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This was a show that I had greatly anticipated for a long time. Opeth and Dream Theater are easily two of my favorite bands, so when I saw them both on the same bill many months ago, I was pretty excited. Both bands put on great live shows as well, so I knew I wouldn't be disappointed. I made the trek down to Detroit with my dad, Jessica, and Mike.

The first band to play was 3. I thought that we'd get there with plenty of time to see the opening bands, but we didn't. We only caught the last part of one of their songs. It sounded pretty good though, from the five minutes or so that we heard. They had a two drummer setup going, and they were seriously beating on the skins. I would have liked to see more of their set, but alas, it wasn't meant to be. Grade: N/A

Between the Buried and Me played second. I hadn't really been exposed to them in great depth, and for some reason I had the impression that they were going to be another dripping-with-testosterone type band (like Throwdown or Bury Your Dead), but I was pleasantly surprised that they weren't. They do have the crappy barking vocals that is typical for a hardcore/metalcore band, but their music is way more complex. These guys can flat out play, and they pull a ton of different musical styles into their sound. It makes for a pretty cool experience. They only had a half hour so on stage, and they played all of two distinct songs. They wasted no time with blathering between songs either... they pretty much stopped only to announce the name of the second song and get a drink of water, then started playing again. They definitely merited further attention, which is why I bought three of their CDs yesterday. Grade: A

Opeth is the band that I looked forward to seeing the most out of the four. I've only seen them once before (compared to Jessica's ten[!]), and that was an abbreviated set at last year's Gigantour, where they were only able to play four songs. They ended up getting around an hour on stage this time around, and were able to play six songs - Master's Apprentices, In My Time of Need, Baying of the Hounds, Heir Apparent, Wreath, and The Drapery Falls. They had a pretty good sampling of songs from their newer albums, but none from the older four albums, which kind of disappoints me. "Still Life" and "My Arms, Your Hearse" are my favorite albums of theirs, and with two shows under my belt, I've yet to see them play any songs from those albums live. Oh well... there's always next time! Mikael Akerfeldt does a pretty good job of making the breaks between songs interesting as well. He's always got something funny to say, and it's pretty obvious to me that he genuinely enjoys putting on a show for the crowd. Grade: A

Dream Theater closed out the show in the way that only they can - with authority. This was the fourth time that my dad and I saw Dream Theater together, and they've never once disappointed. I've blathered on and on about how good they are in previous posts about them, so I'll try to save it this time around. This was the first time, however, that I saw them without having heard their most recent release. Their previous release ("Octavarium"), seemed kind of tired to me, and didn't really grab my interest much at all. Because of that, I didn't run out and grab their newest ("Systematic Chaos") when it came out last year. I probably should have grabbed it sooner. They played a few tunes from it, and they were pretty good. They opened the set with an instrumental passage from one of those songs, and I was really digging it. Their set list was expansive, and pretty typical for the shows I've seen. They played a good sampling from their albums, and played most of the first act from "Scenes from a Memory". They didn't play "Home," which kind of pissed me off since it is one of my favorite songs of theirs, but hey, you can't win 'em all.

One neat thing they did for this tour was turning something that is typically incredibly lame into something totally awesome. Jordan Rudess (the keyboardist) played a key-tar. Yep, the dreaded 80's pop instrument. In this case though, it was sweet because it gave him the opportunity to step out from behind is mammoth keyboard rig and get up close and personal with the fans like the other band members get to do. He mostly used it in extended "improvised" musical passages that break out of their normal song structures, and used his mobility to add a more visual flare to the frequent traded/harmonized leads that he does with John Petrucci in so many of their songs. I laughed when I first saw it, but it really did add a pretty cool element to their performance, which was already top notch.

The only downer in the show was that they played one of their new songs (I think - I didn't recognize it) for far too long, and it totally slowed their momentum. It was a slow piece of music, and it seemed to go on FOR EVER. Otherwise, they were phenomenal as always. Grade: A

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

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... :)

2006/09/24 - 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.

