So I was at Gigantour with my friend on May 6th at the Aragon ballroom.
For those of you not in the know, the lineup is High on Fire, Job for a Cowboy, Children of Bodom, In Flames, and Megadeth.
Unfortunately, I had to miss High on Fire cause of transportation issues. It sucked ass, as I was totally hyped for seeing there.
We came up around halfway through Job For A Cowboy's set, and I remember just asking myself, "Why isn't anyone here moving?" Now, I'll admit, I haven't listened to much Job, and I had some preconceived ideas about them to boot. But they were pretty good (live, at any rate. Still don't like their music.) The pit was pretty mild, which was good, cause I'm a scrawny 13 year old kid and mosh pits can be scary at times. They were decent at best.
Then there was Children of Bodom. The crowd was pretty hyped for them, but I'm not a huge fan. It was cool watching Laiho play guitar, and the pits were rowdier. They played some newer material, and I remember some guy in the crowd playing air piano along with the songs. It was at the same time stupid and awesome. I remember they played "Hate Me" and "Hellhounds on my Trail", or whatever that song is called.
In Flames blew ass. In fact, as soon as Bodom went offstage, we got off the first floor and sat down somewhere in the balcony. No old material at all, but a couple other guys on the balcony were fans of their old stuff and we talked about Lunar Strain. Frankly, I haven't heard much of their new stuff, so I was expecting much more. But it's just amazing to see how far they've sunk. They even did a jumdafuckup. You heard me right. A JUMPDAFUCKUP. That's something Soulfly would do, not a once-respectable Melodeath band. At one point, the singer said something about how great the guys on the balcony were and shone the light on us. That's when half the balcony stood up and flipped him off and he shut up.
But the highlight of this night was the almighty Megadeth. I got up about as far up as I could get and waited for them to come on. They took a really long time to set up, and each time a piece of their equipment was brought on stage the crowd would go crazy. You could tell that everyone came there to see them and that the crowd would be amazing once the band came on stage. They played "Run to the Hills" over the PA to keep us content, and the crowd got really into it. It was great. Once they finally came on, the show started for real. The whole band played really well and was really into it and full of energy. Dave was sexier than ever live; I couldn't stop staring at his godly hair. Jeff Loomis was pretty good too. You could really tell that he was a really proficient lead guitarist. They started off with Sleepwalker, which was an okay opener. During the breakdown in "Wake Up Dead", EVERYONE started moshing. There were pits popping up in every part of the audience, just because the breakdown is that good. The rest of their set was up to par as well, especially their closer, "Holy Wars". Dave dedicated "Gears of War" to a friend of one of the guys who had VIP access who had died in the Iraq War, and he talked about his feelings when he heard "Countdown to Extinction" had reached #2 on the charts. At the end, he tossed his wristband into the audience and there was a massive dogpile of, like, 20 people who tried to get it.