Saturday, July 26, 2008

Concert Review: Rockstar Mayhem Festival (July 25)

By Todd Maternowski

DALLAS — With Ozzfest pulling back to just one date this summer, it made sense for Rockstar to fill in the yawning gap and come up with an Ozzfest-like heavy metal lineup of their own. Fortunately, it's pretty clear that the organizers behind the first-ever Rockstar Mayhem Tour know what good metal is, and came up with a dozen or so bands that beautifully showcase the range, depth and showmanship of the heavy metal genre. Fest-starved metal fans should be stoked by Mayhem for years to come.

The one drawback to festivals of this kind is that it's physically impossible to see every band on the schedule, particularly in a venue as massive and impersonal as Superpages.com. So rather than give you a comprehensive field guide to every metal band there, I'll do my best to capture the bands that I was able to catch live.

The first band I got to witness up-close on the searing concrete outside the Superpages.com amphitheater was 36 Crazyfists. The Alaska-based band plays a heavy barrage of metalcore, just without the high-pitched screaming that can so easily turn fans off. Despite what seemed to be 110-degree heat on the pavement, lead singer Brock Lindow was able to masterfully pump the crowd up into a rolling, feverish mob, no small task considering how difficult it was for the later bands (even the headliners) to get the same response. Throughout the entire 30-minute abbreviated set, Brock looked like he was having a blast, while guitarist Steve Holt --who looks eerily like the guitarist from Hurratorpedo-- kept the sweat-soaked fans moving with his pounding guitar riffs.

Todd Maternowski

36 Crazyfists towering frontman Brock Lindow whips the crowd into a frenzy

An hour or so after their set, I was able to corner Brock for an interview. The singer was easily the happiest guy in the entire venue, pumped that 36 Crazyfists was finally able to tour with some of the greatest metal acts of the past two decades. Brock discussed many things: this being their first festival tour in the U.S. after a decade of success overseas, how happy they were moving from Roadrunner to Ferret, their newest album The Tide and Its Takers, Texas' oppressive heat, and the joys of playing 30-minute quickie sets in said heat. Unfortunately, you're going to have to take my word for it, as when I got home I found that every file on my (pretty expensive) audio recorder was completely blank. Ahh....technology. Make sure to catch them next time they come through DFW: with four shows in Dallas/Fort Worth over the past two years, it's only a matter of time before they're back in the area.

The band following 36 Crazyfists was the similarly awesomely-named Five Finger Death Punch. This relatively-new band is composed of pieces of several other metal bands, including Motograter, W.A.S.P. and U.P.O. The wide range of historical influences is obvious on stage: this is not your run-of-the-mill screaming-and-noise metal band. Lead singer Ivan Moody effortlessly flows from primal rage to operatic melody in his vocals, punctuating his live show with plenty of visual theatricals. The band, even being just 2+ years old, has already reached a pretty substantial following, as Ivan was able to whip the crowd into a frenzy despite the surface-of-mercury temperatures coming off the pavement in waves.

I tried to get an interview with Ivan, but unfortunately the night before the band had gone to Grapevine Mills and had a little too much crabmeat and beer, a deadly combination in the Texas summer. Moody was not feeling well, but sucked it up for the 30-minute set and made sure his fans had a blast.

Todd Maternowski

Is that not the perfect backdrop for Dragonforce?

Of the next few bands, I only caught partial sets: distracted by the motocross stuntmen of Metal Mulisha, the need for water and my interview with Brock, I wasn't able to catch the full 30-minute sets of these next four bands. I was able to make some initial impressions, however.

Suicide Silence seemed to be your typical run-of-the-mill teen angsty screamo deathcore band, unsuccessfully trying to get the crowd as into it as they were, and ultimately ending the set on a whimper. The huge lines of fans waiting to meet Sid from Slipknot --which seemed to outnumber those actually watching the band-- probably didn't help much.

Airbourne, an Australian hard rock band, seemed ripped straight out of the late 70s/early 80s metal in both look and sound. Much like Dragonforce, Airbourne seems like throwback-metal to a time when musicians wore colorful spandex, every song had a 5-minute guitar solo and you couldn't be in the band unless your hair was long enough to reach your ass.

Black Tide was a youngish band, but like Airbourne they clearly loved their instruments, crossing several genres of metal with some old-school 80s hair-metal guitar riffs.

