sadly yes. jesus the internet truly will come back to haunt you

Brian Eno with Karl Hyde (Underworld) and various others.... Fucking wonderful shit. Saw three shows in a row at the Sydney Opera House, the only performances in the world by this lineup. They did loads of ambient stuff (as you would expect) but also a surprising amount of modern sounding electronica and bits and pieces of industrial and power electronics. Good shit indeed.

Brian Eno with Karl Hyde (Underworld) and various others.... Fucking wonderful shit. Saw three shows in a row at the Sydney Opera House, the only performances in the world by this lineup. They did loads of ambient stuff (as you would expect) but also a surprising amount of modern sounding electronica and bits and pieces of industrial and power electronics. Good shit indeed.

Are you serious? That is AWESOME - I hadn't heard of this; I had heard that Underworld were touring, and so was Brian Eno, but TOGETHER?!
I envy you so much

Last night I saw the San Francisco leg of the national Air Guitar championships.
Funny thing - I actually know the guy who won world air guitar champion of 2008 It's a strange world. I went because he was the MC, and there lots of face melting to be seen.
Some of the contestants clearly had never played a guitar before, and some had clearly spent plenty of time in front of the mirror practicing guitar face while listening to Slayer.

There was Bjorn to Rock, Shred Nugent, Judas Priestess... and the list goes on. Good times.

Saw The Amenta and Psycroptic last night. Am a massive fan of both Amenta albums, but because their music is SO 'studio-created' my initial impression was that they weren't reproducing it as well as I expected. I was kinda expecting more visuals too, maybe of the 'horror-gothic' type. But as their set progressed, I found their intensity levels increased and by the end they were actually quite devastating, and I wanted them to play for longer!

Psycroptic did what Psycroptic do, ie belt out high quality tech-death.

Graspop Metal Meeting was quite awesome! Lots of rain was predicted, but nothing came. It was very hot and very sunny every day, and I loved it!

These are the bands I've seen:

Lauren Harris: Has only 2 selling points and makes no effort hiding them.
Taake: Great black metal, probably the 'noisiest' band on the festival but I did quite enjoy them.
Samael: Seen them before, not as good this time but still very unique and very good.
Exodus: Didn't see them, but I did hear them. Sounded tight, apart from the inappropriate MJ joke.
The Gathering: Seemed totally uninspired wit the new singer.
Soulfly: Not bad. It's a bit sad when the highlight of your show is when you cover your old band.
Static-X: 20cm spiky hair, 40cm braided goatee, stripper on stage: WIN!
Dream Theater: I laughed.
Motley Crue: The guy sounds like he's on helium.

In-Quest: Substitute for Killswitch Engage who cancelled at the last second. The only Belgian metal band that I know and they did a great job.
Keep of Kalessin: Quite alright. I can't understand how the singer could stand his all-leather outfit in that fucking hot tent.
Negura Bunget: Really interesting to see, ambient power metal with loads of traditional instruments. They had a xylophonist on stage ffs!
Mastodon: Amazing.
Kataklysm: Damn heavy, enjoyed that.
Dagoba: Last.fm has been advising me to check them out for years and they were quite good indeed.
Gojira: Live much better than on CD, damn tight but I still think they're musically a bit lacking.
Korn: Plain boring. Same show as when I saw them 5 years ago (singer in a kilt, bagpipes, covers of One and Another Brick In The Wall).
Volbeat: Got The. Biggest. Cheering. of the entire festival. More than all the headliners put together, great job.
Slipknot: They're a bunch of clowns but they did a good job.

