Mayhem Festival, 2008
This year was the first, and hopefully not last year that the Rockstar Mayhem Festival. The festival has some of the biggest metal bands there are all in one show. You can check out the original press release here.
We attended the August 12th show in Atlanta, GA at the Lakewood Amphitheatre. Other than a little rain, it was a great day for a concert, it wasn't too hot, and there was a nice overcast. You can check out the show pictures here.
The shows started off with the Hot Topic and the Jagermeister stages. The two stages were next to each other, and as soon as the band on one stage ended their set, a band on the next stage started up. This type of timing is probably a lot harder to pull off than you would imagine, but it was pulled off flawlessly.
Black Tide, The Red Chorde, 36 Crazyfists, Suicide Silence, Airborne, and Walls of Jericho all played for us on the smaller stages while the main stage was being set up. They all did an excellent job at keeping everybody entertained. While the bands were playing on the stages, DJ Starscream (Sid Wilson of Slipknot) was spinning the tables in the back of his RV with the Metal Mulisha freestyle motorcycle team jumping the RV. Between the bands and DJ Starscream, everybody was entertained until the main stage started up.
Between main stage sets, Underoath and Machine Head performed on the Jagermeister and Hot Topic stages.
The only thing I questioned in the Lineup was having Five Finger Death Punch playing on the Jagermeister stage while Mastadon was playing on the main stage. Five Finger Death Punch pulled an good sized crowd even though they were playing on the same time slot as a main stage band. Since we had to choose between Mastadon and Five Finger Death Punch, we chose 5FDP and we weren't disappointed.
All of the bands that played on the smaller stages did an excellent job. I would have to say Black Tide and Five Finger Death Punch were the best two performing bands. I had never heard of Black Tide before this show, but I loved their music and they were just fun to watch. This was the 3rd time I had seen Five Finger Death Punch in the past year, and as usual they played good music, and had a great stage presence.
The first main stage band that we saw was Dragonforce. I had never really listened to their music, other than playing their insanely hard song on Guitar Hero III. I was a little skeptical that they could pull off a good show, but my skepticism was proven wrong with the first song. Dragonforce was very entertaining. Their guitar playing was insane. Dragonforce thoroughly entertained me, from their singing, the shredding of the guitars, to just their stage presence. Needless to say, after seeing the Dragonforce set, I became a fan. I didn't get to watch the end of their set because we had an interview scheduled with Five Finger Death Punch.
Disturbed was the 3rd main stage band. I had high expectations of Disturbed's show, and they didn't disappoint. Vocalist, David Draiman was brought on stage wearing a Hannibal Lector mask and a straight jacket. This was by far the best band intro of the festival. Disturbed's set consisted of both older and newer material. They played most if not all of their most popular songs, and they sounded just like they do on CD. Unfortunately I did miss some portions of their show due to a meet and greet I had with Slipknot during the set. Even when I wasn't in the main area, I could hear them just fine which was a huge surprise on my end.
Slipknot was the final set of the night, and it was the band I had been waiting all night to see. Just like with Disturbed, I had very high expectations from them, and again I was not disappointed in any way. Once the curtains were pulled back, drummer Joey Jordison was alone on the stage standing behind his huge drum set wearing gloves with what looked like small tree branches extending from his finger tips. Then the other band members came onto stage, Sid Wilson in his wheel chair. There is nothing like seeing Slipknot walk onto stage live. It is something that a music video just cannot portray correctly. They played songs from all of their CDs including "Psychosocial" from All Hope is Gone (not including Crowz and Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat.). Not only did Slipknot play their major songs "People = Shit", "Duality" and "The Heretic Anthem" they also played some of the lesser known songs like "Prosthetics". The fans got a good look at the detail in Sid Wilson's electronically controlled mask when vocalist, Corey Taylor told everybody about how Sid "DJ Moonboots" Wilson broke his heels on the first night of or the tour, and that Sid told Corey that there's no way he's missing the tour even he has to be drug around on stage all night. During different parts of the show, Sid Wilson would lizard crawl across the stage. Out of all of the masks I think his is now my favorite, closely followed by Joey Jordison's mask with the crown of thorns, and Shawn Crahan's "bondage" clown mask. Overall, everything about their song set was over the top from the mechanical lifts on Joey Jordison's, Shawn Crahan's, and Chris Fehn's drum sets, to the flames in the background. If you have not seen Slipknot at a live performance, you don't know what you are missing. Not only does Slipknot put on one of the best shows out there, they make sure each and every one of their fans understands how important they are to them, and that they will not forget that it is their fans that make the band important.
Overall my favorite three bands of the night were Slipknot, Disturbed, and Five Finger Death Punch. But every single band of the night was just awesome. This is definitely a tour that any metal fan must see and I hope that next year they can somehow make the tour even better.