Alice outshined by Staind and Benjamin at Kiss Fall Fest
It was an opportunity few could give the cold shoulder: a chance to see the reunited, albeit reinvented Alice in Chains and washed up nu-metal quartet Staind. Together on the same bill in San Antonio. Who could lose?At the end of an 8 hour day at 99.5 KISS FM's Fall Fest, I learned a few things:
- Perhaps Staind is not washed up and melting in an identity crisis
- Some reinventions are best left to the imagination
- The sound engineers working these days blow worse than a Wham! reunion tour
They probably made a wise decision. After the sound engineers couldn't fix a ghastly squeak reverberating from the vocal mic, A7X stormed off stage barely cranking one song. If the board operators made me sound like a horse shitting during a plane crash, I'd probably heave my mic and throw a hissy fit, too.
"Bullshit," chanted the crowd.
Breaking Benjamin, the reason I spent $64.50 on seats, followed the Sevenfold spectacle in fantastic, show-stealing form. The Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania quartet was warmed by a 1,000 deeper crowd probably totalling 8,500.
The band's stage presence has flourished and its musical heaviness has matured. Singer Ben Burnley's vocals attacked with a most appropriate, razor-sharp growl. There were no clunkers in this set - every song rocked like the final evening of a crack-head's misspent youth. Material pulled from all three records - Home (a song about The Wizard of Oz) and Polyamorous (both from the self-titled debut), Dance With The Devil, Had Enough and Breath (from the latest release, Phobia), and Breakdown and Away (from the platinum We Are Not Alone).
Of course, the band chugged through its monster hits So Cold and The Diary of Jane.
The four times I've seen this fearsome foursome, they've never received proper praise. Gunning a work-a-holic ethic and microscopic tightness as an ensemble, Benjmain plays the concert grinch, even when Christmas is three months away; even when stubborn fans of that night's headliner won't admit there's been a robbery.
Stone Sour touts its own muscular sound, one that has also expanded in the live arena. If seeing singer Corey Taylor (also in Slipknot) bark "what the fuck is free about it?" in a song lambasting the Bush administration punches your adrenaline, then Stone Sour will keep your boat sailing happily.
The metal-tinged rockers, who take their name from a Southern whisky, garnered the first deafening cheers of the day (more applause should have been directed as Benjamin).
All Taylor had to do was yell "Guess what?"
"What?," the crowd yelled.
"I'm looking at you through the glass..."
That was all it took for the near 12,000 crowd to completely understand the singer, to sing a current rock radio hit, Through Glass, louder than the band could play. While Stone Sour sports the refined live sound Slipknot can't seem to muster, Taylor ensured Saturday, his excessive and violent headbanging wasn't lost.
More on Staind and Alice in Chains later...
posted by Robert Kleeman @ 12:48 AM
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