I agree the songs sounded heavier live on this last tour, however I saw them twice at the same venue, once from the balcony and once from the pit. Both times, the actual strikes of MM's bass drums were mostly inaudible...they just produced like a big wubble-wubble of bass noise. From what I had seen of that set in pics and such I feel that (at least part of) the problem was the type of beaters he used on his pedals. They all looked to be super soft, felt, rounded kickers. Those are well-suited to certain types of music, but not metal, or "heavy music," as it were. I could be totally wrong, but that seemed to contribute to the lack of punctuated bass drum sound, on the album and live. I was confused as to why he never changed those out at some point, because yeah he had already designed that kit to a specific standard and he wouldn't change out any big parts, but putting different beaters on your pedals is not a big deal...*shrug* I dunno.
I LOVE the riff in BITS. It was a bit redeeming of JP's metal riff skills to me, and it has aged well. Looking forward to pretty much anything they give us on this next album.