Matt, Brian, and all the rest attend a Festival of Uproars!

It was a gamble, but the Uproar Festival was totally worth skipping a class, driving three hours, and feeling awful Tuesday morning. Showing no support for the small names, we only showed up to see the last 3.5 bands, and I will review each band's performance while pointing out some of the most memorable parts of the festival.

HaleStorm: N/A

I'm not going to give HaleStorm a grade because we arrived in the middle of some odd keg-drum solo and then heard "I Get Off On You" as their final song, but honestly, I'm not too sad I missed them. I do love certain rock bands with female vocalists, but this chick just did not have a good voice; I think she was going for the punk-rock image by having a rougher voice than most female vocalists, and it just doesn't work for me. I will say that the band's drummer was an energetic maniac for the brief period of time I watched him.

Stone Sour: 7/10

Stone Sour did a good job on giving it their all at the end of a long tour, and Mr. Taylor did not half-ass his vocals. There was a lot of talking with the audience--which I like very much-- and a decent setlist. The biggest problem I had with seeing Stone Sour this time was that their entire self-titled debut album was neglected from the setlist (even Bother didn't make the cut!). When you have only three albums to your band's name, this can become a problem for a fan who has only listened to that album in its entirety. However, the rest of the songs were performed masterfully, and Through Glass was performed in an interesting and awesome way. I didn't pay much attention to the rest of the band members, but they gave me very little reason to give them any, choosing to stay on their designated side of the stage the entire show. Overall, a good showing by Stone Sour, and I probably enjoyed their short setlist more than I would have enjoyed a full Slipknot setlist, so I can't complain.


Avenged Sevenfold: 10/10

 Having never seen A7x before, I did not know what to expect, and I certainly did NOT expect the stellar performance they gave us Monday Night. I can honestly say that they had the second best stage setup and performance I've ever seen (behind Alice Cooper), and you could tell that they had way more fun on stage than any of the other bands--not to mention you could tell the band members weren't just band members, but also close friends, which is not often seen in rock bands these days. There were three songs I wanted to hear from A7x (Beast and the Harlot, Afterlife and Almost Easy), and they played each one of them perfectly. A7x and Disturbed both played my personal "Top Three," a feat which some of my favorite bands could not accomplish! Maiden didn't do it, Metallica didn't do it, Priest didn't do it, Rush didn't do it, Megadeth didn't do it, Dethklok didn't do it, and this might be why I gave the guys a perfect score at the beginning of this review, but they truly are great live. I must admit that I was expecting some sort of fancy drum solo from Mr. Portnoy, but this never happened, and I think this is because they want him to feel like a part of the band and not the star of the show, and I was okay with this.

Disturbed: 9/10

As I said earlier, Disturbed played the three songs I demanded that they play, then went several steps further and played almost every song I like by them! Of all the bands, I think they had the best setlist, except for one glaring flaw--the reason I gave them a 9 instead of a 10. They opened with a new song, and it wasn't their latest single, so I was definitely not the only one who never heard it before. The opening song is probably the absolute most important song in the Rock and Roll setlist, because it adds to the pumping up of the crowd (they're already pumped because the concert is finally starting), so picking a song that maybe starts out slow to play when the lights are dark, then bursting into a fast/heavy part of the song (Battery, Aces High, and Nightmare [A7x] are prime examples of this). I think their latest single, Another Way to Die, would have made the best opener because of the fact that it's their newest song and because it has the slow intro leading to a straight up metal-riff. The highlight of their setlist was Indestructible, which caused a great electricity in the crowd's enthusiasm and ended with a patriotic chanting of "USA! USA! USA!"


Top 5 Funny Moments of the festival:
1. Woman flashing her boobs on camera for the entire arena, with David Draiman (sp?) commenting on them by saying "Your mother blessed you, sweetie."
2. Random skeleton man suspended in the air during the last A7x song, M. Shadows offering $100 to the person who could hit him with a shoe.
3. Corey Taylor losing his train of thought, commanding the crowd to say "Fuck you Corey!" and replying by saying "Yeah, fuck you too."
4. Random fat guy impersonating lead singer of A7x during Nightmare (first song).
5. Drummer of HaleStorm grabbing one cymbal and hitting another cymbal with said cymbal to create a double cymbal sound.

My 5 favorite songs (based on personal preference, energy of the band and enthusiasm of the crowd):
1. Indestructible
2. Beast and the Harlot
3. Almost Easy
4. Prayer
5. 30-30-150

Overall rating of the entire show: 8.5/10

As I said, I had to go through some shit to see this, and it set me back $45, but I definitely approved of the concert and do not regret for a second going to it.