Lamb of God: Nothing special but they got the crowd going nicely.
Scar Symmetry: Fucking flawless. I was a bit surprised that they only played 1 or 2 songs of the latest album (not a bad thing though, I like the other 2 albums better) but they played really really well.
Eths: French metalcore (that doesn't resolve to endless double kick drumming, surprisingly) with a tiny girl screaming her balls of. Nice.
Devildriver: Started out with a shit sound, but when that cleared up they made a great show. I think they won for the biggest circle pit, the metal support poles for the tent roof were actually in their way.
Disturbed: Didn't know them beforehand but they were impressive. The singer can really sing!
Nightwish: Not my style of music. Heard loads of bashing of their new singer but she wasn't so bad. I haven't heard them with Tarja though so I can't compare, apparently she's totally different in style.
Marilyn Manson: Freak show. There were hordes of look-alikes the last day which was a bit scary. Luckily they didn't commit mass-suicide no matter how depressed they looked. MM actually rated vibe over hits which was a good thing.

All in all: success!

Disturbed is pretty damn amazing live. They put on a great show.

When I saw DevilDriver a few years back, they had almost an entire field opened up into a circle pit. To this day, about 4 years later, I still have not seen a bigger circle pit.

I hate you for seeing Mastodon.

Kataklysm has one of the best live guitar tones I've ever heard. And it's all from Randall stuff too, I asked the guitarist when I saw them here.

Scar Symmetry is one of those bands that boggles my mind as to why they aren't very popular. They put on an amazing show, each member has got some awesome chops, and their music is basically the evolution that the Swedish metal scene should've made a ten years ago (combining singing and growling without losing their balls in the process). I'm pretty pumped for the new album because I'm curious as to how they'll compose the vocals now that they have two guys instead of one.

I knew the story about the Scar Symmetry singers, but the thing is that when I saw that show, I was starting to doubt that story. The two singers fit in so well, and sound so much like the old singer, that I started to thing I dreamt the whole singer stuff and they'd had these blokes all the time. Simply amazing.


Also, good to see all the Oceansize albums in your signature

Also, good to see all the Oceansize albums in your signature

Oh yes, I've been listening to them heavily for the past 3 years or so. Amaaaaazing band. Crossing my fingers that they tour North America soon. I'm getting antsy.

mayhem....excellent

i filmed most of the show too, hope y'all check it out if you're interested

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Scar Symmetry is one of those bands that boggles my mind as to why they aren't very popular. They put on an amazing show, each member has got some awesome chops, and their music is basically the evolution that the Swedish metal scene should've made a ten years ago (combining singing and growling without losing their balls in the process). I'm pretty pumped for the new album because I'm curious as to how they'll compose the vocals now that they have two guys instead of one.

I speak only for myself when I say that: Although I agree with their style being what Swedish metal should have evolved into 10 years ago, I can see why they haven't gotten very popular. While the songs are aggressive and mostly ass kicking, I have never (besides The Illusionist) heard a song by them that have included great vocal melodies that have been catchy enough to make me want to listen to a track again.

Now mix the vocal melodies of Soilwork along with the true aggressiveness and extreme metal of Scar Symmetry and there could be a real band created to complete the evolution.

Actually I feel that since bands like Soilwork and In Flames began to change Swedish metal I feel the change has been left open and no one has really taken the sound to the next step and these older bands are trying to close the gap but at the same time no new bands have been able to efficiently fill the shoes.

Melbourne band Mammal. Stunning, as usual. Yet another Aussie band more than deserved of worldwide attention.

I saw Meshuggah yesterday and I give them a >9000/10. I also saw The Haunted, Chris Cornell and Korn but really it was all about teh Meshuggah. I bought three Meshuggah t-shirts. <33

A month late, but I saw Ozric Tentacles in a small pub. It was brilliant sound for such a small place. They're a bunch of fucking gypsies, and everyone there besides me was on acid, but it was brilliant! Then entire set flowed beautifully while still being distinguishable. And a couple of times they ranted, and I had no idea what they were talking about. Then I made out with some girl, and found out she was lesbian, then made out with her again. Then someone busted out some whipped cream in a can, and we passed it around. It was fucking ridiculous.

Go see Ozric Tentacles:

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