Metallica, Lamb of God, and The Sword at Key Arena

Friday, December 19th, 2008

Jason got us row 5 tickets for $60, day of show. It took me over an hour to get there, regardless that I live only 12 miles from the venue We missed The Sword completely, but caught the last half of Lamb of God’s set.

Lamb of God was good. Not as good as when they were headlining the show I saw in Spokane at the Big Easy in 2007 mainly because their sound equipment was nowhere near as extravagant as Metallica’s. Seemed like they had their jam-room equipment onstage, whereas Metallica had every speaker in the building hooked to their shit.

Metallica was so fucking loud and badass, though they sounded sloppy/lazy on most of their older solos and seemed to be off-time when entering older choruses. No songs off Load, Reload, or St. Anger were played. I nearly jizzed across the Arena when they went from “Master of Puppets” right into “Blackened”. I was basically screaming every word to all the older songs (hadn’t listened to the new album enough to know the lyrics yet). And Lars is the biggest Diva in metal.

There was no beer “at request of the tour”.

Setlists

The Sword

?

Lamb of God

1. Hourglass
2. Laid to Rest
3. Walk With Me in Hell
4. Ruin
5. Overhauled <- I caught from the middle of this song on
6. Now You’ve Got Something to Die For
7. Redneck
8. Black Label

Metallica

1. That Was Just Your Life
2. The End of the Line
3. Creeping Death
4. Harvester of Sorrow
5. One
6. Broken, Beaten & Scarred
7. Cyanide
8. Sad But True
9. Welcome Home (Sanitarium)
10. Wherever I May Roam
11. The Day That Never Comes
12. Master of Puppets
13. Blackened
14. Nothing Else Matters
15. Enter: Sandman
16. Motorbreath
17. Die, Die My Darling
18. Seek & Destroy

My ears and voice were fucked for several days after the show. Good times.

Dilated Peoples in Seattle

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

I just got home from the show. If there is anyone with enough balls to talk shit about Kanye West and even hang their head in shame during the Kanye track off Neighborhood Watch in the front row near the end of the show, it’s probably me. Fuck Kanye West. Oh, he is the executive producer on your album? Let me not even waste my [recently upgraded] bandwidth to check it out, let alone purchase it in any way, shape or form. “Fuck Kanye West.”

More will be posted regarding the show, which was awesome by the way, eventually. Remind me to rant about Kanye West, Angry Alaskans™, finding parking on Capital Hill, Iriscience’s solo shit (finally), and keeping it real at the show. Peace.

_josh

Atmosphere in Seattle

Thursday, May 22nd, 2008

We went to the Atmosphere show at Showbox Sodo on Tuesday. It took me over an hour to get across the 520 bridge. I imagine it would have taken just as long to go down to I-90 and take it across. I finally got to the hotel, we drank some tequila, then hit the Bar bar across the street from Showbox Sodo before the doors opened. None of us were too concerned about the opening acts so we stayed there until the line went down (it was raining most of the time while the sheep stood there) then got our tickets at will-call and went in.

“Any song done during the karaoke portion wasn’t done during the actual show.” The show was ok. I really don’t care about hearing a DJ spinning tight cuts or whatever. And the karaoke was wack for the most part, mostly because any song they did during that wasn’t done during the show, so all we got were half-assed versions of them. There were a lot of songs I wanted to hear that Atmosphere didn’t do, and they did some songs I didn’t want to hear (“Little Man”, fuck my life…).

After the show we went back to the Bar bar and had another beer, then headed back to the hotel where we got caught trying to get into the hot tub that was closed, went back to the room and drank more, then ordered a gigantic pizza that got devoured.

_josh

Atmosphere in Bellingham

Thursday, February 21st, 2008

This is from a couple months ago, and I never posted it because I wasn’t done, but fuck it. Here it is:

My friends came to pick me up at my apartment in Bellevue, the three non-drivers (myself included) downed some beer and some airplane bottles. It took a while to get there but traffic was decent besides one accident blocking two lanes. The venue (The Nightlight) was sick as shit. It was really nice (and clean before the show), had a few pool tables and this separate middle section that was like a huge living room, with couches and chairs and tables. The interior of the place was really cool too. Once the show started (Luckyiam opened) we each got a beer and went down in front of the stage. It is fucking awesome standing a few feet away from the stage drinking a beer and watching live hip-hop.

