Mayhem Festival - 8/12 @ Lakewood Amphitheatre
As much as I can't stand all day concert festivals, I keep finding myself attending them this year. This one happened to be the inaugural Mayhem Festival...actually let me rephrase, the Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival, because you just can't have a national touring concert festival without some form of corporate branding these days. But at least they had a few bands that I wanted to see, including Black Tide, Airbourne and Mastodon.
It's been awhile since I've seen Black Tide and I was looking forward to checking them out again. I wasn't too pleased that they were the first band to perform, because that meant I had to get my ass down to Lakewood by 2pm. But since they were one of the handful of bands I actually cared about, I got there just as the gates opened. And because they were among the opening bands on the bill, they played on one of the portable stages set up in a parking lot (much like most of Warped Tour). I hate that particular set up, but when you have so many bands performing in a given festival, guess there is no better way to put it together. Anyway, I had heard that they had replaced one of the original members of the band and for awhile I thought it was the lead singer, because he didn't sound anything like he does on the record. Whereas he used to have this Iron Maiden/Judas Priest wail, now he sings a lot deeper and more guttural. Probably because the guy is maybe 16 and his voice finally finished changing. Either way, it does change their dynamic of sounding like 80's Metal, which is kind of why I liked them in the first place. They can still shred and do a decent cover of Maiden's "Prowler," but I didn't really care for the new vocal styling. At least I have the album that I can still listen to.
Then I walked around a bit before checking out one of the other bands I wanted to see, Airbourne. Airbourne are from Australia and sound just like Bon Scott era AC/DC, which is of course awesome. In fact, their lead singer looks a bit like Bon Scott too. They were playing on the Jager stage and appropriately, they were downing shots their entire set. But when just about every song has the word "rock" in it, you'd expect nothing less. It was pretty much straight up balls to the wall, rock out with your cock out rock and roll. And who doesn't enjoy that? My only complaint was they only played for 1/2 hour, because I would've enjoyed seeing a much longer set by these guys. But maybe it's for the best as their livers probably couldn't take that much Jager each and every day on this tour. Hopefully, if one of them doesn't die from alcohol poisoning before the end of the tour, they'll come back to town and play a proper show in a real venue, instead of on a stage in a parking lot. They pulled it off well, but still not the best way to watch a band. I also ran into Dave Cook and hung out with him during their performance.
Then as I didn't really care to check out any of the other bands on the side stages, I walked around some more and wasted time until they opened up the main stage and then sat around until Mastodon came on. I've seen various side projects from members of Mastodon, but I don't recall ever seeing them actually perform together. And as this was their hometown show, figured it was going to be pretty decent. They were loud, very loud, but I kind of anticipated that. While I was watching them, they reminded me a bit like Tool in that prog-metal kind of way. I enjoyed their set, but I wasn't blown away. I think I had higher hopes or was just way to tired and over it from being out in the heat all day. And once they were done, so was I and I headed home.
I wouldn't have minded staying to see DragonForce and Slipknot but I had been there way too long already and didn't have the energy or desire to stick around any longer. If only there was some form of beverage that could give me a boost of vigor in order to have the endurance to stay for the entire show. Man, if they made something like that, I would imagine the company that created such a miracle product would do anything to spread the word.