Children of Bodom, The band was all over the place, the sound system was weird and the vocalist had NO stage precense what so ever. He seemed more interested to interact with the rest of the band than with the audience.. I was not impressed at all.

Gotta agree with you there. CoB areone of my all time favorite bands but couldn't help but feel disappointed by them. Well I thought they were pretty energetic and I generally had a great time (Alexi was puking up his guts though). The only thing was I didn't like their live guitar sound noway near as much as their studio tone. Frankly couldn't hear any of Alexi's leads. But I know the venue they played wasn't the greatest for me.

Definitely my most disappointing gig because every gig I've been to has been awesome.


Thats a shame. Because when I saw Arch Enemy they had the greatest live sound I ever heard (Alright probably 2nd to Iron Maiden ). Huge awesome wall of sound of guitars that cut through perfectly and could hear every note perfectly. I think it all depends on the venue really.

I missed these replies so I'll briefly better-late-than-never-them. I've found it really does depend on the sound engineer. 2 examples of the same venue running consecutive weeks with 2 headline bands of similar genre and origin.

Islington Academy, London.
Small venue which usually has a good sound. I like this venue.

[Week 1] Exodus
I'm not sure if they brought in their own engineer, but the acoustics sounded boomy and muddy and I went home utterly disappointed. The guy behind the desk looked like “Fat Jake, The Cowboy”, complete with hat.


[Week 2] Testament
Same venue, different engineer. This was the “One Night Only” gig where they played their first 2 albums in their entirety, with several tracks from The Formation Of Damnation for the encore. The sound was brilliant. Loud, but crisp. Bass punchy, but not boomy. Vocals clear and present. I had a great evening headbanging with a huge grin on my face sloshing beer everywhere.

The difference between the two bands was striking. It's also worth noting that there's a lot of venues that have a balcony overhanging some of the ground floor areas. Islington is one, ULU is another, as is the Brixton Academy. I've found it's best to steer clear of the balconies and venture into the open space. The boominess tends to get exaggerated under them.


Outdoor venues usually have a different setup and will sound different to indoor venues. When done right, either will sound amazing.

I'm a bit late, but holy shit.

Slayer. They came on stage and just played song by song. No passion, no conversation with the audience. Lame.

Sonata Arctica at Graspop Metal Meeting 2008. The sound was crap, only the bass came through. If the keyboards, vocals and guitars did play at that time, I never knew of it. Left after two songs.

Really? I regret not going to that concert

Dunno if anyone mentioned it or not, but the Between The Buried And Me/Devin Townsend/Cynic show at the State Theater in St. Petersburg, FL was the most horrific fucking thing I have ever been to.

BTBAM did alright, but they went on after Cynic and DT, who I went to go see.

Cynic.. are some of the most drugged out fucking people ever.. and the music was god awful. They came on stage and the guitarists hit one note and let it ring out like a drone song while the singer -- who was so high on pills or some shit -- sat or rather nearly fell off of a stool on the stage while he did these weird faux Gregorian Chant like vocals. The drummer was on speed, I swear. The feedback from the guitars rang out for like ten minutes -- it felt like hours -- as he fucking SWITCHED out his cymbals repeatedly. He'd take one off, switch it with another one... then stare at them and put them back. He switched his high hats like four times. To top it off, the vocalist was saying weird ass shit into the mic.

" You know.. you guys... I love you guys... you're so beautiful.. seriously, you're all so beautiful... "

A friend of mine shouted, " JIM MORRISON, GET OFF THE STAGE " at him.

The biggest disappointment was Devin Townsend's set. There was no energy on the stage, the live guitarist and bassist he had with him just stood there and looked bored; like they were only there for a paycheck. Devy was just... boring. I do not like the new album at all, but was expecting him to pull some good material from his other solo projects out of the bag. Instead, I swear, every song was down-tempo'd and nothing but palm muted open chords. People were fucking LAUGHING at him from the crowd. He talked so big, " YOU GUYS READY FOR THIS HEAVY RIFF!? ... *CHUGCHUG.. CHUGCHUG... CHUGCHUG* "

It was at this point that I walked out of the show and into the bar with my pals.. and we stayed there until BTBAM went on.. which wasn't really too great, either.