Matt: DAMN "The Grand conjuration" kicks fucking ass
Mike: hahah
Mike: yah
Mike: I can play that song too
Matt: first time listening to it
Matt: oh yeaH?
Mike: learned it on the guitar
Mike: most of it
Matt: i can play it on winamp
Matt: owned
Mike: rofl

"The Grand Conjuration" is an Opeth song by the way... My conversion of Matt to the Dark Side is almost complete!

I just realized the other day that I hadn't yet talked about Opeth on my page yet, which is a travesty considering how much I've been listening to them lately. It's quite safe to say that they're my favorite band at the moment. While Opeth and I haven't been seeing (hearing?) each other for very long, our relationship has flourished. Opeth touches me in ways most other bands can only dream about. The thing that makes Opeth so attractive is their diversity and their sheer musical talent for writing punishing riffs. There are few that can compare to these guys in the riff department. They lay them on thick and heavy. Then, on the other side of the coin, when they decide to play with my emotions, they dump the heaviness and raspy snarling vocals and segue into something that's quiet, melodic, and soothing. Consider it the calm before (or after) the storm, if you will. Whatever you choose to call it, I call it phenomenal. I call it superb. I call it splendid. But most of all - I call it METAL. \m/

As is my tendency, I will try to introduce any band that I like to more people so that they may feel the warm glow that I feel when I'm hearing music that I love. With that being said, I've succeeded in scoring my first convert. The other day, partially due to my recommendations, Matt bought some Opeth albums, and so far, he's totally digging them. I also introduced Phil to Opeth, and I can safely say that he digs their quieter melodic side. The loud metal side - not so much. Oh well, it's better than nothing. Two people down, many billions to go. I'd better keep moving.

In a related story... When I was introducing Phil to the sheer musical might of Opeth at work one evening, we got on a side conversation about how American metal decayed into an androgenous pile of dung at the end of the 80's, with only a few of the pure and talented metal bands surviving to see the end of that dark and dismaying time. Our discussion covered various traits that made a band truly 'metal', and why the pretty boys of the glam era had absolutely no chance of playing anything worthwhile. Invariably, had little of the thing that gives metal its potency - angst. Shiny happy people don't play metal, period. Glam rock (or as my good friend Jon would call it, "cock rock"), sure. Metal? No way. This discussion led to modern metal, and how Scandinavia is the only place left where playing in a death metal band will still land you a plethora of female-types. Well, less than 24 hours later, I checked up on the latest Strong Bad Emails, which is my semi-monthly habit, and saw a gem of an email. It's entitled "Death Metal", and it covered our discussion almost to a "T", only in a totally humorous way. I highly recommend checking it out. Phil actually told the same story here, but I wanted to tell it as well. I do what I want!

I dediced to go ahead and include the RSS thinger I discussed in my last post. I've set it up to reload the del.icio.us RSS feed once an hour, which should be plenty often. I've mainly been tagging things that I find interesting on my daily RSS feed journey, but there are also things in there that I think everyone shoud read. Chances are decent that if I feel strongly enough about it, I'll just create a normal post as well. The new page is listed in the menu bar as Additional Reading.

In other news, I bought the new Lacuna Coil and Queensryche albums yesterday, along with the Opeth album "Deliverance." I'm really digging the Lacuna Coil album ("Karmacode"). They still have the big, encompassing sound, but they've taken things a bit more up-tempo as well. They did a cover of "Enjoy The Silence" by Depeche Mode, and it's very cool. I always loved the original's simple yet haunting melody, and LC did a good job of leaving that undisturbed while layering distorted guitars and a huge bottom end behind it. I haven't had a chance to put the new Queensryche album ("Operation: Mindcrime II") through it's paces yet, but I'll get there. I've been too busy obsessing over Karmacode and Deliverance.

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