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I took my wife and son to their very first live concert last night. It was Korn head lining with Alice in Chains (my sons fav band) with Under Oath and HO99O9 opening

. I've been to a good handful of live shows, but Korn was fantastic live and HO99O9 was really surprising. Never heard of them before but they really kicked ass on stage. Just wanted to see/share some live bands you've experienced

I saw Iron Maiden just last Friday here in Toronto. It was only my second time ever seeing them, and they put on a fantastic show. During Aces High they had a life-size Spitfire floating over the stage, bobbing and weaving as they played. Really insane. If you're into that flavour of metal, I'd definitely recommend seeing them at your next opportunity.

Saw the Rolling Stones last year.... Phenomenal!

Was slightly ambivalent towards seeing them live but boy I was converted during the show.

Also seen King Pleasure and the Biscuit Boys recently, another quality night out.

I have been seeing a lot more theatre recently, a lot more than seeing bands or concerts...

Nice topic, I love going to some concerts.
My first concert was Bloodhound Gang way back. It wasn't special, but as my first concert as a what, 14 year old, it will always hold a special place in my heart.
As for the best concert, I honestly can't decide between Flogging Molly, Russkaja, Kraftklub or Bilderbuch.

Flogging Molly I've seen 4 times so far and every single on of those have been a blast. I love me some good mosh pit and the pits at Flogging Molly concerts are some of the most fun and also one of the most civil ones. Also, I vividly remember attending a FM concert during a concert while my friends were at a, I think Placebo concert. Well I had the time of my live, one minute moshing in the pit to Devils Dance Floor, while in the next minute I lay in another guys arm and sing along If I Ever Leave This World Alive. Brilliant live band.

Russkaja is also an amazing live band. An Austro-Russian ska-punk-world mix band that does some of the most amazing live shows. My favorite feature is the Tractor song, where the lead singer Georgij tells a story about a russian (that bit is important) tractor that has gone loose. To escape it, the whole crowd starts running in a circle and if somebody ever trips, Georgij will see to it that that person gets helped up. Super fun shows, I was always sweaty all over after seeing them.

Kraftklub is a german band known for their punk/indie mix with some rap elements thrown in. Again, superb shows, amazing fun and one of my absolute favorite bands. I'd highly recommend checking them out!

Bilderbuch is an austrian band and I simply adore them. They don't really want to stick to one genre/genre-mix, rather doing what is fun. They have become wildly popular over the last few years and i had the luck to see them before their fame and after and their shows are still amazing events.

Honorary mentions to Bad Religion (still super energetic even after 30 years), Parov Stelar, Franz Ferdinand, Beatsteaks and Less Than Jake.

I've seen a good number of various bands in concert. Some, like Slipknot, I've grown out of listening to but would not hesitate to go to a live show again because they're such great entertainers. I've been to my fair share of bad shows, usually either noname bands or local starting bands who have no idea what they're doing, though some are great listening but have zero stage/live persona. Others are fantastic masters of general craft like Judas Priest, Slayer and Sabbath.

I'm going to go see Amon Amarth again next month for sure, and The Hu in October. More recently Ive seen Alestorm, Animals As Leaders, Arcshpire, Fallujah, Skeletonwitch, Intervals, Mayhem, Obscura, and Dying Fetus, which have covered kind of the entire range above of show quality.

I just saw Bad Religion on Sunday, which I believe is the tenth time doing so. Honestly, I've lost count because I've been to so many concerts/shows in my life and that this point they just all kinda blend together.

Original Black Sabbath line-up, Milton Keynes 2001.

Rammstein put on a pretty good show. GWAR too.

Only ever gone to see one band, Sabaton. Saw them twice during The Last Stand Tour, once in Peoria and once in Chicago. Going to see them later this year for The Great War tour.

Currently waiting for Marylin Manson to take the stage, followed by Rob Zombie. My boys’ first concert.

Ear plugs are mandatory.

Palaye Royale was the opening band, not bad but I won’t be buying their music.

Wooot! Sound check for Manson!

I've seen GWAR, Alice Cooper, meatloaf and Powerman 5000.
GWAR was my fist live concert and my ears were ringing for 2 days. The opening acts were not so good. It was their blood drive tour. I missed GWAR a few years ago, couldn't afford to go or couldn't make the time and planned to go the next year..The Dave goes and dies. I've been a fan for over 20+ years and really thought it was an early April fool prank.
I hope to see them again one day.
Alice Cooper was a lot of fun he hit all the high spots one would expect including cutting having his head chopped off via guillotine at one point.
Meatloaf was good at one point he dropped his mike while holding a note, picked the mike up and finish the note as if he had had a second of pause. Really cool.
PM5K played in Korea at the rec center in a small ball room a USO kinda show. I wish I had cash at the time to buy some of their merch.

