Mayhem

Sooo, went to a concert this past Friday. What concert, you ask? The Rockstar Mayhem Festival. Yeah, I'm one of those "sick freaks" who rocks out to Marilyn Manson.

It was fun as hell.

Didn't pay much attention to the opening bands. It was too hot outside to stay out for a full set, and most of them were "screamers" anyway. The headliners started inside around 1900, kicking off with Bullet for my Valentine. They were ok... the sound setup was crap though, so you could hardly hear what they were saying. The guitars sounded great though :p

Killswitch Engage was next up, and I was fairly impressed. I'm not sure if I've ever really listened to them before, but I probably will now that I've heard them in concert.

Slayer was... meh. I actually slept through most of their set :p No offense to them, really... It was just Friday, which meant PT, which meant I'd been up since 0430 and I was really fucking tired by the time 2130 rolled around :p Jay told me that if I heard any part of the set, I heard the whole hour and a half anyway... hard beats and a lot of screaming. He was surprised I could actually sleep through it, lol.

Then... there was Marilyn Manson. It was... not what I expected. A lot more theatrical than what I thought it would be :p Cue the outfit changes. Cue the 2 or 3 stage hands running around like crazy clearing the stage off, picking up the mic when he purposely knocked it over (made me laugh once I realized he was doing it on purpose), bringing him about 50 friggin' water bottles (he would take a mouthful, spit it out all over everyone and everything standing in front of him, and throw the rest of the water into the crowd... this also made me laugh). The set was far too short, and I wish I could have heard more of his older work (he did a decent mix, but since the set was so short there just weren't many older songs). He didn't play Tainted Love or The New Shit, so I was a little disappointed. Sweet Dreams was ok. Better seats would probably have made the entire concert better, but hey... I bought the tickets the week before the concert, lol. I'm lucky there were tickets available at all, really.

All in all, well worth the money spent. I've now seen most of my favorite bands in concert: Manson, Disturbed, Korn, Linkin Park. I'd like to see Apocalyptica, Shinedown, and Seether. The Cat Empire would be fun too, but I'm not sure if they ever tour in the US :p (I'd go in a heartbeat if they did though). Stick two or more of the aforementioned bands in one concert at the same time, and I could die happy.

Metallica is playing September 28th here... if I get screwed and don't start flight school until Feb, I might still be here, in which case I'll probably go to that one too :p