Heavy Metal Blunder

I took my 14-year-old son and a couple of his buddies to a concert last night: The "No Fear" tour, featuring the bands He is Legend, Chimaira, DragonForce, and Killswitch Engage.

Now, being 45, I'd never heard of any of these groups. They don't play Killswitch Engage on the light jazz station I usually listen to in the car.

I was originally planning to drop my son and his friends at the concert hall and hang out at a Starbucks for a few hours, but it seemed a little irresponsible, so I purchased a ticket for myself and we made the trek to Indy to see the show.

Now, I'm not ignorant when it comes to music. In fact, I pride myself on being fairly knowledgeable about rock and roll and pretty eclectic in my musical tastes. I like some hard rock, some country, jazz, even some hip hop. But the stuff I heard at the Murat Theater Wednesday night, with the exception of DragonForce (the band my son and his friends really wanted to see) was just grinding, repetitive, monotonous garbage.

Watching Killswitch Engage and Chimaira pound and shriek and rasp through their songs, I thought "this is what serial killers must listen to when they're dismembering their victims and making lampshades out of their skin." It was truly disturbing, yet mind-numbing, sonic swill.

A few highlights of the show:

• My son being denied entry because of the plastic studs on his fake leather gloves (he had to run back to the car and ditch the offending items)
• DragonForce lead singer spitting four bottles of water at the indoor crowd. (Eww)
• Several very wasted young men being escorted by security from the theater
• One very wasted young lady being escorted by security from the men's restroom
• Paying $2.00 for a 50-cent bag of potato chips and $3.00 for a can of Sprite

The funniest (and oddest) sight at the show was a young man standing by the sound board in the middle of the room. Seated in front of him were two women, who took turns performing the songs in sign language for him as the bands played. The women were reading the lyrics from printouts placed on music stands and signing accordingly. Since it was impossible to make out the words to any of the songs being sung, I wished that I understood sign language, too. Maybe I would've known what the *@#! the bands were singing.

As it was, the only lyrics I could make out during the entire evening were "I Hate Everyone," which the frontman from Chimaira kept repeating over and over and over. Standing in the Egyptian Room of the Murat Theater, being assaulted by an endless wave of awful noise for four hours, I had to agree.