Update: I think Manson was hammered. First half of the show was slurry and missing half the words. :(

We mostly came to see Zombie, anyhow. Here’s hoping for a better closing act.

My thoughts on live music is that there's a fine mix of showmanship and musicianship/sound quality that needs to be met, and less than half the bands I've seen live really hit that mix. I've had a couple bands that were so close to their studio sound that it may well have been the recording, and less than half of them really did any sort of stage show at all. Tool comes immediately to mind as does Primus and Black Sabbath. Some bands compromised their overall sound quality live, like Rob Zombie and Deftones, for the sake of showmanship.

One of the best bands I've seen live is The Smoking Popes. The show itself is engaging, almost every song is changed on some level so that it's not simply listening to the album in person, and they're engaging enough with the crowd without dipping into the pretentiousness of some live shows.


Special mention goes to Flyleaf for having a horrid live sound AND a completely immersion breaking stage presence. Would never pay to see them again.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:
I saw Iron Maiden just last Friday here in Toronto. It was only my second time ever seeing them, and they put on a fantastic show. During Aces High they had a life-size Spitfire floating over the stage, bobbing and weaving as they played. Really insane. If you're into that flavour of metal, I'd definitely recommend seeing them at your next opportunity.

Good to hear! I'm flying up to Pittsburgh to see them this weekend.

Zombie was excellent. Fun show, playing with the crowd, people really got into it. Still has that strong stage presence.

Kids had fun, though the youngest had a quick nap about halfway through... kid has a gift. He can sleep anywhere.

Happy to have gone. Ended with Dragula, the kids' favourite. They had a great time and I'm glad to get to be there for their first live rock show.

I saw morbid angel a long time ago, I had a head to head collision with some random person and remember hobbling out of there in a daze, drunk and disoriented and tired. It was a crazy show, though mostly due to the crowd going nuts. I very rarely go to live shows. I find that either there's too many opening bands, drags on too long, too many people in too small a venue, etc. It's very rare that i've been to a show that I 100% enjoy.

Tbh though I don't listen to music as much as I used to, there just aren't any bands I want to hear anymore and that sense of discovery when I find a new band that is great is becoming less and less frequent....I guess maybe that's called getting old, but i'm only 26. A lot of bands people have shown me in recent years feel more like self parody than legit music.

Parkway drive were awesome live. I've seen devildriver a bunch of times, machine head, cannibal corpse, while she sleeps, bring me the horizon (back when they didn't suck) saw neck deep at a bar in Bristol a few years ago. They were a blast. I went to a couple of ghost fests too, which were fun. Done my share of stage diving and crowd surfing. Nowadays I don't tend to go to shows, especially the modern metal bands as I find the scene and a lot of the people are a bit lame. Plus headbanging just gives me headaches now and I only really listen to it in the gym these days.


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 greatbigtree wrote:
Update: I think Manson was hammered. First half of the show was slurry and missing half the words. :(

We mostly came to see Zombie, anyhow. Here’s hoping for a better closing act.

I've heard Marilyn manson has fallen off the wagon a bit as of late, and his shows leave something to be desired.

I've gigged a lot, put on a lot of other bands, and used to organise two festivals so I've been pretty spoiled on the live music front (especially since I went through a long time of being guestlisted for everything) but have gotten really lazy/busy more recently and only make it to two or three a month rathe than the two a week I averaged for a long time.

Not sure what my favourite ever live show was. Electric Wizard and Blood Ceremony, maybe. Could be Solstafir. Pallbearer possible. Anaal Nathrakh at Damnation 2007 was another belter.

I've seen Iron Maiden at every tour they've done in the last 10 years and every single time they've been fantastic.

Over the years I've seen quite a few bands (having a uni mate who's a music reviewer helps for free tickets!) with Honeyblood being a particular highlight when I saw them in Glasgow about 5 years ago. Worst shows have generally been "big" bands that were terrible for one reason or another. Saw Marilyn Manson get booed off stage in Milton Keynes after he basically didn't bother to give any effort whatsoever. That kind of thing really grinds my gears after people have paid good money to see you. On the flipside, I saw Anthrax as a support act a few years ago and they were amazing, giving the sort of show you wouldn't expect from "just a support act".

