We’re three days into Louder Than Life and I wanna start this blog off commending the incredible staff and volunteers for Danny Wimmer Presents. They have kept all fans safe. Made sure everyone is following the Covid guidelines and created a safe place for 40,000+ fans to enjoy live music again after the insanity that we’ve endured this past 18 months. Huge love to all DWP staff because this weekend has been nothing short of perfect!
Saturday was a take it easy kind of day though because there were only a handful of bands on the bill I was interested in seeing. I arrived later to the festival later than other days to catch the end of Spiritbox’s set and, yes, they live up to ALL the hype!
Bones UK was the first full set I watched Saturday and just like the last time I saw them, they left it all out on the stage with blistering guitar solos and their singer, Rosie Bones giving a big middle finger to everyone who thinks women can’t play rock music!
Ice Nine Kills was the band I was excited to see though. I remember back in 2012 at Warped Tour, they were walking the queue line handing out free copies of their EP. Now they’ve exploded and the Horror movie concept around their music is just brilliant! Almost everyone of their songs is based around an iconic Horror movie and throughout their set, they brought out Pennywise, Jason, Freddy and even performed their newest single based on the movie American Psycho! Overall, Ice Nine Kills performance was utter brilliance, no other way to describe it.
I took a long break after INK to take in the sites, sounds and smells of the festival grounds while also sipping on a $20 bourbon slushy. Was not worth 20 bucks…but it did taste incredible! I did catch one or two songs from Atreyu who, as always, sounded great.
I made my way back up to the stages though for Asking Alexandria who battled microphone issues through the first half of their set. Danny Worsnop’s mic kept cutting in and out on him that they ended up using a backing track to have some form of consistent vocals coming out of the speakers. After that was fixed, they were off the races cranking out their hit songs and enjoying every second of it.
A literal and figurative Loudmouth was ready to rage after Asking Alexandria and that man is Ronnie Radke and Falling in Reverse. To me, Ronnie is the modern day Axl Rose. You love to hate him, but you know every single word to all of his songs that you singalong while waving the middle finger at Ronnie. Ronnie soaked in all that hate though and went on to play one of the best sets of the day.
The best show of the day though absolutely went to Volbeat! Those dudes never fricking miss and know how to bring the HEAT every time they walk on stage. Volbeat debuted a new song to the crowd and announced that a new album will be coming out I believe in December.
The buzz around the entire festival though was for Machine Gun Kelly who, last week, took a shot at Slipknot calling them all 50 year old guys wearing masks. This caused all the maggots to come out in full force Saturday to sound their displeasure with MGK and BOY did they! Boo’s reigned down on MGK as soon as he appeared on stage. I took enjoyment out of it because I love Slipknot and dude shouldn’t be talking down rock royalty (similar to what he did in rap with Eminem). The boo’s were definitely getting to him though because after just about every song, he kept reassuring the crowd that he loves rock and to F all the haters. He even called out one dude for flipping him off.
Overall, MGK’s performance really wasn’t that bad. He sounded good, his band was solid and the few fans were really enjoying the set. I honestly enjoyed it WAYYYY more than his album work because he didn’t add the godawful autotune to his live voice which killed me while listening to ‘Tickets to My Downfall’.
I left out before Disturbed went on because I’m seeing those dudes in Evansville November 6th. Plus I needed to save all my energy for Day 4! Ayron Jones, Fozzy, Tremonti, Badflower, The Hu, From Ashes to New, Skillet, Seether, Breaking Benjamin, Judas Priest and night two of METALLICA!
