So, the other day Metallica came to india and I went there. Show was pretty mediocre, but worst part was when as we entered, we were asked to give our bags to ''security'' who would keep our bags in the stands. All that was great until we saw that the so-called stand was the swampy piece of land at a corner of the venue. What's worse, people stole valuables like phones and ipods and cash. My 80 GB ipod and Rs.12,000 (= about $225) were stolen.

Nile was also going to come to india, but apparently the Indian Embassy didn't give one of the members their visa. I don't know who that is.

What bad shit happened to you when you went to gigs?

My chains were stolen too in a concert, but that´s only chains, so it doesn't terrible at all.
But in a concert, full of youngsters, i was beaten by a fat and old guy, and many other guys too. My father was very angry, and not only him, anyone who see him. Because... a man of 40 years fighting with guys of 17-18 (I was 17 back then)? That was completely stupid. This guy really beat the crap out of us all.
Anyway, it was a very good show, and some months later, or maybe a year later, a friend of my father told me i was avenged at last. That doesn't make me happy, but the guy deserves it.

hideously expensive drinks, NO PASS OUTS and friggin' smokers polluting the outside 'garden bar' areas always ruins it for me oh and bands starting like 3 hours after the doors open.

edit: oops, specific examples...
when my mate and i were about 16 we bought tickets to see primus but when we turned up at the gig they denied us entry because we were too young, we had to flog our tickets off at the door.
AND the guy who sold us the tickets [from the shop] was actually there!

Nearly had my neck broken by a fat crowd surfer who landed on my neck. This was during Exodus' set when they toured with Hatebreed many years back. Rob Dukes almost killed me too because he jumped into the crowd and I was right up front.

When I saw Judas Priest I had another bad experience with a fat person... except this one was a really fat woman whose left thigh stole my seat. Fortunately there was an empty seat in front of me that I moved to.

I drove about two hours or so to New Jersey to see Heaven Shall Burn perform at this shitty small venue in the middle of nowhere. Though I can partially understand why HSB cancelled after arriving at the venue, it still pissed me off. I was tempted to practice my skills at swearing in German when I went outside to confirm that the band was indeed leaving (fortunately did not, but hey I got to meet the band and find out that the promoter of the show was a complete asshole).

My first concert that I drove to outside of my hometown was In Flames in Philadelphia and that was a shitstorm from the get-go. I drove a big fucking white van at the time and was really bad at parallel parking... didn't stop me from trying but I failed and smashed the front end of some lady's SUV in a dark alley. My rear bumper wasn't really that damaged... just a dent, but damn did that get me in the ass with the insurance. The show was also sold out and I almost didn't get to go in until someone had an extra ticket for sale. The show itself was awesome and quite memorable... so it all worked out in the end.

Kult ov Azazel and Goreaphobia performed along with many other bands at The Silo, a show that was quite a dream come true since it was a decent metal fest in my home town... but the show ran very late, Kult ov Azazel only played for about 25 minutes before they had to cut it short at 2:05 AM, and during the soundcheck for Goreaphobia one of the members said "I'm never playing here again" to one of his bandmates.

Though not really a bad experience, it was very strange to have been to a show where I was the only paying audience member. There was also only one band Confessions of a Lifetime, since four other bands dropped out. The cool thing? They still played.

Same thing happened to me when a huge band in the scene at the time was playing, last year, I was only 15 then.
Oh, and that band is the only indian band (yet) to have made it to Wacken..

You guys should check out this thread for a good read: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=61089&hilit=worst+concert

i went to a concert where someone died(later revived but they were dead) it was a hardcore kinda concert and some moron kicked another person in the chest with steel capped boots, not fun

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/m ... 5814510622

proof i didnt make it up, did not see much though

im having a hard time thinking of examples, but the last post reminded me of this one thing, it wasn't technically a show i was at. i was hosting a show at the stone pony in asbury park new jersey, a small local metal show, and i noticed the roads were all blocked off outside, there was a club accross the street having a hardcore show, and apparently some dudes beat some guy to death for no reason. so that kinda sucked

I was at the Life of Agony show at L'Amour in Brooklyn in 1994 the night that kid was thrown from the stage by a bouncer and subsequently dies from head trauma. I actually saw a bunch of people dragging him to the exit while he was unconscious to an ambulance. Very bad vibes that night.

poor kid, what happened to the bouncer for that?

