I’ll have to admit that I chose to hit Ozzfest this year because I was worried that the little guy would croak before I had a chance to see him. The only bands that I was looking forward to seeing were Dragonforce, Strapping Young Lad, and System of a Down, and waiting for three shows in a lineup of 15+ bands was not an appealing prospect. In the end, though, I was quite glad that I went.
The festival itself was sort of a heavy metal carnival, which was totally cool. I felt a little outdated as I pushed through the swarm of angsty teens and watched the brutish hardcore daytime acts on the second stage, and I was starting to regret my decision to attend until Ozzy hit the stage in the late afternoon. The only daytime act that I halfway enjoyed was Strapping Young Lad, and that was mostly because Devin Townsend is freaking hilarious. After laying down a crushing, bass-laden track, he went up to the mic and said: “I love that low-end rumble… it adds a little je ne sais quois to the experience.”
Ozzy was definitely the height of the daytime lineup, though. Zakk Wylde had played a long set with BLS before deferently taking the stage with Ozzy, and I couldn’t help but invoke the image of Ozzy as the High Priest of Metal with Wylde as his acolyte — like Goro to Shang Tsung, as it were.
Ozzy only played 5 songs, and I was only familiar with two of them, but it was so awesome to see how happy the little dude was on stage. He kept kicking his legs around like a manic leprechaun, and he had this huge smile on his face the whole time. I actually got a little choked up at one point when I saw how cheerful he was. When he finished the fourth song and the producers told him he had to stop, he got all petulant and begged to play two more songs. In the end, he was only allowed to belt out one more, and then they had to practically drag him away. His enthusiasm was entertaining until I realized that by extending the second stage show, it had overlapped with almost all of Dragonforce’s performance on the main stage.
We dashed to our seats in the amphitheatre to catch Dragonforce’s last track, and I was disappointed to discover that their performance is a little lackluster; It’s just a bunch of guys in leather pants standing there and emitting a tumultuous wall of sound. I suffered through most of the other mainstage performances, except for Lacuna Coil and Avenged Sevenfold, and, of course, System of a Down. Lacuna Coil plays incredibly repetitive and uninspiring music, and if it wasn’t for the female vocals they’d sound almost indistinguishable from Linkin Park; however, they were fun to watch just because of their wardrobe.
Avenged Sevenfold was the biggest surprise of the night. They looked like they’d been outfitted at American Eagle, especially the boy band-ish frontman, but they were incredibly entertaining. The highlight of their performance was a stellar cover of Pantera’s Walk. Unfortunately, they were followed up by an hour-and-a-half of putrescence by the ever-underwhelming Disturbed. The only thing I can say for them is that they’ve got an eloquent and occasionally entertaining frontman.
System of Down predictably kicked ass. They were up for about two hours, but it felt like a little less than ten minutes, which is the hallmark of an amazing show. Not only did they perform the bulk of the material from all four of their studio albums with astonishing fidelity, but they threw in a bunch of experimental electronic stuff, and a wild Sultans of Swing cover that I only recognized after Nathan pointed it out to me after the show. Because of them, my neck muscles were sore a mere two hours after the concert, which hasn’t happened since I saw Megadeth for the first time when I was 16.
I sort of expected Ozzy to make one final appearance at the end of the show, even if it was only to come out and bow or something, but after the last SOAD song the lights we were rather abruptly cut and we were ushered out. I guess that a reappearance by Ozzy would have stolen System’s thunder, but I think it still would have been a cool thing to do.
I probably won’t ever go to another Ozzfest, but System of a Down alone made this one worth going to.
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