What a fest! So many bands, and my first open air experience! 3 stages, parallel gigs. Couldn’t manage to catch all of the bands that played (who can possibly go to a gig at 11am? :/ ), of them Trivium, Wolfmother and Mastodon were a sore miss. Of the rest, there were plenty of highs, and some lows.
Highlights:
Friday, May 16
Killswitch Engage - 'Holy Diver' (the start of familiarity :P) Overall awesome.
Black Label Society - ‘Stillborn'! So missed Ozzy for this one! Their entire gig was brilliance!
Lacuna Coil - My first Gothic Metal band live!! Goth after so long! Oh the joys I can’t put in words! Scabbia and her voice! I miss Vibeke Stene! Would still love to see Tristania live someday
Seether - ‘Broken' (meh very broken indeed. They had a very eager crowd, but the gig felt flat and sad)
Down - That insane bass setup. Could feel every nerve thumping. Best sight to see a mom and daughter (looked 21-ish) attending together, with the girl head banging all over the place with mommy looking on in joy :) Brilliant energy to the gig, out and out hit. ‘Stone the Crow’, thank you, kindly! I truly never died before ;)
Staind - entirely awesome! Played plenty of heavy numbers. Highpoint: Aaron Lewis (to the crowd): “To all the men in the field here, I want to say, your mothers have miserably failed. You think you can grope the crowd surfing girls any which way you like, I don’t see girls grabbing your penises. So stop it already!"
Guns N’ Roses - 'Welcome to the Jungle', 'November Rain', ‘Chinese Democracy’, 'Sweet Child', 'Paradise City'. Axl Rose and his energy! Slash was missed but not so much, they managed to be brilliant even without him. A full 2 set gig! Brilliant end to day one with Paradise City! Post shower cold, and numb limbs, all calmed with the closing number :)
Saturday, May 17
Theory of a Deadman - 'Bitch Came Back' and 'Bad Girlfriend' were most loved by the crowd, haha. The former made it to our car playlist for the next few days. :P Connolly was good!
Exodus - ‘WAAAAR! WARRR! WARRRRR! WAR is my Shepherrrrrrd!!!!!'
Chevelle - Very enthralled. Had run out of seats close to the stage at the stadium by this point, so were standing on them stairs the whole while. Start to end hooked. ‘The Red’, of course, was the highpoint.
Slayer - :D To see Tom Araya Live! Almost posted another ‘Life Event’ on FB :P Felt like I was inside one of the many documentaries and gig tapes of theirs I’ve seen. A part of history! ‘God Hates Us All’ and ‘Angel of Death’ highpoint. Wish they’d play ‘Bloodline’ in some gig already! :(
Avenged Sevenfold - My second gig of A7X! Started a full 20 mins late, to pyro and fireworks! Just as brilliant as the last gig, but unlike the 'Hail to the King’ tour, they played quite a few old numbers. ‘Almost Easy’ my highpoint! The first single of theirs I’d picked from the ‘Transformers 2’ album! :P Brilliant energy, neck split at the end of it with all the head banging. Totally worth it! :)
Sunday, May 18
Sore from the previous 2 days, couldn’t wake up in time for Trivium at 1pm! :/ How much I’d spammed my gig-mates with Trivium’s ‘In Waves’ single through the days leading up :( Missed quite a few good ones there. Adelitas Way, Wolfmother, .. barely made it to Mastodon, to the end of it. So the day technically started with Gojira. Turns out we missed ‘Of Mice and Men’ in the process, was on in parallel at the other stage, and from what I heard later, was a great gig.
Gojira - Heavy! Loud! Must listen to them more often. ‘L’Enfant Sauvage’ gave me goosebumps! Loved ‘em!
Alter Bridge - Umm, okish. ‘Metalingus' highpoint, teehee.
Comedy Tent break with Aaron Kleiber and Jim Breuer. Liked the former more. Santa, Wife and Kids, Alcohol consumption, them stand up comedians have little left to play with lately. Also, missed the band 'Led Zeppelin Experience' in the mean time thanks to the schedule listing them as 'Jason Bonham LZE' :/ Dull day, and minds :P
Five Finger Death Punch - :O Those energy levels! :O Ivan Moody with his seemingly punk appearance and his band playing metal. Morning alarm material. Like I was telling another friend later, performers like these make you do the math. “If only I had 10% of his energy levels, I’d have accomplished this and this by now, been so and so, etc.” :( Highpoints:‘Coming Down’, ‘Bad Company’, ‘Under and Over it’, heck all of it! The crowd being the size it was, every band’s attempt at making them sing along fell flat. 5FDP were the only ones in all 3 days to successfully pull that one off, over and over again. Sheer brilliance!
Left for the trip back home short of Kid Rock’s performance. No rap-rock for us thank you very much :P
Looking forward to Rock on the Range 2015, a definite go!
(Pic Courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/rockontherange)
(Pic Courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/rockontherange)
P.S. - Pls forgive the over usage of the words ‘awesome’ and ‘brilliance’ among others (emots!), can’t help it. And I actually went back and added a few bands that I missed in the first go of writing lol, vices of the plenty :P