He was tried and acquitted. Although, I believe the venue itself was sued and had to pay the family, but not sure about that. Here is a link to an article about it.

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/27/nyreg ... death.html

My ex (who was indie/scene) dragged me to some real stinkers over the years.

Weirdest experience was seeing the Bodom / Black Dahlia / BTBAM tour. BTBAM was playing when I walked into the huge venue.They had a PA speaker in the back of the venue that was just playing the vocals for some reason. So I walk in and jump from surprise when it sounds like someone is screaming about 6 inches away from the back of my head.

I've always been a much bigger fan of small/midsize club shows rather than big honking arena shows. Not that those can't be fun but...I appreciate the music more if I am close enough to really see the band play up close and interact with them.

So with that said, I've had mostly good, some forgettable but not necessarily "bad," and a few definitely bad, experiences at gigs. Probably the worst one of all for me would be the 1988 Monsters of Rock debacle. Chalk it up to another reason I dont like big shows, but this would have been the first time I got to see Metallica. I would end up having to wait another 4 months to see them after this total FUBAR of a day, but anyway the show was at Candlestick Park (home of the 5 time world champion 49ers.) I left around 1 PM, show started at 2, figure it wouldnt take much longer than half hour to get there, park, and walk in and if I missed the first band, so what- I didn't really care much about them anyway (It was Kingdom Come who were opening.)

Thing is, they sold about twice as many tickets as the stadium capacity, since (by their logic) the official stadium capacity only includes seating, not standing room at field level. Pretty sound logic, except- the parking lots were not built to accomodate that many people. So I get to the stadium at a quarter to 2 and the lot was full. Even worse, you didn't realize that until you were stuck, bumper to bumper, in a gridlocked holding pattern circling the stadium waiting to either turn around and try to park somewhere else, or just give up and leave. So there we sat...for three hours, engine idling, stifiling hot, praying that there would at least be SOME auxiliary lot that was full, knowing (correctly) that if we tried to park on the street it would be at LEAST a two mile hike to the stadium. Parking anywhere in San Francisco is pretty close to impossible for non-residents as the houses and driveways are so close together; any on-street parking fills up pretty fast. ESPECIALLY with some 10-20,000 rock fans driving around competing for spaces. And even then, the area around Candlestick Park was a poor, drug-infested area of the city and you could pretty much guarantee your car would get fucked with (or you yourself would) if you left it there.

So, while we were sitting there in gridlocked traffic, Kingdom Come came and went, then Metallica started and I was just AGONIZING that I was missing them, sitting in the car. Then Metallica finished. GReat- the one band I wanted to see. STILL stuck in traffic waiting to park. Dokken starts, they wrap up and by then, we had reached the exit of the lot and of course there was not one single spot, legal or otherwise! to park a vehicle anywhere near the stadium. We drove around "Da Hood" near the stadium and of course it was the same story; and instead of parking spaces all we saw were 40ounce-drinking gangstas giving us dirty looks. So, with three out of five bands already finished, and the prospect of ever actually getting into the stadium diminished, we gave up and accepted defeat. We returned home, unused tickets in hand, hot, pissed off and generally bummed.

Now, of course, the smart thing to do would have been to take the bus or the transit system. Heck, if we had flipped a u-turn before ever entering the parking lot, drove to the nearest transit station, parked there and then hopped on a train or bus to the stadium, we still probably could have at least caught part of Metallica, and seen the rest of the show without hassle. We never thought of that though, and I guess its partly our fault, being 18 and living in the suburbs, we just assumed we could drive and just park anywhere without hassle. After all, when going to shows in downtown San Francisco, there was always SOME parking near the waterfront. We werent prepared for this. Ah well, at least I did get to see Metallica a few months later.

thank you for the reply and the link, some gigs i have been to im suprised there isnt more death at concerts

The worst experience for me was on the Bison BC/Black Cobra/Priestess/High on Fire tour. Bison BC, Black Cobra and High on Fire were all excellent and put on great shows but Priestess? Ugh, they were so boring. And I lost my seat to some hipster douche so I had to stand for about an hour. Speaking of hipsters, it was funny, there were a bunch there that came for Priestess but left once High on Fire took the stage. It was nice to see them leave!!!

you sit at normal club shows?

