Next Wednsday (9/21) I'll finally get to do another broadcast/podcast for When Prog and Power Unite and will be doing music and reviews and such for ProgPower. For now here are some thoughts I posted to Facebook about the festival:
As this year was my first ProgPower USA experience, I'm going to take a page from Jeff DT Teets and instead of ranking performances, just talk about a few of the things I enjoyed and appreciated.
-Since I didn't get my tickets right away, I had to buy them second hand, and so a big thanks goes out to Jeff for connecting me with Navid Rashid so I could get a ticket. You rock Navid!
-Similarly, after planning a big northern road trip with Joey Frevola it was awesome that Chad Belcher took the heavy load on planning things out for Atlanta. Fly in, have a card waiting at the desk, and a great hotel. A big thanks as well to Amanda Whitehead for hanging with us so much throughout the weekend!
-It's clear why all these years in they still use the same venue, it's perfect. Floor for those who want to be up front, and a great rising seated section with almost no bad seats in the house.
-Sound. Coming from RoSfest and NEARfest I expected the volume to go up and the quality to go way down. Volume may have risen a little bit, sound quality may have come down a tad, but for the overall style of music the festival did a great job making everyone sound very good.
-Day 1: Getting to see Ted Leonard perform for, and I'm not even joking, like the 15th time. Spock's Beard was great yet again, but I always particularly enjoy Ted as a vocalist, front man, and player. He does it all, and he does it very well! And Alan Morse is always one of the most entertaining guitar players as well.
-Stream of Passion. Sure, they may be lacking some people I'd like to see, and I may not be too keen on the last two albums, but they put on a good show and I finally got to see Marcela Bovio sing a full set.
-Day 2: Pyramaze being welcoming in the best way possible, by allowing their past two singers to perform along with their current vocalist. People always have singers they prefer, but usually there is a consensus that people like to hear songs sung by their original vocalist, even if they prefer someone else overall. And that's what we got here, great songs performed by the best singer for those songs. And an amazing final track with all 3 performing.
-Circus Maximus: Just incredibly tight and living up to the hype of waiting close to 10 years to see them. As one would expect from the album a very polished sound live. Really everything I hoped for from them was delivered. A+.
-Blind Guardian: I didn't come into the festival a huge Blind Guardian fan, but that may certainly change. As far as acts I wasn't overly familiar with they (along with one other later) were the clear favorites. For 6 guys the instrument separation was great, Hansi was insanely good live, and the overall performance, along with the audience was absolutely nuts. There are bands I'm a huge fan of that I managed to withstand buying merch for, but that show made me immediately get a Blind Guardian shirt.
-Day 3: The Gentle Storm. I would have traded all three sets leading up to this one to have another set. Only complaint was the disturbing lack of a keyboardist leading to a heavy use of a backing track. That aside, their original material was fantastic. Their covers, fantastic, especially seeing two Ayreon songs with Ed, Johan, Marcela, and Anneke performing. Speaking of Anneke, while I may not always like her taking on other roles (most notably The Theater Equation), she is one of the premier female voices in metal doing her own stuff, and showed it off in this set. Add to that Marcela doing backing vocals and what a freaking duo!
-Awaken the Guardian: Flame shield on, this album is not even in the same ballpark as the recently released Theories of Flight. That said this was something special. I finally got to see Frank Aresti on guitar and he did not disappoint, and John Arch nailed that album all these years later. It's amazing that with so little in the way of performances over the past several decades not only did he manage so much more control on his voice, but he managed to stay a great front man as well.
-Day 4: Green Carnation. Kinda annoyed that I was so busy leading up to this festival I didn't have time to check the album out they were going to be performing in full. They got about 2.5 songs in and I ordered it from my seat. An absolutely mind blowing experience. Music was some of the most interesting of the festival, delivery was theatrical, and as the set ended I felt I had truly just experienced something special. CD was delivered today, can't wait to give it some spins.
-Haken! What can I say that I didn't say over the 5 straight days I saw them prior to heading to Atlanta. Ray Hn and company were all that and a box of spinach. Having seen them 12 times now I can say the ProgPower performance was my favorite to date, thanks to the backing vocals being more audible than usual. Be it my position, the bigger venue, or Jerry Guidroz doing me a solid it added a whole new dimension to the show. People can get excited about Mike Portnoy ringing a gong all they want, but as Portnoy himself said, it was all about the 90 amazing minutes that proceeded that. So glad I was able to get up on the rail for this one.
-Devin Townsend. I am not a huge fan of Devin's music. Some stuff I love, some I hate, a lot I'm indifferent to. That said I've seen him twice now and he is one of the best entertainers in metal. From his jokes to his performance everything about him helps you have a good time. I can't complain about the setlist, as it was pretty well suited to me, and I even got to hear an acoustic version of one of my favorite tracks, Ih-Ah.
-Finally, the after party. Much like at RoSfest it's great to have a place each night to chill and talk to friends and performers. I stayed progressively later each night, and loved relaxing at the Artmore before heading back to my own hotel.
I'm sure I'm forgetting people and things, but that's a good start!
Topic: The Official ProgPower USA & Europe Thread (Read 19223 times)
