Prog Metal !!!!! Stadio Olimpico Roma 20 June

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   What a night for my first foray into the world of live prog metal.  Mastadon and Iron Maiden sandwiching a extreme of non prog..acts, Machine Head and... ahhh... Motorhead.

Mastadon opened things up, interesting if not exactly what I enjoy listening to usually.  My usual complaints hold up.... non-existant bass and vocals that sounded great if you liked listening to growling.. not so good if you wanted to understand just what the hell they were singing. The music... very very good on the prog scale... always shifting with highly capable instrumentalists especially the drummer. I understand there was some bickering about their addition here.  Bah.. they belong here. Not my thing but definitely prog-metal.. as I think many see it (more on that later).  The crowd was really into them judging by the smoke wafting from the front of the stage (being old elitist farts we sat under the cover of the  of the stadium roof with the families and the rest of the ...hahah.. respectable people).  Liked them enough that we are heading out shortly on another album buying spree and will look for something by them to add to our collection.

Next up Machine Head....   the less said the better....

terrible. Simply terrible...  best clue..... the noticeable lack of fists waving in front of the stage and the increase of smoke wafting up from the front hahahha.  Lots of growling.. and little melody. Was painful on the ears....  

Next up ...the legends themselves... Motorhead.

By then it had got dark enough for the video screens to be used.  Lemmy still has it... voice, chops ( well... he can still wield that monster Rickenbacker).  An hour plus of ear-splitting kick ass speed metal.  Lots of solos... tons of riffs... vocals that sounded like Pavarotti in comparison to the previous acts and melody.. again... that sounded like Bach in comparison to others.   

Finally... the mighty Iron Maiden.

I'm no expect on Maiden.... I still have not listened to a complete album by them since high school but it baffles me as to what people have against them.  If having audible and distinctive bass that does more than double guitar riffs and reinforces the bass drums... intelligent... INTELLIGBLE lyrics...  technical and virtuostic solos... high structured and varied compositions means it isn't prog-metal... just really what the hell IS prog-metal.  Of the prog... I think that is spoken for... as far as the metal...some modern metal heads might be put off by the embarrising reminders of the glory days of metal... the hyper-posing of the guitarists.. the funny as hell stage props...  having the guitarist use Eddies machine gun to play was simply priceless hahhaha.  It may or not be prog metal.. but it's metal to me... and as a elitist prog head...  it was prog enough for me.  The show was a nice mix of the old and the new.  The crowd went wild and had even the normally reserved me shaking it with pumping fists and singing along.  Great show and looking forward to seeing them again when they come back to Italia next year.

next up...  Symphony X and ..ahhahha... Dream Theater when they come here this fall. Now that should be fun.

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