My worst experience was by far the Brutal Truth show I went to see about three years ago in Rochester. There was this shitty as hell god awful band opening called Safety Off who was basically a wanna be slipknot. Their music was garbage and they dressed up in weird ass bloody costumes and had some fat as hell whale of a woman doing chick vocals for them, not too mention there was only 5 people watching them and they were all a bunch of weird as hell kids wearing fan boy shirts for the band and blood on their faces. Then some shitty hardcore band played with literally not a single person watching, and yet for some reason the vocalist kept talking to the crowd and asking questions as if there was actually people there - but there wasn't... Finally when a decent Rochester band played called Abdicate, their show got cut off right away because some kids started moshing and the security threw them out because they apparently developed no moshing rules. Abdicate got pissed at this and stopped during their second song. Then sons of Azrael played, and they were a decent band at the time but the sound was so awful I could not hear a single note. Finally, when brutal Truth played about 6 hours into the show, everyone had left due to the shitty pre-conditions and I sat with a crowd of about 12 people watching brutal truth play a good set but we couldn't mosh or anything so it was boring as hell.

Worst concert in the history of mankind.

Also, there is one venue that in my hometown that is notorious for scheduling shows that don't actually exist, and we would show up only to find out that the band was not actually coming and it was just a huge lie in the first place. Thank god that place is under new management.

Way back, I went to see Metallica in the RDS, for maybe the second o third time (I didn't know many other bands back then). A mosh pit had started and I tried to join in... except i charged at some guy and he just smugly dodged me and I fell on my fucking ass and ended up looking like an utter retard, much to the laughter of everyone else. I was so embarrassed, and still, am, that I avoid mosh pits altogether at every gig I've been to since, though I tell and friends with me that I'm afraid of getting hurt, which hilariously feels less shameful than telling that story to anyone I know. To be honest, it's one of the reasons that I barely go to gigs anymore.

Once when I went to see Theatres Des Vampires with my ex we were right at the front for the support act (no idea who they were though) and I got hit in the head by the guitarist's guitar (as it was a small venue with no barrier). Only really bad experience only other ones is getting a migraine before Ensiferum performed at BloodStock Open Air in 2006 (only reason I went) so I missed most of their set and being punched in the ribs (because someone pushed me forward into the person in front of me) at a Combichrist concert.

Man, Finegan- that Brutal Truth debacle would have been pretty @#% demoralizing. It's bad enough that there are no-moshing rules, but even worse when the security arbitrarily decides, in the middle of a gig, that moshing will no longer be allowed and then proceeds to start randomly tossing people for moshing (who, under what rules were posted, clearly hadnt been doing anything wrong up to that point!) I have seen this happen; again, at bigger shows, not small clubs, thankfully!

I also hate it when clubs advertize shows that they never had intended to book; I read somewhere a thread on this board about this kind of thing happening a lot in South American venues? There was one instance here involving the Neurolux (a local club where Priestess actually played a GREAT set opening for High on Fire back in 2009...sounds like RocoCooper must've caught them on a bad night?) The owners advertized a show for the night AFTER the band was actually booked; I suspect this was due more to incompetance or human error than deliberate falsehood. So what happened was, the Supersuckers played to a mostly empty club, and the following evening, tons of people showed up, tickets in hand, only to be told that the show had already happened the previous night. I was one of those unhappy customers but hey, they did refund the ticket and at least it beats sitting in a hot idling car in a stadium parking lot for 3 hours and still not getting into the gig.

This was more of a depressing gig than a bad gig. I saw Green Carnation play Seattle during their first/last North American tour. The show was on a rainy Wednesday night and maybe 15-20 people showed up. The band sounded great but apparently the tour was horribly planned/executed so turnouts like this were happening each night. The band ended up breaking up a few months later. I dug up this quote from Tchort about the tour/breakup -

"Tchort announce that the current line up of Green Carnation has split up.

Although releasing the amazing concert DVD A night under the Dam earlier this year, the band felt drained of energy after the miserable organized USA tour put together by The End Records and their booking agent. The End Records being one of the main supporters of the band the last years, bringing hope back to Green Carnation's view on the music business, left the band with broken promises, huge debts, theft of license money and a poor organized tour draining the band for energy."