Walls of Jericho was an unusual band, a metalcore band fronted by a female. Candace Kucsulain performed admirably when screaming, but was unfortunately competing at that point with Mastodon on the main stage, and the dwindling, sweat-soaked and sunburned crowd was pretty lethargic.

At that point, unfortunately having just missed Mastodon, it was time for the heavy hitters of the tour to take over the main stage. First up was Dragonforce: what can be said about this band that hasn't already been printed a million times? They're fast. They're amazing. They're always having a blast. And they're the least ironic band in the world. This was a much better show than the last time they came through Dallas, when they came to the Palladium with Killswitch Engage -- fans will always remember that show as the one where the sound for both the vocals and guitars were inaudible for most of the set (did the Palladium's sound guy think we wanted to hear an hour of double-bass drum?). Fortunately, Dragonforce's lightning-fast guitarwork and soaring gamer-metal vocals were on full display, as well as a hilariously amazing backdrop that will serve as the cover for their next album, Ultra Beatdown.

Chicago-based heavy psycho-rockers Disturbed were up next, and did not disappoint. Lead singer David Draiman came out in a Hannibal Lecter getup to open the show, and utterly dominated the packed-looking house with his stage presence for the next hour. The band crammed a number of their countless hits into their set, including Indestructible, Down With the Sickness, Land of Confusion, and Inside the Fire amongst others: Draiman's powerful staccato vocals were on full display over the massive arena speakers, and after witnessing them at Superpages.com it's hard to imagine them playing to less than tens of thousands of screaming fans. Draiman did lose his voice a few times during the final number, Down With the Sickness, but it was undeniably a great show.

Todd Maternowski

Slipknot = Soundtrack to Heath Ledger's Joker

Finally, the headliners came on - Slipknot, playing their first show in Dallas in nearly three years. Slipknot is undoubtedly the creepiest, most chaotic band ever: for the next hour and some-odd minutes, there was never a dull moment at any point on the stage. Chaotic movement everywhere, all the time, during every song: and the music --though clearly not as loud and clean as it was for Disturbed's set-- perfectly matched the eerieness onstage. The new masks are great; guitarist Mick Thomson in particular, looks like the massive serial killer from Rob Zombie's remake of Halloween, while lead singer Corey Taylor's new mask easily trumps his last one, and makes even his first great mask seem tame by comparison.

The band played several of their old hits -- Before I Forget, Get This, Surfacing and People=Shit, before closing with (sic). The only lull in the set came when they played a song off their upcoming album All Hope is Gone called Psychosocial -- for those of us who loved the first two albums but only kindof liked the third, Psychosocial's complete lack of creepy cacophony and surprisingly uninspired song structure is definitely not a good sign. The height of the show for me was when they played Prosthetics -- an awesome discordant song that ought to be played at every show. With the band running out of time --up against Dallas' weird 11:15pm curfew for the stadium-- Slipkot ended with People=Shit, but seemed to cut Joey Slipknot's fan-favorite elevated-drum-solo-over-a-rotating-pentagram short. In all, however, it was an incredible show, and Dallas metal fans have a lot to look forward to for next summer's festival season.

Related stories

• Concert Review: Judas Priest / Heaven and Hell / Motörhead / Testament (Aug. 23, 2008)
• Concert Review: Ozzfest, featuring Metallica / Ozzy Osbourne (Aug. 10, 2008)
• Pegasus News Week in View: The Hits Keep Coming (July 31, 2008)

See more stories in:

• Arts > Popular Music > Metal
• Arts > Popular Music > Rock

Comments

Todd Maternowski Staff

Hi Ray_eguia, first off thanks for the corrections. I was still a little woozy from headbanging when I wrote my review at 3am this morning.. I seem to recall them playing Left Behind in the first few minutes, but my memory could be wrong. But they did cut the drum solo short, especially compared to previous shows in which Joey was up there rotating for a considerable period of time. This time, they got him up there, one rotation later [and no glowing pentagram] and he was done.

3 months, 4 weeks ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

Collin Gouldin Verified

gunsdog, if you read the article then you would have seen who wrote the review, and that he commented nearly two days ago about messing a few things up ... so: who are you? and did you read this page??

3 months, 3 weeks ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

Todd Maternowski Staff

Hi gunsdogs25, thanks for the comments. I wasn't high, but I had been in 392 degree heat that night since 11:30am, so I might've gotten Slipknot's playlist 12 hours later a little skewed.

3 months, 3 weeks ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )