Alright for a scattered senario unedited. They played all the songs as mentioned above, as well as the new track. Sounded very cool, they keyboardist wasnt the same dood. Gene is still fillin in for Martin yes and did a terrific job, alot of free styling going on though. That man is a machine. All That Remains was by far the best band on that entire bill thats kinda gay they played at 11am to start off the fest.
All That Remains bassist quit to join CKY one day before the tour fucking them out of a bass player, everyone was upset about that in the band, and talked shit, all I can say is whoever that was is missing out on a whole lot, with that great band. So Ken Susi from Unearth learned their material in one day to play bass for them on this tour. Metal Blade label execs were there hanging out, got to talk alot with them a bit throughout the show. My buddy Kevin Talley from Dying Fetus/Misery Index/ now in Chimera, was in good spirits with his position and played very well.
Lamb of God looked huger than Pantera. 9 cabinets on each side stacked high on each side (like the As I Lay Dying Stage setup, 8 full 8x10 bass cabs on each side. Used 2 backdrop banners, the album cover one for entire set, for the encore they dropped one of the banners and it turned into their pentagram flag usa banner. They sounded huge, and played very tightly and had major crowd response. Most of the hardcore kids left towards the end of the night which was like 10% of the people there but the rest were there to see Lamb of God. They made fun of everyone who wore a white belt to the show, which was funny cause alot of those kinda kids stayed for them. DevilDriver had a huge circle pit as well. Good sound all around. Throwdown had alot of crowd participation with their lyrics, each band had a huge as fuck iron maiden sized banner, I guess thats mandatory these days. It was 113 all day, I got sun burnt a lil bit, cooled down a lil towards the night. Not everyone was into Strapping Young Lad, guys they were too weird for most, or Gwar. But Gwar sure did make a mess, squirting everyone as usual. I dont know how they did it in those costumes.
Every Time I dIE had a bit of a whiny voice, but I liked their set regardless, I can see a bit of originality, same with Norma Jean but was very hard to follow, very off timish similar to A Life Once Lost which did pretty powerful. Unearth did a very powerful set, I got into them right away, very melodic, hard ass riffs, they are a very tight band. Glad to see everyone at this show, seems Metal has come back to a sense, or its just Arizona finally getting their asses together for some good music instead of staying home. Although I heard that the presales for this show was the weakest out of the whole tour, so imagine the show we saw yesterday, plus a lil more or double that in other cities.. Cant wait till Ozzfest!