Pit injuries: bloody mouth, black eyes, sprained ankle, fat lip

The worst experience was as a kid the feeling of suffocating under numerous bodies when a shitload of people fall down at a large scale concert at once and you're at the bottom of it and can't breath.

I'm somewhat curious to know what venue this was.

At any rate, my worst show experience was very recently, and it wasn't even a metal gig.

In November 2011, I went to see Steve Wilson's solo band at the Nokia/Best Buy theater in NYC on the supporting tour for his Grace For Drowning album. I always take the train into the city when traveling there. SW was the only act on the bill and it was known in advance that as a preamble to the actual performance, for about an hour from when the doors opened, there would be a visual presentation accompanied by the new Bass Communion album (for those who don't know, Bass Communion is another SW project, in a droning, ambient industrial vein. The album is called Cenotaph for those interested). Doors at 7 per the ticket, show at 8 per common knowledge from other stops on the tour.

Apparently, there was some snafu where the venue management would not allow the band to hit the stage until 9:30-9:45. So the crowd stood there being bombarded with this somewhat harsh ambient industrial drone for two and a half hours. The first hour and a half was basically in total darkness, and the last hour included the video (which was a nondescript image of a ghost on a beach, with the angle changing every half hour or so). In addition to all that, the show was presented in quadrophonic surround sound-so not only was the main speakers blaring this mechanical drone, there was also a full PA setup behind the audience. You were getting blasted with droning ambient music from all angles, in a crowded floor (the general admission stadium seating in the back of this venue was curtained off to accommodate the rear PA), and people were just getting agitated.

I was so frustrated because I only caught 4 songs of a planned 13 song set before I had to split to catch my train back to NJ (plus I was so tired from being up at 4:30am that day for work). What was more infuriating was the fact that from the 4 songs I saw, the band was absolutely incredible, and I would've killed to see the whole set (including the 23 minute centerpiece "Raider II").

At first I thought that this was all intentionally planned as some artistic indulgence, but SW later took to facebook to apologize for the situation and decry the venue management. Rough night .

As for metal shows, the worst experiences include sitting through endless shitty local hardcore/metalcore/etc. local opening bands, as others described here.

There was an incident surrounding the first time I saw Dream Theater in 1998, but that had nothing to do with the band or the venue; it was mine and my friend's fault that we had a shitty night. Firstly, my friend had locked his keys in his car on a snowy December night. We eventually had someone from the venue (a bouncer or something) spring us with a slim jim. Then, because we did poor research in advance of the show, we didn't realize when we bought the tickets that this was a one off acoustic show and not a full DT show. So they show the full 5 Years In A Livetme video before the performance, and we're a little annoyed because we had literally just bought and watched that very same 2 hour video earlier in the week. Then as they hit the stage, James LaBrie says "Who wants to hear "Pull Me Under"?" [crowd roars in approval] "Well too bad, we ain't playing it. We're sick of that fucking song". Only to launch into an acoustic version of a Falling Into Infinity b-side called "Cover My Eyes" (which DT aficionados know as a straight up pop rock song; no prog, no metal). We just looked at each other and said "fuck it" and split.

This is getting excessively long. I could continue, but I'll stop now .

That sounds awful. SW shows I've heard are fairly high budget, or at least present themselves like they are high budget. Top it off with the quality of the performance and music, that makes it seem like a bigger disappointment. I'd love to see him (primarily PT) live. Though if the conditions are like that over here, I doubt I'd stick around. 2 and a half hours that kind of music, let alone waiting for two and a half hours, is torture.

Man this sounds awesome to me, except maybe that the video seems lame. When I saw Throbbing Gristle, they only played an hour, and that was intense. I'm not familiar with BC's output, but it sounds like it'd be similar to TG.

As for shit gigs I've been to... well, aside from the usual shit openers, can't really think of any. I've somehow avoided the ones where things go horribly wrong.

Getting felt up by drunk assholes who think helping someone up means that they have the right to put their hands anywhere on that person's body.

@OzzyApu: Please do not make the mistake of passing on any SW related show based on my story. Like I said, this situation with the delayed start time and extended Bass Communion "set" was unique to the show I went to. The BC prelude was at every show thus far, but much shorter by comparison, from what I've read. I've seen PT 4 times (3 for Deadwing, once pre-FOABP) and Blackfield once (for DNA), and there was never a situation like this.

