Deftones
Live @ Alcatraz, Milano 04/04/07

Having arrived smoothly at Alcatraz in the cheerful (?) city of Milan, we look around (after leaving the bottles at the entrance: inside, a beer 6€...): the place is far from huge (it looks like a former warehouse...), decently packed, the crowd as usual: loads of piercings and tattoos, plenty of black, rebellious youth, you know, the usual stuff.

Around 9:15 pm the lights go out, and we, remembering the Gods, expected to see a (drumroll) "big guy" but instead it’s a "Chinese guy" who takes the stage of the defitonts! There’s a bit of watermelon under the black shirt, but apart from the nerdy striped socks pulled up (if he does it, it becomes cool... Sure, sure...), he's quite the figure... The good (don) Camillo (with a heavily effected voice) is a little stingy with the screams, rather he screeches like the pig he almost no longer resembles. From what I can hear, his performance does not excel, but he holds his ground.

The mosh pit is calm, painless, a guy falls and everyone stops immediately to pick him up before getting back into the frenzy. The setlist is really remarkable, filled with many historic tracks (many from the first 2 or 3 albums, e.g. Passenger, Change, and even Bored); definitely enjoyable (especially for the fans who showed much more participation in the "old" songs).
I move around a bit (breaking some heads with my Risiko backpack!) to see if it sounds better in the front or back, but it changes little... The acoustics are like those in my home bathroom. It’s really difficult for me to give an objective evaluation of the band's musical performance: the sound is cacophonous, dull, and muddled.

This is certainly not a minor detail considering it’s a concert... Nonetheless, after almost 2 hours of Deftones, we leave fairly satisfied overall; a few details among which mainly: the reasonable price (28€), the setlist, the duration (and past disappointments from other bands that promised and then... see Tool this summer http://www.verorock.it/vetrina/?IDNEWS=76), manage at least to ease the annoyance of a murky acoustics.
Damiano