Rockstar Uproar Tour Featuring Disturbed, Avenged Sevenfold, and Stone Sour – First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre, Tinley Park, IL (08.21.10)
Posted by Aaron Titan on 08.27.2010
Disturbed, Avenged Sevenfold, Stone Sour, and others bring their package tour to the Midwest. 411's Aaron Titan checks in...
This was a weekend of grandiose epicness and the preface must be told…
I’ve gotten close with a core group of friends, the roots of which began during and shortly after I graduated from college a little over a year ago. Every time we come together, brain cells perish, cocktails are garnished, bonfires blaze, music is played (and sung along to poorly), and good times are had. While the events of the night before we left for the Rockstar Uproar Tour will remain mostly to your imagination, I will reveal one thing…
My friend Stephen brought his amateur breathalyzer to the festivities and yours truly blew a .11 around 1:30 in the morning. I would venture to say I wasn’t nearly the most intoxicated one at the party, so that gives you an idea of our state of mind leading into the concert.
We wake up, get a good late diner breakfast, get dressed in our metal garb - I wore a Down NOLA T-shirt - and head out on the road for the drive to the Chicago suburbs. We drive down Ridgeland in the awkward countryside that is inexplicably jammed in the middle of Tinley Park and see the large, black bastardization of architecture that is the First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre.
We are told we must circumnavigate at least half of the venue grounds in order to get to the gate that has the Will Call windows so I can get my Second Stage Photo Pass and free tickets. But hey, we made it! John and Stephen have already imbibed some bourbon and whiskey respectively and I’m too jittery and sweaty to think about getting a beer, but we’re here and Airbourne is playing!
We got to see Airbourne play a few songs including one of my favorites of their catalog, “Runnin’ Wild.” Sure, they’re Australian and are essentially ripping off a lot of AC/DC and Judas Priest riffs, but they’re damn good fun in spite of that! I can’t help but think that frontman Joel O’Keeffe sounds way better on the album than he does live, but that’s OK. Airbourne are more about their energy and vibe than musicality anyways. Plus, I started losing my voice just singing along to Slipknot’s Vol. 3: The Subliminal Verses and the song “Wonderwall” by Oasis on the drive up here, so who am I to judge?
Then, before the second stage festivities wrap up – yeah, we missed a few bands before Airbourne – Hellyeah’s crew is setting up their gear for a pulverizing onslaught of southern influenced scream-fueled metal. I get my ass up to security who see my pass and let me chill in front of the guardrail until the set begins. I greet a few dedicated metalheads who have definitely been here roasting in the sun, sweat, and dirt for far longer than I.
Hellyeah comes out and starts riffing their band’s namesake song. Vinnie Paul Abbott (ex-Pantera) hits the stage to the sheer worship of the crowd. Having only seen the guy play live briefly one time seven years ago, I’m fucking stoked that this guy is slamming the skins mere feet from where I’m standing.
Then Chad Gray (Mudvayne) stomps onto the stage and all hell has broken loose! Fans are moshing and crowd surfing. I’m snapping pictures while dodging metalheads being hoisted over the guardrail onto the ground as well as evading the beer cans that are sailing towards the stage. The group powers through old and new Hellyeah cuts, including “Stampede,” “Hell of a Time,” and “Cowboy Way.” As I make my way to the water bottle vendor, I hear Chad Gray tell the crowd, “If you see someone throw another fucking thing at the stage, punch them in their fucking teeth. I’d do the same for you!” ‘Tis a shame such a fun band had to deal with bullshit like that…
We made our way over to the main stage lawn area. A few of my friends buy the new Stone Sour T-shirts, Katie somehow gets a random guy to buy her a $14 hurricane drink, and I hear Halestorm’s Lizzy Hale serenading the crowd before they rock out to some better-known rock radio mainstays the rest of the night. Halestorm’s cool and all, but besides the all-band 4-drum tribal percussion break midway through the set, it wasn’t really my cup of tea. I basically found myself waiting for Stone Sour to hit the stage.
