Thoughts on the music

I thoroughly enjoyed Friday night's show.

Shatter Messiah: I wish they could have lowered the volume of Shatter Messiah's set so you could truly enjoy it. Way too distorted.

Suspyre: What happened with Suspyre's keyboards? I really got into their Sylvery Image tunes that I was familiar with. Newer stuff wasn't as catchy to me.

Benedictum: They blew me away. I wish I had listened to their CD more than 4 times prior to the show. Veronica sounded outstanding.

Solitude: Their set was great except for the massive guitar sound problems for the first half of the show. What is up with them only playing 8 songs?

Lethal: I really enjoyed Lethal's show. I practically wore out my "Programmed" CD through the late 90's due to the fact that grundge killed our metal during that time period.

I was amazed at Tom Mallicoat's ability to hit every one of his riddiculously high notes. Unfortunately, his constant ramblings about absolutely nothing really turned me off. It appeared that his band was a bit tired of it as well.

Once again... why did they only played about 8 or 9 songs?... and one of them, "Another Day", should never have been played live. Chicago Powerfest is no place to be playing sappy ballads. They should have slammed their way through their entire "Your Favorite God" EP back to back without any breaks or nonsensical ramblings. (Nevermore did that during their Dreaming Neon Black tour) I am happy they did play Hard to Breathe.

I am not sure why the co-headliners sets were so short this year. Anyone else wondering about it? Nocturnal Rites and Tad Morose played 15 or more songs in past years. I was driving home at 12:30 on Friday... and that was after browsing through Lance's CDs after the show for at least 20 minutes. How many songs or approx. how long did Athiest play on Saturday night?

I was amazed at how smoothly Friday night went. I don't think we ever waited more than 30 minutes between sets. Great job guys!
 
I am not sure why the co-headliners sets were so short this year. Anyone else wondering about it? Nocturnal Rites and Tad Morose played 15 or more songs in past years. I was driving home at 12:30 on Friday... and that was after browsing through Lance's CDs after the show for at least 20 minutes. How many songs or approx. how long did Athiest play on Saturday night?

Atheist played roughly 60 minutes....basically, with all these bands just
getting back together, they didn't have more than a hours worth of material
ready to play.
 
Normando.....I totally agree. I said it to Jason the second we got in the car to go home....the in between set times was really fast. It was nice not having to wait 30 to 40 minutes between bands. That drives me nuts.
 
I think the longest wait was on Saturday between Saturnus and Martyr and Atheist... But understandable, since they had to change a lot of the on-stage equipment. But even then, it definitely wasn't a long wait at all. Everything went smooth!
 
Thanks for the nice comments everyone. As for us destroying ourselves with the heavier chunkier new songs we play now....ultimately we can't please everyone. We have people who love the new stuff and disliked the old "Silent Tomorrow" stuff, and vice versa. We enjoy playing new songs like "Rain" and "Drown the inland mere" alot, and it's what makes us happy. I think there's a better mix of songs now in our set because of it. Some people would prefer we were all chunky, faster, heavier, etc...and some would prefer we still played all slower, doom & gloom, etherial stuff. I never want to be completely one way or the other, because that bores the fuck out of me. Having stuff like "Rain" as well as "Silent Tomorrow" in our set keeps it fun and interesting for us. And that's what matters because if we're not enjoying this, then why bother? I appreciate that people at least watched us and gave us a chance, though.