Last night, I went to my first arena show since Metallica's horrible Black Album tour performance in 1991 or 1992 in Madison, Wisconsin. Disturbed's last three albums have ranked very highly for me in their release years, and I thought it was about time I saw them live. I was also curious about revisiting the arena concert experience, as I have many fond memories of shows from when I was a teenager and college student.
This silly tour package (ROCKSTAR ENERGY DRINK UPROAR FEST, FUCK YEAH, MOTHERFUCKER!!!!) started at something like 3:15 yesterday with an outdoor stage. I actually would not have minded seeing Hail the Villain, but, I mean, come on. I actually have a job and stuff. Also, there is no way I would want to sit through 8 hours of these bands.
So I arrived in the evening and looked at the merch. I decided I could stand the ridicule of my many tr00 metal brethren and asked for the coolest Disturbed shirt in XL. Sold out. Went to the other merch stand across the venue. Also sold out. I envisioned a ranting post about how bands always seem to run out of merch (especially since I was asking for an XL, and most of their teenybopper audience wears a M at best), but I came to and realized that Madison was the last stop on this tour. Fine. So I won't rant, but I am still curious - For those in the know, how is merch handled on tours? It really does seem like bands run out of shirts at every show I am at. Do they not have enough space on tour to carry more than one show's worth of merch, so they have shirts shipped to each venue? Do they intentionally underbuy to ensure they never have excess inventory? I would think you could sell excess shirts on-line, but I don't know.
To my great joy, I set foot in the arena just in time to catch all of Stone Sour's set. (I actually would not have minded seeing Halestorm. I do not like their music much, but they are not overly annoying and the chick singer is cute.) Stone Sour was a real chore. Incredibly bland, yet extremely annoying. Sorry, fucking extremely fucking annoying fucking motherfuckers in the fucking fuck fuck audience! Fuck! I have nothing against swearing as anyone (friends, slow drivers, my kids' teachers) will tell you, but this vocalist was comical in his profanity. Beavis and Butthead (take your pick) is all growns up and bald. And, of course, I hated the music as well.
I had plenty of time to survey the crowd during this time, and I was shocked that I was not the oldest dude in attendance. Of course, most of the older guys were there chaperoning their apparently-10-year-old sons, but I did see several of the same type of crusty old rockers who scared me at Ratt and Motley Crue shows back in the day. I guess once the county fair concert circuit is finished for the summer, these guys need somewhere loud to leer, smoke outside in the cold, and get shitfaced.
I was also pleased to see that I had my pick of seats in the venue. All the cool kids were on the floor smoking weed (crowd anonymity is a crazy thing - I would never have had the balls to do that), so I parked my fat, old ass down in a seat with a nice view of the stage. I do not miss the days of repeatedly redialing the Dayton's Department Store ticket line until I finally got through and held my breath while the bored ticket agent went through my seating options for Dio or Judas Priest (Turbo tour, bitches!).
Avenged Sevenfold (or as the cool kidz like me say, A7X) was up next. I have tried a few of their discs and have not been able to get into them. That said, they put on a decent live performance. Somewhat energetic, not overly annoying for the most part, the guitarists can actually play a lead or two, and the stage set up was fun in a Spooky Haunted House I Used To Go To As A Teenager sort of way. LOTS of fire. Sitting in the back of the arena and still feeling the warmth from the blasts of pyro brought back many fond memories. No lasers though. I miss lasers. Must not be cool anymore. I would not say I got into their performance, as I need to like the tunes to do that (except for very rare exceptions like Freak Kitchen), but I was not overly bored and I thought they put in a good effort.
It was interesting to see the A7X stage set tear down in prep for Disturbed. Set design is an art, man. Seeing how quickly the crew broke the set up into modules and wheeled it away was quite impressive. No Spinal Tap here.
