Wifey & I made our way south 200Km from wicked sunshiney weather, to Taxman’s in WellieTron, where it was fully hosing down. Lucky the gig was inside! We got a bit of liquor and pie in us, for rain protection more than anything, adorned our metal-head uniform, and lurched into battle.
A bit of a taxi fail, and the usual press pass hassle, meant we arrived at the end of the last song of These Four Walls’ set – a fact I was most gutted about. Everyone I talked to said they ruled, good thing for them, sad for me! I was so looking forward to seeing them too.
As I Lay Dying were next up, a very thrashy and heavy set, heavily laden with intense basslines and mammoth vox. We all really enjoyed seeing them, I hadn’t heard much of their stuff, but I’m now keen to do some serious research.
Trivium took the stage around 8ish, by this time, Wifey, Taxman, Mac and myself had wormed our way through to 8 or 9 from the barrier. Within 3 songs we were firmly ensconced at about 3 from the barrier, purely from pressure from the back - and man was it intense! Trivium rocked a mean set, with lots of old stuff and very little from Crusade and Shogun – we were all rather surprised, but not disappointed. A few of my favourites got cranked; Throes of Perdition and Down from the Sky notably. I would have loved to have heard Anthem and Becoming the Dragon, but beggars can't be choosers. A very heavy and technically well-executed set, truly epic.
Wifey & I checked on Taxman and Mac, only to find them lost in the mosh – so we fell back to rendezvous A (sound stage front) were we reunited with Taxman. Mac, I found out later, stayed lost in the mosh and got 40-odd minutes of Disturbed video footage – fantastic.
Disturbed rocked onto the stage, fronting with a slow and chuggy intro, backed by the wickedest video wall I’ve ever seen, which had David breaking out from an Asylum and rocking directly onto stage – it was fully wicked. Heaps of favourites cranked out from their entire catalogue – the ones I can recall were Asylum, Another Way to Die, Land of Confusion, Stupify, Indestructible, The Infection, Ten Thousand Fists, Warrior and of course The Sickness to finish. A fantastically awesome set, chock full of wicked solos both drum and gax which got massive crowd response. Huge mosh pit – stretching fully two-thirds across the arena floor – and everyone was really well behaved, Taxman mentioned later that it was like everyone had picked their spot and just stayed there.
All in all, a damned wicked gig, Disturbed always put on a wicked show and they certainly didn’t disappoint! Huge credit to These Four Walls, As I Lay Dying and Trivium – all wicked bands and excellent choices to open. They’re all fairly heavy, and at first I wondered how that would work, but the flow was perfect – the crowd was worked up just enough for Disturbed to hit the stage and our minds with their red-hot awesomeness.
We all are Disturbed,
CEOMong