I went to Big Day Out at the Gold Coast this weekend in Aussie... 14 hours, 8 Stages, 60-70 bands. At first I had decided to skip Metallica (I've seen them about 9 times already) to check out that band "Thursday" that someone made a post about. Big mistake, Thursday sucked (live at least). The singer sounded like a bigger whiner than Axel Rose. Although, I did basically get a free lapdance from the chick in front of me that kept jumping up and down as I was being mashed into her. After about 4 songs, I decided to bail on that shit before my ear-drums cracked from the dudes off-key singing, and make my way back to the Metallica stage.
I did start off there as Metallica started at 8:15 and Thursday at 8:30. Met opened with Blackened (fucking kick ass) then played Creeping Death (rockin...), but then I left for some ear-drum abuse at the Thursday stage. When I came back, Metallica was playing Battery (fuckin-A kick ass) and then Fade to Black. I slowly made my way through the sea of people (and I am talking thousands, I've never seen so many people at one stage in my life). Lights go out, and the fucking stage starts to explode with fireballs and sky-rockets... I know this shit, its got to be the intro to One. Sure enough, they play the best version of One I've ever heard them play. They did get into gayness by closing with Enter Fagman, but thats cool, because the crowd was into it and shit was rockin... Their new albums may suck (I dunno, I didn't even bother with Mr. Anger or whatever the hell it is), but they can still put on a good show. Kirk is getting a bit sloppy with his solo's now, but maybe he was just improvising, probably gets bored playing the same thing every time... James still sounds pretty good.
Other bands I checked out:
The Mars Volta (I think someone posted about them). Their drummer is down right incredible, but they fucking sucked cock... They would just sit there and cause feedback for like 3 minutes (no fucking joke) before each song. For some reason the crowd of idiots loved it, but it was just fucking noisy bullshit anyone can do by plugging in a guitar and letting it sit in-front of an amplifier (I play guitar, I know what I'm talking about...). When they finally did play a song, the singer looked like that Dokken guy, and sounded like him if he had been kicked in the nuts and rose 2 octaves. They were pretty bad, except for their insane drummer.
I hung out at the Metal Stage most of the time to mosh and see if there was any talent. Poison the Well and Lost Prophets were just fuking sad. They were the death metal bands where it sounds like the singer has a bad cold and is coughing into the mic the whole time, while the drummer is on crack and playing a beat so fast that the guitarrist cannot possibly make a coherent rhythm with it. However one band, The Butterfly Effect actually decided to sing, and their music was pretty decent if you are into metal...
At the DJ/Rap front, the only one worth mentioning was Salmonella Dub, who sort of did this Jamacian Rock/Rap/HipHop thing which sounded pretty fricken good. Audio Bullies was shit and PNAU was shit, unless you want to get doped up and dance around in that 80's revert techno style hopping gayness.
There was one rap band I heard passing by that was decent, but I don't know who the hell they were so fuck em.
Thats about it. I just want to add, whoever thought Thursday and The Mars Volta were good bands, don't go see them live, it will change your opinion. <img src="/~stretch/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />
-Bal.
