Worst live sound/gig you have ever experienced?

ratsapprentice

ratsapprentice

God can gtfo
Aug 15, 2009
3,011
1
38
London
Ok, so I just got back from seeing Mayhem and Anaal Nathrakh at the 02 Academy Islington.
Well, I say I saw Anaal Nathrakh, they couldn't make it because of the snow.
Neither could the first support band, completely understandable, our country can't deal with any amount of snow at such short notice.
However after waiting until sometime after 9 o clock (I arrived at 5:30ish)
the band finally came on, and holy-fucking-snare batman!
Seriously, all could hear through the first two songs was snare and bass like you wouldn't believe. Thankfully after that the snare was reigned in a bit, unfortunately the bass was not.
The rest of the set was basically just 80hz, the guitars were sooooo fucking low in the mix. I don't think I can put into words how little of the guitars I could hear, FUCKING NOTHING!!!

I am dissapoint :mad:
 
The worst I heard was at a club venue in a small town in northern oklahoma. I won't name names, but there was a tree out front. We go up there and I have my wireless setup. So around the third song, I decide it was a good idea to run around the club during a solo, to check out our sound. ALL OVERHEADS, no kick, just snare and OH's. I was pissed, but thank the stars, somebody kicked the sound guy and the subs magically popped on. Of course we fucked their monitors up though. some guys just don't know how to do it.
 
Machine Head somwhen 2008 I think....to loud, you couldn't hear a single fucking thing. but the venue has a shitty sound in general.
Also: Motörhead 200...errrmm...4 -> too loud AND treble knob of the endmix cranked at 11. felt like my ears were bleeding. was at a festival.
Best sound ever was at Dream Theater 2006 or 7. awesomesauce. the venue had the best sound I ever heard around here in austria.

worst gig:
Disturbed. Only Donegan seemed to enjoy the show, everyone else seemed to be annoyed as fuck about having to play that night.
will never go to see them again live after that experience
 
The sound engineer of Station 4 here at St Paul mixes so that only thing you hear is the kick and vocals.

brianhood said:
i've played a couple shows where we couldn't finish out set because the sound system just blew up.
Click to expand...

I once mixed a gig in a super small boat where during the opening bands sound check the right side of the PA went mute. Then during our set we set up an extra d&b max monitor to the right side pointing at the audience. During our set, the left side of the PA also went mute. If we didn't had set up the monitor, we wouldn't have had any sound in the audience. And I literally mean that the space was small. You could easily touch the ceiling:

majorlabel_waiski.jpg
 
Went to a gig with a bunch of metalcore and thrash metal bands back in May.
One band had the guitarists playing Marshall AVT100 amps and another one had the rhythm guitarist/vocalist with the mids scooped to buggery like what you'd hear on Master of Puppets or something. I could hear the lead guitarist though.

Have to say Periphery didn't exactly sound amazing when I saw them. Whenever they were playing rhythm guitar, it was just muddy sounding.
Maylene and the Sons of Disaster came on next and their sound totally blew Periphery's away.
 
Suicidal Tendencies played at my venue, their foh guy was awful... it sounded better on stage than it did in the crowd. I have heard lots of awful mixes, that's just the most recent one that comes to mind.

Sevendust was pretty bad too when I saw them because it was so goddamn loud there was no clarity at all
 
Was a band called Lockdown in Amsterdam, god damnit. Their sound consisted of boss metal zones into Marshall jcm900s. Problem was, their metal zones had all the mids scooped out and the bass and treble were cranked. It was also way way too loud. I just walked out after the first song, their stuff wasn't worth permanent hearing damage.
 
Mago said:
Best sound ever was at Dream Theater 2006 or 7. awesomesauce. the venue had the best sound I ever heard around here in austria.
Click to expand...

Same here, best sounding gigs I've been too were DT in 2005 (Octavarium world tour) and 2007 (Chaos in Motion World Tour), oh and Carcass in Caracas (lol) had an excellent sound.

about the worst, I've been to millions of local gigs in Venezuela including with my own bands, I couldn't even decide which one was the worst
 
^Lucky buggers.
Only time I've seen Dream Theater (Chaos in Motion Tour) was in a crappy sounding venue. They sounded alright considering the venue, but I have no doubt they would sounded much nicer in a much more acoustically friendly environment.
 
Soundmen that hide behind a wall of kick and bass annoy me so much.
Also soundmen that only turn up one guitar in a two guitar band.
Also soundmen who think cranking the absolute shit out of the subs, to the point that they're drowning out the mids and treble, is appropriate for a metal gig. It's not.

And what fucks me off most? Is that these cunts are getting paid good money for doing an awful job, when I could do an infinitely better job.

