« | Home | »

01/19/2011 Music As A Weapon V: Disturbed, Korn, Sevendust, In This Moment (Rochester, NY @ Main Street Armory)

By Eric | January 28, 2011 5:27 pm

Another Armory show, another unecessarily long line to get into the venue. I arrived shortly after 6pm and waited in line for approximately 50 minutes. I got inside just as In This Moment was starting. I saw this band back in November of 2008 opening for Five Finger Death Punch, and wasn’t terribly impressed back then. I figured I’d give them another listen, as a lot of people have told me they’d gotten better. I’m not so sure. They weren’t bad, but I wasn’t blown away. Their 35 minutes came and went, and I was getting ready for the next, much more important band. In This Moment Setlist: Blazin, Standing Alone, The Rabbit Hole, The Promise, The Gun Show.

During set change, I meandered into the crowd to get primed for the almighty Sevendust. Every one around me seemed to be buzzing, getting excited, “this is gonna be awesome”, etc. The boys came out to a rousing ovation, kicked into Splinter, and… nothing. No crowd movement, no one bouncing, nothing. Sure, people had their devil horns in the air, some screaming, headbanging, etc., but nothing like what it should be. I figured, okay, Splinter is on the new album, no one knows it, yadda, yadda. Next song? Only the most (usually) riot-inducing song Sevendust has: Black. I thought, now *this* oughta get everyone going, so I started jumping around, and almost got my ass kicked by three dudes. As in, they were pissed that someone had the audacity to start even mildly doing what you’re supposed to do in the middle of a GA pit at a supposed metal show. Literally almost got punched. Thankfully didn’t. (Hope you didn’t ruin your shiny new Korn tracksuit, asshole.) So during Black, I moved across the front of the GA crowd to desperately find someplace people were “dancing”. Never found said place, so I ended up center-right about 20 people deep, and had to make do practically standing still. So so disappointing. The band, on the other hand, was trying their damnedest to get people riled up. As they said themselves, it was more like a 40 minute sprint through a lot of the heavier part of the catalog, continuing with Driven, Forever Dead, Pieces (my personal favorite live song), Praise, and finished up with Face to Face. Clint Lowery was out on “paternity leave” for the first couple shows of this tour (his wife just had a baby), so they recruited B.C. Kochmit (ex-Switched, now of Eye Empire) to take his place. B.C. fit right in, bringing just as much energy as Clint and the rest of the guys usually do, and he even sang on a couple tunes! Again, the band was not lacking in any way, they sounded awesome, but try as they might to get the crowd really riled up, said crowd would have none of it. As I tweeted immediately after the set:


Sevendust setlist: Splinter, Black, Driven, Forever, Pieces, Praise, Face to Face.

2011-01-19 sevendust 02

Splinter / Black:

I love the description on this YouTube clip, because if this is what passes for a mosh pit, we’re ALL in trouble.

So after that crowd debacle, I wandered to the back of the venue to meet up with Scott and Mark, grabbed a brewski, and we enjoyed us some Korn. They came out to an extended intro which transitioned into Blind. So everyone that didn’t move worth a damn for Sevendust was saving all their energy for this, right? I mean, it’s Blind, right? The floor should have looked like a wave pool. A disaster area. Nope. Same lame-ass shit as 7D’s set. I couldn’t even see anyone jumping. Okay, okay, enough about the crowd. I thought Korn sounded even better than they did when I saw them in May of 2009, and they sounded damn good then. There was a good spread of songs, with two off of the latest “Remember Who You Are” album, along with some older stuff. The bagpipes naturally made an appearance at the beginning of Shoots and Ladders (with the cool breakdown from Metallica’s “One” in the middle), and then a mash-up of a bunch of tunes as the closer (reminicent of the Shot Liver Medley from Family Values). Very good set, and I was glad to get to see them again. Korn Setlist: Blind, Here to Stay, Pop a Pill, Freak on a Leash, Shoots and Ladders / One, Got the Life, Alone I Break, Oildale (Leave Me Alone), Falling Away From Me, Coming Undone / We Will Rock You / Twisted Transistor / Make Me Bad / Thoughtless / Did My Time / Clown / Y’All Want a Single.

Korn Medley:

I slipped out into the lobby area during Korn’s medley, as Sevendust was doing a meet and greet! As I got to my place in line, I got a tap on my shoulder and spun around to see Kiersten, the girl I’d met/sat next to at the Carnival of Madness show at CMAC over the summer! We chit-chatted as we moved through the line, and while I’d met certain members of the band at various times, this was the first time I’d gotten to meet (just about) everyone. Vinny was MIA for some reason, but John, Morgan (whom I got a pic with), Lajon, and even B.C. came out to chat and say hi. It was cool just to be able to thank them for coming around so often (this was show 15 in roughly 10 years, not counting the shows I never made it to!), and it was really nice to be able to tell BC that I’d picked up the Eye Empire disc also! After the meet and greet I made my way back to Scott and Mark, and it was time for Disturbed.

IMG_0130

It’s funny, after seeing Disturbed twice in 2000/01, and then not at all for seven years, it’s been four times in the last two years. Which means the set is pretty much the same, and while they sound good, there isn’t a whole lot of variation. From the August Uproar show to this one, there was one different song (The Animal in place of Land of Confusion) and we didn’t get the “Fear / Meaning of Life / Numb / Voices” medley. David’s voice was also sounding a little strained in spots, but nothing too terrible. The rest of the band sounded just as good as they have, the visuals weren’t much different from Uproar either, so it was almost a carbon copy of August’s show. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but some variation would be nice. Disturbed setlist: Remnants, Asylum, The Game, Prayer, Liberate, The Animal, Inside the Fire, Stricken, Another Way to Die, Stupify, Ten Thousand Fists, Indestructible, Down With The Sickness.

So overall, very good-to-excellent sets from the bands met with what I guess passes for an enthusiastic Rochester crowd response, and this concert goer is left saying “get off my lawn” to the young whippersnappers who wouldn’t know a fun metal show if it hit them in the face. I know Rochester crowds can get crazy (see Godsmack ’01, Killswitch ’08, Hatebreed ’09), but this last show was laaaaaaaaaaaaame in the mosh department.

Topics: Concerts | Tags: , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 01/19/2011 Music As A Weapon V: Disturbed, Korn, Sevendust, In This Moment (Rochester, NY @ Main Street Armory)

Comments are closed.

  • Latest Concerts

  • Last CD's Added

  • Latest Blog Posts