Next up was Children of Bodom. I saw them open for Iced Earth a while back, and I've been hooked ever since. They only played two songs I recognized from the one album I've been able to find, but it was still sweet. They have a lot of energy up on stage, and always look like they're having a great time, which helps keep the crowd into the show. I definitely need to find a way to get more of their CDs... stupid stores not having good music... Anyways, I digress. Their set wasn't nearly as long as I would have liked, but they're an opening band, such is life. Had they been able to play more songs, their set would have easily got an A grade, but since they only got 40 minutes, it gets an A-.

Fear Factory was up next. I've been listening to them for a long time, proabably since I heard Zero Signal on the Mortal Kombat soundtrack. Yes, I own the Mortal Kombat soundtrack. Shut up. I've been a sucker for any decent music with a double-bass drum presence, and Fear Factory gives out huge doses of that. Raymond Herrera is freakin nuts when he's playing. I don't know how his legs move that fast. It's as much of a quandry to me as Jon Schaffer's (Iced Earth) insane triplet riffing. Damn rockstars and their bionic limbs... This was also my first glimpse of the new Fear Factory lineup... You'd never know Christian used to be their bass player. He's picked up the guitar duties without missing a beat. He doesn't have the stage presence Dino had, but the metal was surely flowing freely from his guitar. Due to the dual-headlining nature of the show, they were also forced into a shorter set list, but they made the best of it. They opened up with the first two songs of Archetype, Slave Labor and Cyberwaste. They set up a pattern where they played two of the better songs from each of their albums, which was sweet. If I remember right the set included (in no particular order) Martyr, Big God (raped souls), Demanufacture, Zero Signal, Replica, Shock, Edgecrusher, the before-mentioned Slave Labor and Cyberwaste, and Archetype. Those are pretty much the Fear Factory A-List as far as I'm concerned. The only two songs I would consider "missing" would be Obsolete and H-K. Had the set been longer, perhaps I would have heard them, but alas, that's the nature of the beast. Overall, they rocked. Grade: A.

We left after Fear Factory, mainly due to the fact that none of us except Matt had heard any Lamb of God songs, and he said he wasn't impressed by them. So we took off early, beat the crowds, and got a head start on getting shitcanned back in Anne's room. All in all, a very good night.

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Wednesday, November 26 2003, 1:09 AM

Got a few disjoint musical notes here. Most people won't give two shits about this stuff, but its my site, live with it. First, I went out and bought the single for the new Iced Earth album tonight. It's pretty cool, but nothing extraordinary. I do believe they're holding out the extraordinary stuff for the release of the real album - "The Glorious Burden" - so I'm not all that disappointed. There are four songs on the disc, with two typical Iced Earth metal-fests, and two slower songs, one of which is completely unplugged. I really wouldn't think of IE making an unplugged tune, but this is more of a ballad-y tune, so it's cool. This is the first material I've heard with the new vocalist Tim "Ripper" Owens, formerly of Judas Priest. He's not the same vocalist that Matt Barlow was, but he does add a lot of flavor to the songs. Speaking of Matt, he hasn't completely severed his ties with the band - he sings backing vocals on some of the songs on the single. Even though he's off doing his part for our country, it would be cool for him to get back in the studio with IE and have both vocalists rip on a few tracks.

I also picked up an Iron Maiden disc tonight when I got the IE single. I picked up their official greatest hits disc - "Edward The Great". After seeing them in concert this summer and enjoying it, I figured I should pick up some of their stuff. This seemed like a good place to start. I recognize a bunch of the tunes from the concert this summer. Great stuff. They aren't total metal like I'm used to hearing in bands like Metallica, Anthrax, or Slayer, but it's very easy to see how they paved the way for the next generation of metal bands. I'll be picking up more Maiden albums soon.

I read something today that kinda suprised me, and I was pretty pumped about it. About two years ago, one of my favorite bands at the time, Fear Factory, broke up. I was bummed. Well, I just read that they're back together sans guitarist Dino Cazares. I'm hopeful that it will be cool, but Dino was the princpal songwriter for all of their past stuff, so who knows.

I also read a blurb quoting Dimebag Darrel as saying that Pantera was officially done as a band. I guess it really isn't current news, but I hadn't heard it. For better or for worse, Pantera wrote some pretty sweet songs, and I own all of their albums except the last one, and they're all good. They got a little too "GRRR I'M TOUGHER THAN YOU!" in the last couple discs, but the music was still badass. I gues s Dime and Vinny Paul are going on with another band, so perhaps the sweet musical end of Pantera will live on without the raw testosterone that Phil brought to to the band.

Wow, just read another article about Anthrax... apparently they're going to record an in-studio live album consisting of 12 of their old Belladonna era tunes, and they're letting the fans vote for which tunes to use! That is totally cool, because John Bush is like 6.02e23 times better than Joey Belladonna. Vote here.

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