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The day didn't start off great. Waking up at five in the morning, after playing a gig at Zoe Club in Milan the night before, it was wickedly hot and difficult to locate the Arena Parco Nord in Bologna. Anyhow, we arrived just in time for the cheerful Frate Rock, the day's guide. After a ridiculous little poem bordering on the grotesque, with a strong "Gods Of Metal Go", the concert kicked off with better prospects.
The first band was Evergrey, with their convincing power prog, although heavily influenced by Iced Earth. Then came Mastodon and Mudvayne, coming off excellent albums of death metal mixed with Nu and metal core, but not as destructive on stage.
The fourth band was Dragonforce, who awakened the crowd with their predictable yet furious and extremely fast power metal: drums and guitar at a minimum of 200 bpm and incredible fun; ZP at times is forced to go into falsetto to avoid embarrassment, but it's forgivable given the power and pitch he reaches in the choruses; the stars are the two guitarists, especially Hermann Li, delivering precise and mind-blowing solos in front of an incredulous audience.
The fifth band was Strapping Young Lad, supported by an extraordinary Devin Townsend with a circular super plaza on his head and Gene Hoglan in brilliant form (there were plenty of chants for him): they crush and destroy, but alas, at very low volumes, which greatly penalizes the quartet: Hoglan's drums are heard all too well, drowning out the rest of the musicians.
Not content with having destroyed themselves a little while ago, Obituary comes on to make noise, with the sun still high in the sky: the time away from the scene seems to have done no real harm to the band, who roll out death metal like a steamroller. They probably deserved a bit less sun, but being in fourth position with Iron Maiden and Slayer is not too shabby for these four resurrected souls.
The sun started to set and the crowd was getting impatient. Five fellow Milan natives like me took the stage to perform their excellent gothic metal. Lacuna Coil hit hard with Swamped and didn't spare more great tracks like Senzafine, Heaven's A Lie, or When A Dead Man Walks, but that didn't spare them from the traditional local bottle-throwing fest: fortunately, it was toned down compared to the anti-Blink 182 and anti-Methods Of Mayhem rainstorm a few years back. Excellent performance by Cristina Scabbia (ah, the good old days when she served me beer at Midnight Pub tables), less convincing the poor Ferro: I criticized him on the record, and live, he's lost his voice... he admits on stage "it's incredible to play right before the real gods of metal like Slayer and Iron". Admirable.
After an exhausting wait, four shady figures armed with instruments take the stage, the sun is low on the horizon, and the apocalypse begins. Slayer are true veterans, professionals of thrash/death. A perfect show, except for Araya, who, as usual, is a hybrid: neither a bassist nor a singer. The show starts with the first track of God Hates Us All, but fortunately, the 4 big guys won't return to the topic of new albums for the rest of the evening. Chemical Warfare, Dead Skin Mask, and many excerpts from Reign In Blood fill the good hour and a half of live show. At one point silence... three sharp blows on Lombardo's toms and the crowd explodes: Reign In Blood begins; the mosh pit is so exaggerated that the arena's ground rises, and the stage disappears, nothing can be seen anymore. Postmortem is introduced by Araya saying "Do You Wanna Die?" and all our fellow countrymen "Yessssss" and he "Are You Sure?"... great track. Conclusion with flames of hell with the powerful Angel Of Death, where the great Dave Lombardo winks at Hoglan by prolonging the double pedal solo at the end by two more bars, firing up the crowd.
The end of the day doesn't take too long, although the live set of Iron Maiden was as massive as always. The sun had fully set, and there was an enormous crowd. The not-so-tall stature of my girlfriend forced me and my companions to climb the hill at the back of the arena to see something. Anyway, the headliners started behind a very '80s scenario, in line with the pieces they would play. To promote the new DVD "Early Days", the six English old-timers pulled out tracks exclusively from their first four albums: like thunder, they opened with two songs from Killers masterfully interpreted by a sprightly Dickinson capable of reinventing even the great Paul Di'Anno. Other gems were gifted by The Trooper (with Bruce in a red coat and British flag), Revelations, and Wrathchild with a giant Eddie surrounded by little lights. With the singles from "The Number Of The Beast" and "Peace Of Mind", the band laid waste to Bologna: Hallowed Be Thy Name was the pinnacle. With Iron Maiden, the concert seemed concluded, but the six Englishmen returned for three more early tracks among which Running Free stood out: the live set transformed and we first saw a giant Eddie head with a visible brain moving its mouth and then a man on stilts dressed as Eddie in a T-shirt and jeans (as in Killers) roaming the stage and confronting Murray and company. A great show bearing the Iron Maiden mark... the only flaw was its duration (only 1 hour and 20 minutes, against the 2 hours set on the gods' website) and perhaps the setlist for old-timers, which overlooked albums like Fear Of The Dark, Somewhere In Time, and why not even Brave New World.
Tired, we return to the tent to snore, as tomorrow awaits more wonders of metal.
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