You'd be doing yourself a great disservice; all of the SW related shows I've seen thus far are musically and visually superb (the GFD show was played behind a giant translucent projection screen-you can see the band clearly behind a wall of video. A very cool visual), and the GFD band-Wilson, John Wesley, Marco Minnemann, Theo Travis, Nick Beggs, and Adan Holzman-is fucking top notch.

@Ribos: I definitely have an appreciation for Bass Communion, but the incessant, repetitive, and somewhat oppressive nature of that music only served to fuel my frustrations on that night (due to the extended performance delay).

Regarding Throbbing Gristle, I have no basis for comparison. Not really familliar with them. See for your self.

I was standing on the outside of a pit during Entombed's set on the last King Diamond tour back in 02 0r 03 or something like that. Now I don't do pits just doesn't interest me, but this drunken dude came out of no where and slammed his sweaty face onto my forehead and he dropped out cold on the floor blood was everywhere. I'm like 6 foot 350 so for this skinny guy it was probably like hitting a brick wall. He was out cold for a few seconds then I helped him up and he was cool, smiled at me and got right back into it. It was weird...

I saw Mastodon last week, they played 11 songs from The Hunter, (what the fuck) they could not pull of any singing, and Troy was obvious on some kind of drug.

I've broken two pairs of glasses at gigs, but I should have expected that.

I was meant to see Dragged into sunlight, anaal nathrakh and mayhem back in december 2010. AN and mayhem were both in my top ten bands at the time. But it was a snowy day and only mayhem showed. I travelled around 200 miles that day for the gig, and Mayhem were the only ones there. Were they great, and did they play a set to make up for it? Did they fuck! They spent close to an hour and a half setting up the drumkit, and then played for a paltry 45 minutes. The sound was muddy, and there was no energy in the performance. Atilla was fucking abysmal, he was shit vocally, but didn't even put on a performance with any energy, no stage presence. He just wore a robe. They didn't address the crowd once during the set. Bland set, from what I thought would be one of the most evil, intense performances I could ever witness.

Yeah, I hate when that happens.

As do I. Tends to happen at big concert venues rather than bars or house shows, which is why I avoid tours that go to the former rather than the latter.

Every single time the mosh pit has come too close to me. I end up having to go elsewhere so the people that form its outer limit don't accidentally hit or shove me. On a similar note, every single time the people in the back rows have started to push to get to the front rows and I've been forced back a few positions from my comfortable spot close to the stage. Aside from that, nothing too bad has ever happened to me at shows.

Every time this has happened to me, it's always some +6' bald asshole.

Do what I ended up doing: bring your +6' bald (or similarly sized; baldness is optional, as is "assholeness") friend to the show and have him stand behind you. It works even better if you can manage to bring a couple of them. Push 'em if you can, suckers!

However, if you've managed to snag that magic spot so close to the stage that you can physically grip it, you're good to go for the whole night if you just hold on...but if you're even one or two spaces back when the band hits the stage, yeah, you're going to get shuffled like a cheap deck unless you happen to be that massive fellow in question.

Goatfang's experience may have happened at Birch Hill, which is where my bad experience happened.

Lacuna Coil/Type O Negative in 2003 at Birch Hill was like fucking torture. Type O were amazing, maybe the last time they were that good according to subsequent tour reports I've read. However, Lacuna Coil were fucking terrible. First off, the club was a straight up hotbox. My wife and I were dumb enough to forget to pull out any money before the show and when we got there, we were told none of the vendors took credit or debit cards. We were told that we could go to the bank up the street, but we weren't guaranteed reentry to the club. So we figure it won't be so bad and go up to watch Lacuna Coil start their show. About one song in, we realize we needed water, ASAP. Of course we couldn't get any so we suffered through one of the worst performances ever. Christina's voice was fucking horrible. Just this scratchy, squeaky mess with taped vocals sometimes playing over her. If she was sick, I'm pretty sure no one would have minded if she no showed with an explanation. Instead they played this fucking terrible set. Even worse, they had synced headbanging and whatnot. People were booing halfway through the set with chants of "Britney" kicking up. By the time Type O got on stage, people were being pulled out of the crowd because they had passed out from the heat. Thank Odin Type O kicked some serious ass.