I want a sign to hold up at gigs that says "Kick and bass are not lead instruments!"
 
Trevoire520 said:
Soundmen that hide behind a wall of kick and bass annoy me so much.
Also soundmen that only turn up one guitar in a two guitar band.
Also soundmen who think cranking the absolute shit out of the subs, to the point that they're drowning out the mids and treble, is appropriate for a metal gig. It's not.

And what fucks me off most? Is that these cunts are getting paid good money for doing an awful job, when I could do an infinitely better job.

I want a sign to hold up at gigs that says "Kick and bass are not lead instruments!"
Click to expand...

That's what i was thinking throughout the gig.
It's these sound guys that don't understand that 99% of the actual musical worth of metal is held in the GUITARS.
I couldn't give a shit if i can't feel the kicks, if i cant hear what MUSIC is being played. it's not fucking dubstep.
 
Nevermore in the Markthalle, Hamburg in 2003. I was there for Arch Enemy who cancelled due to illness of complete band (some infection on their tourbus).

No replacement for AE, so we had to wait for 1,5 hours until Nevermore started to play, while shitty electro/techno music played through the PA.
Then Nevermore finally came out and proceeded to bawl out a huge pile of mud with vocals on top. Leads came through somewhat ok, but only because Jeff was the only guitar player at the time.

I remember they brought out Steve Smyth at the end and covered a Testament song, and to this day I do not know what song they actually played. Because he added even more mud to the mudfest.

After that experience it took me more than 2 years to even check out a Nevermore album and realizing that they are, indeed, an awesome band.
And later live experiences showed that they also are an awesome live band. That is, unless the sound is the most shitty mudfest you've ever heard. Fuck the mud.
 
soundwise almost EVERYTHING at this year's brutal assault

necrophagist: instrument levels and tone where constantly changing litterally all the time, on some spots the toms were turned up insanely loud, very bassy with lots of sustain, cool toms yeah
bass was too loud most of the time, but for the last few songs i think they either turned it down very much or muted it completely
ensiferum: everything ridiculously undergained, sounded totally silly
fear factory: just pure bass the first few songs, surprisingly the sound became really great later on
cannibal corpse: loud kick + you could really hear how untight it was
gorgoroth: distorted kick, fuck yes

devin townsend was godlike though

performance wise: mayhem
saw them in austria in 2008, they were the headliner of the festival, the band before had finished their set, lots of people standing there, waiting for mayhem
soundcheck, hellhammer checks every fucking little tom of his retardedly big kit, soundcheck takes ages
then, finally, the other mayhem dudes appear on stage, without corpsepaint or anything, totally unmotivated,
hellhammer plays
hat--x---x---x---x---x---
sn-------x-------x-------
kick-x-------x--------x--- ...
on his retardedly big kit
the singer, he was the only one of the whole band who at least moved around a little bit, isn't really screaming or shouting or something, he does some sort of strange high squealing noise all the time, maybe i was just hearing feedback i dunno,
also, the guy does ridiculously evil poses all the time, occasionally, he tires forming a swastika with his hands somehow, (i can't really put it into words how he did it, but it was totally obvious)
the whole show was full of nazi allusions, which is something that austrian and german audience generally doesn't want to see at all
i was amazed, literally i couldn't believe my eyes and ears
at the end of the show, only a handful of people were left before the stage
incredible

when i saw them in czech republic a few weeks later they hat corpsepaint & all the fancy stuff, and put on a quite solid show surprisingly
 
I mentioned it in the thread that James made about the new Lazarus AD tune, but I'll post it again here simply because the time I saw Lazarus AD opening fro Unearth, and Testament was one of the worst sounding gigs I've ever been too. Oddly enough Lazarus as the opening act had very respectable sound live, the volume was perfect for the venue (the Webster Theater in Hartford, CT), but as soon as Unearth hit the stage, the sound man cranked the board and the place just became a muddy and yet piercing mess and it only got worse when headliners Testament hit the stage. The volume had a real negative effect on the acoustics of that room and it became almost unlistenable - I stayed, but I really thought about leaving 10 minutes into Testament's set.

Just a note about the best sounding show I've ever been too - it's a tie between Dream Theater back in 2003 at the Oakdale in Wallingford, CT (one of the best sounding venues I've been to, every show I've seen there has had phenomenal sound), and Rush at the Mohegan Sun on the "Snakes & Arrows" tour (while I liked their latest tour at the same venue better as a show, the S&A tour had better sound).
 
There are literally hundreds of shows that I've come home and felt so annoyed that I'd went.
Sonically.. a lot of grindbands that pass through Glasgow sound like shit.
I just don't get how people want it that loud in such small venues - and then complain that they can't hear things like bass through the PA.
 
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