Finally, Disturbed began their show. I was initially disappointed in their sparse stage setup, as the show seemed to consist solely of a series of video screens that spanned the entire back of the stage. The lame Draiman At The Asylum Scooby Doo Vignette that started the show did not help matters. I quickly came around though, as many of the different song-specific video montages were pretty cool. And, of course, they also had Fire, Fire, Fire! I cannot say the same for the band themselves though. Draiman sounded pretty good overall, and his banter was mercifully somewhat limited and not moronic. His movement and energy on stage, however, was not exactly inspiring. Ambling from one side of the stage to the other and pausing for a moment does not exactly make one want to jump da fuck up. The other dudes were a little better, but not to a significant degree.
Having only one guitarist always makes a live performance suffer, IMO, but my bigger issue by far was the sound. The rhythm section completely drowned out the guitar. The whole place reverberated with the drums and bass to the point of severe distortion, and I could barely discern a riff. Now, I know most of you will retort that Disturbed has no riffs to begin with, so you do not understand the problem. I would never describe Disturbed as rifftastic myself, but they do have a guitarist and he does play stuff on their albums. Unfortunately (yes, snobs, unfortunately) there was little evidence of that live.
My final bitch is the set list. I had looked it up prior to the show (listed below, but I am not sure if they even played all of these songs in Madison), but I never did the math. Disturbed, the headlining band, played for almost one hour. Fucking lame. In addition, the set list was rather lacking for my tastes. I do not care for their pre-Ten Thousand Fists material, but it is clear that their acne-ridden, mumbling fanbase does. The (two, I think!) songs from Indestructible came across the best for me, though it was also quite cool in a The Power and Glory of Metal sort of way to see all the fists raised during the Ten Thousand Fists title track. Yes, I am a cheesy old metalhead.
So until that Ratt/Coroner/Thought Industry/Mordred/Theory in Practice arena tour comes to fruition, I think I will be sticking to club shows. I will miss the pyro a little though.
Disturbed Set List (taken from a previous show): Remnants, Asylum, Another Way to Die, Liberate, Prayer, Serpentine, Stricken, Inside the Fire, Land of Confusion, Indestructible, Stupify, Down With The Sickness, Ten Thousand Fists
This silly tour package (ROCKSTAR ENERGY DRINK UPROAR FEST, FUCK YEAH, MOTHERFUCKER!!!!) started at something like 3:15 yesterday with an outdoor stage. I actually would not have minded seeing Hail the Villain, but, I mean, come on. I actually have a job and stuff. Also, there is no way I would want to sit through 8 hours of these bands.
So I arrived in the evening and looked at the merch. I decided I could stand the ridicule of my many tr00 metal brethren and asked for the coolest Disturbed shirt in XL. Sold out. Went to the other merch stand across the venue. Also sold out. I envisioned a ranting post about how bands always seem to run out of merch (especially since I was asking for an XL, and most of their teenybopper audience wears a M at best), but I came to and realized that Madison was the last stop on this tour. Fine. So I won't rant, but I am still curious - For those in the know, how is merch handled on tours? It really does seem like bands run out of shirts at every show I am at. Do they not have enough space on tour to carry more than one show's worth of merch, so they have shirts shipped to each venue? Do they intentionally underbuy to ensure they never have excess inventory? I would think you could sell excess shirts on-line, but I don't know.
To my great joy, I set foot in the arena just in time to catch all of Stone Sour's set. (I actually would not have minded seeing Halestorm. I do not like their music much, but they are not overly annoying and the chick singer is cute.) Stone Sour was a real chore. Incredibly bland, yet extremely annoying. Sorry, fucking extremely fucking annoying fucking motherfuckers in the fucking fuck fuck audience! Fuck! I have nothing against swearing as anyone (friends, slow drivers, my kids' teachers) will tell you, but this vocalist was comical in his profanity. Beavis and Butthead (take your pick) is all growns up and bald. And, of course, I hated the music as well.