Lucky’s set was interrupted by Mac Lethal, who seemingly kicked Lucky and his DJ off the stage. Mac Lethal came hard. Real hard. A lot of his songs seemed to have music from more mainstream songs.

Lucky came back out and did some Living Legends songs. I was kind of annoyed that Slug didn’t come out and do his part of Night Prowler after Lucky did his.

Grayskul put on a good show and was very energetic. I fucking love their new album, Bloody Radio.

Slug had a mustache and kind of a mullet going on. Ant had some sort of Guido thing going on. Slicked back hair and shit.

One thing that really sucks is that this cool-ass venue closed down (or will soon). I fucking hate All Ages shows anyways, and this place was definitely the coolest one I’ve ever been to.

_josh

Site updates, moving, Bellingham

Thursday, October 11th, 2007

I’ve been modifying the crap out of  the already modified theme I’m using. I wanted to make sidebars on either side. Seems to be working ok. If something looks fucked (like the header image–that’s a placeholder), I’m probably still working on it. “Nothing is fucked, man.”

Moving sucks. “Moving sucks.”Packing, moving, and unpacking all that you own is tiring, boring, and close the bottom of my list of things I want to do. What makes it more lame is when you move to an apartment because then it’s inevitable that you will have to move at least one more time. Once everything is unpacked it starts to feel like home. I was actually surprised at how I went from hating my new apartment for the first couple days to actually liking it, despite its shortcomings as compared to my old one. This new one saves me $235/month just on rent, plus it’s just over a mile from work, so I can walk to work in about 15-20 minutes depending on how many lights I have to stop at along the way (there are at least half a dozen between). Something that makes moving worse is when you have to order something right before you move. Do you have it sent to your old (current) address or to your new one (that you haven’t picked up the keys for yet)?

I ordered the last online ticket for the Atmosphere show on TicketsWeb. The reason I say I got the last one is because I had one in my cart and it wouldn’t let me add anymore. Then after I checked out, the site said “there are no tickets available for the show you have chosen” and later you couldn’t even click on the link to buy tickets for that show. So I ordered that last ticket and had it sent to my current apartment even though I would move out that following weekend. I then went to USPS.com and filled out the Official Change of Address Form™, which I’ve become accustomed to in the last few years, moving after one-year leases are up.

The next day I found out that I would need to drive to Bellingham to get 2 more tickets for E&L. “I had 2 hours to drive almost a hundred miles in rush-hour traffic.”The place that sounded like they had the most tickets available out of the 3-4 places that had tickets to the show said they close at 7pm. At 5pm I got some money out of the ATM in building 25 and headed out. I had 2 hours to drive almost 100 miles in rush hour traffic. It’s a good thing I don’t have a problem driving over the speed limit because I was riding with the governor whenever I could (i.e. ~110 in the Altima 2.5 S). I saw a few cops before they saw me and a few more that already had someone pulled over. I finally got to the place at 6:55pm. I bought 3 of their last 6 tickets. I got an extra one because I figured I could have someone else go with us or sell it if I couldn’t. Come to find out they don’t close at 7pm but at 8pm. Whomever I talked to on the phone: thanks, dick. I don’t want to know what kind of trouble I could have gotten into if some hillbilly-ass cop would have clocked me doing 100+.

Monday, the day before the show, I waited until after work to contact anyone because I wanted to check my new mailbox in Bellevue one last time and contacting them and also call my old apartment complex to see if they had received anything for me before freaking out. I sent an e-mail that evening, with the show being ~24 hours away, and I’m one ticket short. The next day, with nothing but an autoreply that was basically the FAQ off their website, I called the old apartment complex in Redmond and the post office. Nothing. It was a pretty shitty day so far; ticket is MIA, my VPN shit stopped working, and I had a bunch of shit to do. Then, it was like the sun came out after day of pouring rain: the Superdome memory swap I was working on went through with no problems, there was an e-mail in my inbox from TicketsWeb saying that they had canceled the other ticket and had me on the Will Call list (which is what I would  have suggested they do anyways since I didn’t have the ticket yet), and then I got my VPN stuff working again. At ~5pm the old apartment complex calls my office to let me know that they just received my ticket.

I’ll talk about the show later.

_josh