Mayhem Festival

Just got home a little bit ago from the Mayhem Festival. We went to the venue outside Pittsburgh, same place we went to Ozzfest last year. We arrived shortly before 3:00pm, so we missed some early opening acts, but between the 3 stages we still saw 10 bands play. I should add that by having 2 smaller stages where one played while the other got set up, they vastly improved the experience by totally eliminating downtime between bands. The groups we saw were, in order:

SIDE STAGES

-All Shall Perish- (Thoroughly mediocre and generic, but I already knew that.)

-Kingdom of Sorrow- (I saw them at Ozzfest last year two, and they failed to leave much of an impression. A second viewing didn't do much to change that.)

-Suicide Silence- (Despite being familiar with the name, this was the first time I'd ever actually heard any of their material. Stolen riffs, endless breakdowns, annoyingly screechy vocals, and a front man who spent way too much time trying to get the crowd to jump and mosh every 5 seconds. I'd call them the worst band we saw.)

-Unearth- (Second time seeing them. They're by no means a favorite of mine, but they're decent, and they played a reasonably entertaining set.)

-Machine Head- (One of the side stage closers. The best band we'd seen up to this point, though nothing terrifically special. I'll admit I'm starting to sound pretty negative, but honestly there were a lot of lackluster performances amongst the openers.)

-In Flames- (The other side stage closer. It was my third time seeing them, and if you've read many of my music posts you can probably already guess that I really enjoyed watching In Flames again. It was the first time I'd seen them since Jesper left. They weren't as good as the last time I saw them, but they still put on a very entertaining show and were far and away the highlight of the small stage performances, in my opinion.)

MAIN STAGE

-Trivium- (Second time seeing them. Meh.)

-Megadeth- (Second time seeing them, too. One of the better performances of the show, unsurprisingly. They didn't have the time to cover all the material I'd have liked, but they sounded good playing what they could.)

-Godsmack- (They sounded good, assuming you like hard radio rock. The vocals were surprisingly similar to the quality of their recordings. The caveats would be that they had the audience sing the choruses far too often, so we rarely heard the actual appropriate vocals for those, and that while the quality of the performance was perfectly solid, there just seemed to be a general lack of energy. On the whole they were pretty good, but certainly not great.)

-Disturbed- (Big production values, plenty of energy, and good quality performances by all the members. Regrettably, their song selection left quite a bit to be desired. They left off many of their hits in favor of an odd assortment of filler tracks. They may have been holding on to those as ammo for an encore, but they ended at 11pm and I think the crowd was about out of steam, since there was surprisingly little noise calling for more. As such, they didn't come back out and we walked away feeling just a little bit cheated. Much like Godsmack, this left their set at pretty good, though again certainly not great.)

I had a fairly fun time. Compared with some of the other shows I've been to with large bills, though, this one was rather lacking. I can't REALLY say that I was flat-out disappointed, but at the same time I was a little. Admittedly this was more of a hard rock affair than my typical show selections, but I've seen enough hard rock bands live that I feel I'm perfectly capable of approaching this objectively. And for me, the show overall landed a grade somewhere between a C+ and a B-.

Finally Writing Again

I had been making excellent progress on my personal writing project up until I started work. At that point, I almost totally stopped. Over the past few days I've been trying to sort out where to go next with it, and last night was the first time in weeks that I got any significant amount of writing done.

In Flames - Sounds of a Playground Fading

A funny thing happened today. While killing time in the air conditioned mall, I happened briefly into a Hot Topic. An annoying, whiny song was playing (as usual) and for a minute I just kind of phased it out. Then suddenly a a slightly louder vocal bit caught my ear and I froze. I knew that voice. I grabbed my brother and said "Oh crap, you hear this? That's Anders Friden singing. This is In Flames." He had my sister go up to the counter to ask who was playing, and they confirmed what I already knew.

I was crushed by what I was hearing, and I beat a hasty retreat. The episode did serve as a reminder, though, that I had yet to check out their new album. And even though I fully expected to hear a mountain of garbage, I dutifully went into Best Buy and picked up a copy anyway.

I have to say that, at least after my initial listen through the album, I'm pleasantly surprised. The old In Flames is long gone, and we all know that. I was expecting an even bigger train wreck this time, though, from the bits I'd heard and from the really weak nature of their previous release. Instead (though there are certainly a few weak tracks, like "Liberation", the one I'd just heard) I found myself reminded quite a lot of Reroute to Remain and, at times, Come Clarity. It was quite a relief I must say, and already I can tell that I like this new material substantially better than A Sense of Purpose. They mixed some decent guitar leads in, they've tried incorporating some of their traditional jester imagery (including one song title), and while most of the songs are relatively mid-paced and moderate in terms of aggression there are a couple tracks that actually stand out as some of the heaviest material they've released in years.

Of course the loss of Jesper is something I'm not thrilled about, but at least it appears the band is capable of functioning in their new form without him. There are several tracks that sounded fairly derivative of previous In Flames songs, but I suppose by the time a band releases 10 full-length studio albums that's bound to happen. I can't give a good, comprehensive review having only played the album once, but my initial reaction is that this is something I'll find myself playing and enjoying again several times in the future.

Industrial Metal?

I have heard the argument advanced that, since "real" industrial music eschews any conventional form of structure in favor of an anti-musical approach, it cannot truly be combined with any standard musical form. As such, the arguer claimed, "industrial metal" is a false term that represents a musical style which is not really a fusion of its namesakes. Personally I am neither a fan of nor an expert on industrial music. I typically just use the term to refer to metal which includes elements of electronic music. I can't vouch for the "correctness" of the term, but that's how I use it and most people seem to understand what I mean when I use it that way.

I'm curious what others' thoughts are on the matter. Also, does anybody out there with a more specific expertise in the area of industrial music have anything to add?

The Human Centipede

I just finished watching The Human Centipede. I know I've written about people who don't know how to watch horror movies, but that movie was flat-out disappointing. It probably would have gone down better had I not spent months hearing about how it's the goriest, most intense and disgusting movie anybody has ever seen. Honestly, I didn't even think it had the gore factor of standard torture-porn fair like Saw or Hostel, let alone the savage gruesomeness of underground gore horror à la August Underground's Mordum.

I probably need to step back a little for perspective and realize that my penchant for death metal and gory movies has almost certainly left me far less sensitive than most viewers. That said, even people who have seen other gory movies have claimed that this one was too much for them, and frankly I don't get it. I really wanted to enjoy The Human Centipede, but it just plain did nothing for me.