Saw Metallica at Slane Castle in Ireland in June of this year.
Was a fun day out overall despite some of the horror stories I had heard about logistics.
Metallicas set was a bit hit and miss though, an absolutely amazing middle section but not very well book-ended.
The lightshow, sound and effects they had going on were awesome too however.

Next up is The Midnight in November. Not quite Metallica

Not seen many bands live, but I've seen The Sisters Of Mercy a few times and always enjoyed myself. They were a bit too quiet last year though.

I saw Type O Negative once, they were damn good.

I think my favourite though, was a gig in a little pub in Southampton. Saw Inkubus Sukkubus supported by The Faces Of Sarah. Tiny, very intimate venue, and both bands rocked it. Had a chat with the lovely lead singer of Inkubus Sukkubus at the bar afterwards. Also had a very embarrassing conversation with, it turned out, about half of The Faces Of Sarah in the queue for the gents, where I asked them if they knew anything about the support act... I mentioned it on their Facebook page years later and the singer still remembered it...

I got to go to the Slayer Final tour when they stopped here in PA. I scored some pretty nice seats as soon as the tickets went up.

It was an amazing show. I was really there just to see Slayer and Behemoth (Behemoth was kind of a let down but maybe an indoor arena is not the best for that type of music). Anthrax was amazing and they played a whole bunch of their classics that i love. Lamb of God was meh but i only liked Lamb of God when they were Burn the Priest.

The real surprise of the show was Testament, they killed it. So much so that i have become a huge fan of their newer albums and older albums.

Slayer was absolute madness and i loved every moment of their set.

Saw Iron Maiden at the O2 last year. Phenomenal, as expected.

Also got lucky enough a few years ago to get tickets for Sigur Rós at one of the shows they were playing in Reykjavic as part of the Norður og niður festival. Absolutely amazing.

Seeing Ghost in Cardiff this November which should be good.

EDIT: Oh, also saw Alice In Chains on their Black Gives Way to Blue tour when they came to the UK. That was a great show.

I've seen Queen live (with Freddy) - the "Works" tour, Bowie ("serious moonlight" tour) and a handful of other acts.

Both of those, however, were abso-fracking-lutely astounding.

Dude I have seen Barney...live!

 Peregrine wrote:

 creeping-deth87 wrote:
I saw Iron Maiden just last Friday here in Toronto. It was only my second time ever seeing them, and they put on a fantastic show. During Aces High they had a life-size Spitfire floating over the stage, bobbing and weaving as they played. Really insane. If you're into that flavour of metal, I'd definitely recommend seeing them at your next opportunity.

Good to hear! I'm flying up to Pittsburgh to see them this weekend.

Enjoy!

I hadn't seen Iron Maiden since 1990, due to an inability to be in the same country as them, until the Book of Souls tour. I was amazed at the effort they were putting into that show. Fantastic experience.


That spark was nothing compared to the Legacy show I witnessed. It was as if they'd be born into their 80s selves again.

If it was the last show I ever see them do, it's a personal high for me.

I’ve seen Creed live (I know, a lot of people don’t like them, but I do, and their shows are fun!), Alkaline Trio twice (it’s where my username comes from), Weird Al Yankovic on his “Saga Begins” tour, took my wife to see Kelly Clarkson a few months back, multiple country artists when I was a kid because my mom is a huge fan, and a few I’m forgetting. Yeah, I guess I’ve seen a few concerts. Lol. Always wanted to go to Warped Tour. Never got to go.

Best show would have to be seeing Blind Guardian in a tiny venue in the tiny town I lived in at the time. Amazing performance, the opening act was good enough to get calls for an encore, and we were less than 10' from the stage.

 Peregrine wrote:

 creeping-deth87 wrote:
I saw Iron Maiden just last Friday here in Toronto. It was only my second time ever seeing them, and they put on a fantastic show. During Aces High they had a life-size Spitfire floating over the stage, bobbing and weaving as they played. Really insane. If you're into that flavour of metal, I'd definitely recommend seeing them at your next opportunity.

Good to hear! I'm flying up to Pittsburgh to see them this weekend.

Have fun! Their setlist for this tour is incredible and the stage design is beautiful.

Threads like this really drive home how lucky those of us in Europe are. People talking about managing to see Maiden once or never quite catching them. I think I've seen them six times and I hate them.

I've only ever been to a single concert - Garbage at the Roseland Ballroom, October 30th, 1998. I thought it was great. I moved out of NYC soon thereafter, unfortunately.

When I was young, I never had the money to go. Now I have plenty of money, and my knees are destroyed. Sigh.