Birch Hill closed down like a year or two later. It was a good place to see shows, but the heat in there sucked.

I got a few, but there is something that is stuck in my head after reading about the dude who was the only paying member. I saw Triptykon last year, and by my estimates, there was roughly 150-170 people there. A band of that caliber, on a Friday, in Chicago, should not be playing to that few people. I know a lot of people didn't know about the show, and even some people who were there(myself included) only found out the day before. Things like this are the reason some bands stop touring.

There have been a couple of moments when I've been swept up in the pit and haven't been able to move of my own volition, though fortunately without getting hurt. At an Obituary gig a few years ago, I spent most of their set trapped between four rather large guys, squashed so close together that whenever they jumped or moved, I had to as well; I had a great view of the band, but did end up covered in other people's sweat... not ideal. And, like most concertgoers, I've had to suffer through bog awful support bands. The chief offenders were a grind band (whose set consisted mainly of unintentional feedback - which made me and a few others actually shout at the guitarist to get away from the amp - and whose frontman, dressed head-to-toe in white gym clothes, started telling guys in the audience to shove women in the pit... not acceptable) and, as part of a festival, Sonata Arctica. I cannot stand their music and only stuck around for their set because the people I was with didn't want to leave; being the idiot I am, I drunkenly reasoned that music I don't like is incapable of affecting my hearing, so I took out my earplugs whilst right next to the speakers. Naturally, my ears rang for the next couple of days, and I was terrified at the thought that the last sounds I would ever hear properly would be SA's frontman yodelling. Yes. Yodelling.



Generally, though, this happening constitutes the worst thing that's happened to me at gigs so far. I mentioned the two morons who groped me at a gig about month ago on another thread somewhere; unfortunately, though, that sort of thing happens all too often. As if I couldn't tell the difference between someone accidentally coming into contact with me whilst moshing and someone very deliberately trying to touch me... My worst experience with this was about six years ago. This being one of my first concerts, I was stupid enough to wear a corset into the pit, with nothing underneath (really stupid). Without my realising it, some of the guys standing behind me had been slowly loosening some of the lacing over time (I didn't feel it because of the modesty panel, and my sheer newb excitement; and, having never worn a corset before either, I thought I was simply getting used to it - rather than it actually loosening). Of course, they couldn't have gotten very far with this without me noticing, but they managed to undo the damn thing far enough to reveal rather more than I'd intended. Once again, the perpetrators disappeared into the crowd before I could wreak my vengeance, and I had to spend the rest of the set trying to lace up my clothing in the bathroom, trying not to disturb the couples making rather different use of the club facilities.

But: no one died, no one was permanently injured. Reading through some stories on this thread, I hope I never experience violence like that at a gig. And, I have to say, sexual harrassment is far less of an annoyance at metal gigs/clubs than at other venues, and, aside from the one or two idiots who will inevitably be at any event of any kind, I've found metalheads to be far better behaved than other groups.

^^^This really makes my blood boil. I can't stand seeing this kind of shit at concerts. When I was at Summer Slaughter last year, I saw these two particularly washed-up metalheads (they looked a bit coked out, too) groping these two really nice-lookin' metal ladies in the pit. One of the two ladies shoved the smaller of the two cokeheads, and a cokehead in turn full-on slugged her in the face. Luckily for them, the bouncers pulled these two animals out of the pit before I got to them and literally tossed them out of the venue. I don't know what it is about shows that make some people act like animals, but it really pisses me off.
As far as my experiences go, the back of my head seems to be a magnet for overweight fans with uncommonly sharp footwear. At least once every show, a pre-diabetic gets thrown at me, and almost always connects. I guess it doesn't help I'm usually a head taller than most of the people around me, but it gets rather annoying. One particularly robust gentleman got flung at me and almost took my left ear (and the earring in it) off with his super platform boots from hell. This guy had some pretty serious air when he clocked me, and somehow managed to drape half of his body around my shoulders (still trying to work out the physics on that one), so I tossed him along as is protocol, and a gap in the crowd formed conveniently right where this hapless sir landed. That's what you get for having a purple and blue mohawk. Jerk.