Tuesday, September 26 2006, 2:58 AM

It was a dark and stormy night.... Er, wait. It was a cold and stormy night.... Nah, that's not right either. It was a cold and windy night... Now we're cookin. It was certainly cold and windy, but I didn't care much since four of my favorite bands were going to share the same stage. I went with a few guys from work, Gene and Nick, and their buddy Aaron. We all made the pilgrimage to Pine Knob, one of my favorite spots to check out a show.

The four lesser-known bands that opened the show were all decent-to-good, the best being Overkill. They've been around for a long time from what I gather, and easily had the largest following of the opening four. They brought an old-school metal sound into the mix, with a lot of New York attitude. A huge sod fight also broke out on the lawn during their set. I can't remember if it was as spectacular as the one that took place during the Jerry Cantrell/Metallica show I saw at the Knob in '98, but it was a sight nonetheless. It also got old pretty quickly, but the teenager types thought it was a riot to pelt the people further down the hill with tufts of sod. I didn't think it was all that fun, but I remembering having a lot better time back in the day when I was the one throwing the grass. I guess grass-throwing loses its appeal with age.

Arch Enemy was the first of the larger bands to play. With eight bands playing, even the bigger bands had pretty abbreviated sets. AE probably played a good 45 minutes I would imagine. They played a good mix of songs, and the crowd was enjoying it, mostly because of Angela Gossow, their singer. Yep, she's hot. And her vocals would scare small children. Both are good qualities for a woman fronting a metal band. Given that they could only play for 45 minutes, they made the best of it. Definitely a good showing. Grade: A

Opeth was up next. They were the band I wanted to see most, by far. I had seen the other three big bands there at least once, but I hadn't seen Opeth yet. They made the most of their 45 minutes as well... by playing four songs. Opeth songs tend to be quite long, to say the least. They opened up with "Ghost of Perdition," followed by "Windowpane," "The Leper Affinity," and "Deliverance." It was a pretty good mix considering the curcumstances, but I really wish they had another fifteen minutes so they could have fit another song in there. Hearing something like "Blackwater Park" or "Serenity Painted Death" probably would have forced an accident in my pants. I was cracking up a decent amount during their set though. There were quite a few people there that knew Opeth and their style, but there were also a bunch that didn't. They were easily identified by the "WTF?" looks on their face whenever Opeth would drop into a clean section of a song, or pretty much through all of "Windowpane." These sections don't exactly fit in a stereotypical metal show. I don't care though - Opeth rules. The only bad thing about their set is that one of the guitars was barely audible, which made the songs sound pretty funny in places. Grade: A-

Lamb of God occupied the next-to-last slot, and because of it, they had a longer set, probably on the order of an hour and a half. They're a force to be reckoned with nowadays, and it was evident as soon as they came out. They showed up Slayer when I saw them together a few months back, and they were aiming to claim this show as their own as well. They easily had the tightest and most well-mixed sound of all the bands that played, and they weren't taking prisoners either. They played quite a few older songs, including my personal Lamb of God favorite, "Vigil." They also played a good three or four songs off the new album "Sacrament." They were on throughout their whole set, and the crowd was loving it. They definitely achieved their goals and stole the show. Grade: A

Gigantour is Dave Mustaine's baby, so it's natural that Megadeth headlined the show. This was my fifth time seeing Megadeth, but sadly, it was probably the worst show I saw them put on. I'm not sure why, but Dave Mustaine just wasn't on. He seemed visibly agitated for the first couple songs, walking off to the sides of the stage to talk to stage hands between songs and during long instrumental breaks. It may have been due to time restrictions, because he made a point of announcing that they had to rush through their set due to the hard kurfew present at Pine Knob. In any case, he just wasn't on his game. His vocals were pretty weak through most of the songs. He sings with a few distinct styles, and it didn't seem like he was hitting any of them. The mix was also really bad. The vocals and drums were noticiably quiet, while the guitars were way too loud. I like loud guitars as much as the next guy, but they shouldn't drown out the rest of the band. The set list was pretty strong, and they played a new song off the album they're releasing next year. It sounded pretty good. Not "Rust In Peace"-era Megadeth good, but good nonetheless. Grade: B

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Wednesday, July 26 2006, 8:03 PM

Another string of sweet concerts just came down the concert news wire, and all in a ten day span. It would seem that my hearing is going to take a beating... :)

2006/09/15 - Mastodon at The Majestic Theater, Detroit, MI

2006/09/19 - Clutch at The Temple Club, Lansing, MI

2006/09/24 - Gigantour 2 at Pine Knob (a.k.a. DTE Energy Ampitheater), Clarkston, MI

I just saw Mastodon a few weeks ago, but they were in an opening slot and didn't get to play that much. They're headlining this tour, and should have ample room to play a ton of their songs, which will make for a sweet show. It's totally neat that Clutch is playing right here in town, so I won't have to go very far to see this one. The Temple Club isn't that big, so tickets may be hard to come by. This year's Gigantour has another round of sweet bands, including Megadeth, Opeth, Arch Enemy, and Lamb of God. Those four bands are probably enough to force an accident in my pants, but the idea of Gigantour is to have nothing but technically excellent bands who know how to rock, so I'm sure I'll find more bands to enjoy as well.

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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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