Worst 30 dollars I've ever spent.

Warped Tour '09. All. Of. It.

I was there for Bad Religion and Flogging Molly, the rest of the line-up was pretty much just random crap. Breathe Carolina? A Skylit Drive? Attack Attack? Fucking We the Kings? Seriously, I have never seen so much horrible music in one place. The worst moment was when I thought to myself, "hmm, Brokencyde... haven't heard of them before, I'm going to check them out". Oops.

If you've never heard of Brokencyde, count yourself lucky. Now imagine a mixture of the worst of douchebaggy Southern rap, screamo faggotry, bastardized -core breakdowns and extremely bland techno, performed by some dude with AutoTune up to 11 and a guy screaming like a cat in a washing machine. I staggered out after 10 minutes with bleeding ears and left the festival immediately. I am never going again if they let bands like that on the tour. (And the worst part is, the Dickies, DOA and Fishbone were all on the tour, and they weren't at my venue...)

Oh god, no more, please, MAKE IT STOP!

haha i can't believe you've had the utter dis-pleasure of seeing that band live! amazing. i would fucking love to see that shitty band perform - they are utterly dismal -yet so thrillingly funny. how can they not know how much they suck?
anyway, yeah i never bothered with warped tour - even back in the 90s when it was just melodic/pop punk - none of that screamo/emo/core faggetry, but still a bit gay.

I don't know which show you were at but judging from that there was a massive improvement from that time and the Australian shows. Maybe it was just the setlist but I thought that the show was bloody brilliant. And then when he wasn't blowing minds by unleashing wicked songs he'd entertain us with lines such as "You're here on a Saturday night? You could be at home watching Antiques Roadshow". I also found his weird facial expressions throughout the show to be rather amusing.

It was horrible.

Maybe Devy realizes that Fail-orida is just as shitty of a state as the rest of us here do and that's why his performance sucked.

When I saw Them Crooked Vultures, they had some local band open for them. AWFUL! Imagine Radiohead, Coldplay, and Sonic Youth just had a mentally ill child! There was no guitarist, you couldn't hear the bass, the drummer had a four piece drum kit, the keyboarding was simple, AND the keyboardist and drummer did dual vocals! HOLY FRICKIN' SHIT! Luckily Them Crooked Vultures were spectacular.

I also saw Converge live. The worst part is that High On Fire had a short set. Converge's singer then screams something like "You hate us, don't you?" to the audience. I yell back "Yes!" People near me got a great laugh, but I'm disappointed that Converge couldn't hear me...

Echoing Angels. It was a part of a church camp, and every time they played was just boring. They suffer from the same problem that many other Christian bands do; standing completely still. Seriously, only the frontman moved, or for that matter did anything interesting. When they didn't play their concert, and were just playing typical Christian songs, they stretched them out to the length of a Metallica instrumental. Although the band is cool, and I have to give props to the bassist for breaking his low E with just his fingers.

Changing strings every once in three years may be worth the trouble.

This is a great thread but it will be pretty hard to top that, hats off to you, sir!

Worst live METAL show I ever saw was Testament. And I LIKED Testament at the time! (this was back in San Francisco in the late 80's by the way, havent seen em play since.) Every time I saw them, the sound was actually horrible, everything was turned up to full volume but you couldnt even hear what they were playing, it was just a solid wall of noise. Worse still, the band was typically totally wasted and sloppy, what little you could hear sounded like half-assed drunken versions of their songs. Between (and during) every song, the singer would harangue the audience to get in the pit and be violent, which some assholes would always interpret as "Lets just throw random sucker punches at people who are trying to watch the band, they wont even see who punched em, because even though we may be chickenshits, at least we're violent and MOSHING!" And mind you, I loved to mosh back in the day, but Testament shows had the lamest moshpits I was ever in. So in summary, sound was shit, band played like shit, crowd was lame, but I still liked the first couple Testament albums.