I had plenty of time to survey the crowd during this time, and I was shocked that I was not the oldest dude in attendance. Of course, most of the older guys were there chaperoning their apparently-10-year-old sons, but I did see several of the same type of crusty old rockers who scared me at Ratt and Motley Crue shows back in the day. I guess once the county fair concert circuit is finished for the summer, these guys need somewhere loud to leer, smoke outside in the cold, and get shitfaced.
I was also pleased to see that I had my pick of seats in the venue. All the cool kids were on the floor smoking weed (crowd anonymity is a crazy thing - I would never have had the balls to do that), so I parked my fat, old ass down in a seat with a nice view of the stage. I do not miss the days of repeatedly redialing the Dayton's Department Store ticket line until I finally got through and held my breath while the bored ticket agent went through my seating options for Dio or Judas Priest (Turbo tour, bitches!).
Avenged Sevenfold (or as the cool kidz like me say, A7X) was up next. I have tried a few of their discs and have not been able to get into them. That said, they put on a decent live performance. Somewhat energetic, not overly annoying for the most part, the guitarists can actually play a lead or two, and the stage set up was fun in a Spooky Haunted House I Used To Go To As A Teenager sort of way. LOTS of fire. Sitting in the back of the arena and still feeling the warmth from the blasts of pyro brought back many fond memories. No lasers though. I miss lasers. Must not be cool anymore. I would not say I got into their performance, as I need to like the tunes to do that (except for very rare exceptions like Freak Kitchen), but I was not overly bored and I thought they put in a good effort.
It was interesting to see the A7X stage set tear down in prep for Disturbed. Set design is an art, man. Seeing how quickly the crew broke the set up into modules and wheeled it away was quite impressive. No Spinal Tap here.
Finally, Disturbed began their show. I was initially disappointed in their sparse stage setup, as the show seemed to consist solely of a series of video screens that spanned the entire back of the stage. The lame Draiman At The Asylum Scooby Doo Vignette that started the show did not help matters. I quickly came around though, as many of the different song-specific video montages were pretty cool. And, of course, they also had Fire, Fire, Fire! I cannot say the same for the band themselves though. Draiman sounded pretty good overall, and his banter was mercifully somewhat limited and not moronic. His movement and energy on stage, however, was not exactly inspiring. Ambling from one side of the stage to the other and pausing for a moment does not exactly make one want to jump da fuck up. The other dudes were a little better, but not to a significant degree.
Having only one guitarist always makes a live performance suffer, IMO, but my bigger issue by far was the sound. The rhythm section completely drowned out the guitar. The whole place reverberated with the drums and bass to the point of severe distortion, and I could barely discern a riff. Now, I know most of you will retort that Disturbed has no riffs to begin with, so you do not understand the problem. I would never describe Disturbed as rifftastic myself, but they do have a guitarist and he does play stuff on their albums. Unfortunately (yes, snobs, unfortunately) there was little evidence of that live.
My final bitch is the set list. I had looked it up prior to the show (listed below, but I am not sure if they even played all of these songs in Madison), but I never did the math. Disturbed, the headlining band, played for almost one hour. Fucking lame. In addition, the set list was rather lacking for my tastes. I do not care for their pre-Ten Thousand Fists material, but it is clear that their acne-ridden, mumbling fanbase does. The (two, I think!) songs from Indestructible came across the best for me, though it was also quite cool in a The Power and Glory of Metal sort of way to see all the fists raised during the Ten Thousand Fists title track. Yes, I am a cheesy old metalhead.
So until that Ratt/Coroner/Thought Industry/Mordred/Theory in Practice arena tour comes to fruition, I think I will be sticking to club shows. I will miss the pyro a little though.
Disturbed Set List (taken from a previous show): Remnants, Asylum, Another Way to Die, Liberate, Prayer, Serpentine, Stricken, Inside the Fire, Land of Confusion, Indestructible, Stupify, Down With The Sickness, Ten Thousand Fists
