We saw Theory of a Dead man when they played in Atlanta as part of the Avalanche festival this spring. I immediately went out and bought their CD which is still in constant rotation in my car. Other groups that were part of that show that I really liked were Skillet, Halestorm and Stone sour.
That Jen Ledger from Skillet - I LOVE her! Amazingly talented girl.
So my impressions from this show:
The dozen or so lead-in bands all helped to redefine the term "hellatiously unlistenable" - though one band "Leachfield", had us laughing our ***** off with their combo worst-sound and worst-band-name.
Once these guys all finished assaulting us (from a smaller stage adjacent to the main venue), the main gates opened up and we meandered into the stockyard with all the other cattle. The big stage was actually nicely set up (and it looked solid too... God knows you don't stand too close to an outdoor temporary performance stage these days). The main acts were "Chaos Machine", "Emphatic", "Black Stone Cherry", "Adelitas Way", "Alterbridge", and of course the main event "Theory of a Dead Man".
Now, Bernard, I know this is going to be unbearably excrutiating, but in order for you to understand what's being discussed here... you need to at least click on this link and check out "Bad Girlfriend" from Theory. Listen to all of it, regardless of how far back your eyes roll. Once finished - now imagine a 100KW 80 speaker wall of sound vibrating your vital organs like a paint shaker... OK, once recovered, please report your findings back to the forum.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le98NIrVL7U
OK, where was I, Yes... so the quality of music absolutely increased with each and every band that took the stage. Also, couldn't help but enjoy certain comments by the various lead singers as they semi-coherently scream in between songs e.g. "This song's about f*ckin'" and "How you mothuhf*ckahs doin' t'night?!?". The last two acts (Alterbridge and Theory) were easily the most polished and best sounding... they also both held the stage for about 90 minutes each... so can't complian in terms of spectacle-per-dollar value.
HOWEVER... and here's the rub (as well as the big clue that my son is a bit of a budding audiophile)... when you have three electric guitars, a bass guitar, drums, synth, and multiple vocals all wailing at the same time... the power grid has some real work to do to keep up with demand. It was clear that during certain dynamic "challenges" the system just couldn't keep up... so layer some overload/clipping distortion on top of these unheavenly peaks and imagine the grimaces as my son and I looked at each other telepathically thinking "too much - doesn't sound good - they need to back it down from 12 to 11". That was really my only complaint... and it wasn't a constant overload situation - just during certain full-on insane phrases - well, unpleasant.
Beyond the audio critque though, we had almost as much fun people-watching (I guess you could catagorize most of them as "people") as we did band-watching. And the best part, most of the way home, the boys would sporadically mock the head-banging mosh-pitters randomly chanting "Leachfield!! Wooohooo!!"
Cheers all