And hit the stage they did…while I was out getting a soda and taking a piss goddammit!
We made it back in time to catch the end of the set opener, “Mission Statement,” as well as Stone Sour staples such as “Reborn,” “Come What(ever) May,” and the set closer “30/30-150.” They also blasted through two other new songs, “Say You’ll Haunt Me” – which went over with the crowd way better than I would’ve anticipated – and “Digital,” which has a really refreshing riff to it. Oh, and "Through Glass" is still amazing and cheesy and was my favorite song they played. No homo!
The Avenged Sevenfold set was revealed about 25 minutes later and featured a color changing castle backdrop, three metal gates that spelled out ‘A7X’ and spewed fire, and a scaffolding rig up above with what appeared to be a man standing over the crowd. The scaffold fell on one side and the man descended below, only to be stopped suddenly...by the noose around his neck. Then, the piano intro to “Nightmare” played and the band took the stage, led first by Dream Theater’s drummer Mike Portnoy, who is filling the late Rev’s spot on drums for their tour dates this year.
The band blasted through A7X fan favorites such as “Critical Acclaim,” “Beast and the Harlot,” and “Almost Easy,” while delivering a healthy dosage of new stuff like “Welcome to the Family,” “Buried Alive,” and a wonderful ballad song called “So Far Away.” While I was really far from the stage on the amphitheatre’s lawn, I still felt the conviction and energy these guys are playing with in the post-Rev era of A7X. Having seen Avenged live two times prior, I was incredibly impressed and felt I caught these guys on one of their greatest heights yet. M. Shadows was fierce vocally and we know what Zacky Vengeance and Synyster Gates can do on guitars!
So now I’m thinking, “There’s no way Disturbed is going to top that shit!” I’ve seen these guys live twice before as well, and while I’ve always really liked them, their albums have never done it for me in a HUGE way besides the singles (except for Indestructible; that album is tasty). David Draiman also tends to come off like a self-righteous ass in the press more often than not, so I felt the show was theirs to win me over with.
And to start out, it was kind of lackluster. They opened with a brooding, unenergetic new song called “Remnants,” which followed a really cool Asylum-themed opening video package on the video screens that enveloped the stage background and the fronts of the drum riser and amp stacks.
But then, they kicked it up a notch with “Asylum,” a song that has everything I like about this band with the maturity they showed on Indescructible and then some. This song should’ve been the lead single rather than “Another Way to Die,” though I ended up liking that song much better live too than when I saw the music video on YouTube.
Besides those three new cuts, the set essentially consisted of Disturbed’s greatest hits, which was exactly what the crowd was craving, yours truly included. “Prayer” sounded amazing and pristine as did “Inside the Fire,” “Stricken,” and the medley of awesomeness: “Fear/Meaning of Life/Numb/Voices.”
What was really amazing seeing them this time was just how great the sound was for their set. The board mix that came through the venue’s PA was tremendous and had the right amount of bass punch, riff treble, drum thunder, and sheer decibals while not drowning out the vocals in the slightest. The acoustics at the First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre suck ass, so I floored that a band sounded so great there.
Just before closing with “Down With the Sickness,” David Draiman gave a shout-out to the troops and brought out some local servicemen and women onstage to the chants of “U.S.A.” from the crowd. The American flag backdrop just looked way too badass to even badmouth the cheap pop Draiman was going for here and really, it came off kind of cool.
The 411: And with that, the show was over and I left completely satisfied. While package tours like this force bands – even the headliners – to have shorter sets than they normally would, the sheer volume of quality acts and hit songs you get to hear in just a few hours’ time make up for it. The production quality on the main stage was tremendous and the attendees were a fun, mostly non-confrontational bunch compared to those I came across at Rockstar’s much heavier Mayhem Festival I attended last summer. I definitely got the bang for my buck – well, my ticket was free, but I drove our group and spent money on food and stuff – and would go back to the Uproar Fest again next summer as long as the lineup is as solid as it was this year.
