Last night I went to the Machine Head/Megadeth/Heaven and Hell (Black Sabbath with Ronnie James Dio on vocals) concert at the Target Center. I didn't get home until 1:30 and I only got 4 hours of sleep. Man I'm going to be tired tonight. It was worth it though. I had never seen Megadeth or any form of Black Sabbath before and that was really cool. We had seats in the lower level with a straight on view of the stage. They were great seats but it probably would have been better to be on the floor. I rarely go to concerts with seating so this was a welcome change.
Machine Head was pretty good. I had never listened to them before and I think I'll have to check out their new album. Megadeth was simply awesome. I would have loved it if they co-headlined with Sabbath, I could listen to them play for hours. It's too bad I didn't see them at a smaller club so I could see Dave Mustaine's masterful guitarwork up close and personal. They played 3 songs from their new album, United Abominations, which all sounded pretty good. They also played a bunch of stuff from Rust in Peace, and then the only song I knew the lyrics to, Symphony of Destruction. I wish they would have played Angry Again but other then that the setlist was great, albiet very short. One thing about both Machine Head and Megadeth, is that the sound quality was kinda bad. It's like they were using crappy speakers and amps or something. There was feedback most of the time and it was like the guitars were too loud for the speakers to handle. And when you compared the two bands to the way Sabbath sounded, it was like Night and Day. Megadeth/Machine Head sounded like a garage band performance but Sabbath was like the top quality sound you'd expect from a legendary band like them. I wish they could have used Sabbath's equipment or at least their sound guy.
Sabbath's setlist could have been better but other then that the show was great. It was a worth it just to see the extended version of Heaven and Hell with Tony Iommi's amazing guitar solos and the encore performance of Neon Knights was frickin awesome. The show wasn't sold out and it seemed like a lot of people weren't into it. I think it's because they were expecting songs from Sabbath's era with Ozzy but they only played songs from the 3 albums they did with Ronnie James Dio on vocals, Heaven and Hell, Mob Rules, and Dehumanizer. I'm glad they played Computer God and Sign of the Southern Cross but I wish they would have played Time Machine from Dehumanizer. Sabbath had a cool stage set to look like a castle with iron gates, towers, archway, a huge door, windows shaped like crosses and cool lanterns that were lit up most of the show. There weren't any pyros but some cool smoke and light effects. One of the effects made Dio look like the devil, a single red spotlight and a voice changing effect to make his voice sound like Satan a couple times. That was really cool. Overall it was a great show and I had fun, just wish it wasn't on a Sunday night.
As for RRW I got burned out at the end of day 5 and I didn't really play anymore games. I was sick of the constant cycle of playing a game, recording footage, wasting bandwith uploading it to GS and blogging about it. I felt like I was spending more time on Gamespot talking about what I played then the actual time I spent playing the games. Maybe next time I'll plan it out better and select only a couple games instead of a whole bunch. It was worth it just to put up the TMNT IV footage. Too bad Windows Movie Maker doesn't let me import video of SNES or NES games so I could have put it in only a few parts instead of 10.