Awww shit! Ozzfest pictures!!!!! It was on Wednesday, August 31st and lasted from 9 AM to 10:30 PM....with very few breaks.
It Dies Today opening Ozzfest at 9 AM. It was kinda weird because they didn't start letting people in until they started playing...so by the time most of the people got in, they were near the end of their set. But they sounded good from the outside and I got in in time to hear "Freak Gasoline Fight Accident."
Arch Enemy was awesome! If you ever listen to them, you'll hardly believe it's a girl doing the vocals...but it is...and she's pretty hot. They didn't play "Enemy Within," but they did play "Ravenous" so everything was all right.
Here's me getting cd covers signed by Arch Enemy. But where was Angela (the vocalist)??? She didn't show up, much to my disappointment. But I was very grateful that the rest of them did.
The Black Dahlia Murder sounded great. The guitar parts were just as frantic and clean as they are in the albums and the vocals sounded just as good live as well. I can't wait to see them live again.
Here's The Haunted rockin the stage. The two brothers in the band used to be in At The Gates, which was another great heavy metal band. As you can see, there's someone crowd surfing in the picture. There was a lot of that going on all day. The best was when some guy just randomly popped up out of the crowd into the air parallel with the ground, rolled over in mid-air, and then just fell to the ground. I met these guys too, but didn't take a picture of them up close.
A picture I took of The Black Dahlia Murder signing autographs while I was waiting in line. I was really excited to meet these guys.
Jada Pinkett-Smith's band, Wicked Wisdom. And yes, that's Will Smith's wife. I don't know how she ended up doing this. I can't really decide if I like their music or not. She doesn't really sing or scream most of the time...she usually just speaks the words in a monotone singing voice. But she sounds good when she does sing and they had a pretty good crowd response.
I took this picture to give people an idea of the scope of Ozzfest. It's not just 2 stages with bands playing on them. They take up the entire grounds with all kinds of booths (mostly food/beer/merchandising). They had games you could play where you throw darts at balloons to try to win prizes, a game where you tried to kick a soccer ball into some dude's head, which I didn't play cause I was busy with everything else. They also had a tattoo artist there (real, not temporary) and other random stuff like a Playstation trailer where you could play games.
Soilwork playing. I hung around for some of their show, but I was trying to run back and forth and get stuff signed by other bands the whole time so I didn't get to hang around to watch them for too long. They sounded awesome though.
Jada Pinkett-Smith and me while waiting in line to meet Soilwork. She was really nice and more than happy to let me get a picture with her.
Took this picture of Soilwork right before it was my turn to meet them and get autographs.
As I Lay Dying playing. They sounded really good, but I had to cut my time watching them short to go meet In Flames and get stuff signed by them. I wanted to meet them, but they were signing when Killswitch Engage was performing, and no way was I gonna pass them up.
One of the most anticipated sets of the day: Killswitch Engage. I've been fans of them for quite a while now and they were the original reason I wanted to go to Ozzfest. They were great live. You can kinda see the guitarist in this picture with his huge cowboy hat on. It was made of beer cartons. He was also wearing a cape and boxer shorts, and talked a lot about what he did with all of our mothers. They were pretty entertaining, needless to say. This was probably the biggest act on the second stage next to Rob Zombie.
Another picture of KSE playing. I met them too and got a bunch of stuff signed, but was in such a hurry I didn't get a picture of them at the signing tent. I waited in line after their set for probably about 30 minutes while Rob Zombie was playing. Luckily I was in a spot where I could see Rob on stage. After a while I got tired of waiting for KSE and wanted to go get in on the action up at the stage so I decided to leave and go back to the signing tent after hearing a few songs. Well...when I went back they were almost finished signing and I ended up being the second last person they signed for before leaving. I definitely got lucky on that. I would have been very sad if I missed them.
It's not that easy to see him, but this is Rob Zombie performing. He's wearing a yellow shirt so he kinda blends in with the backdrop, but he was really cool. He didn't do any signings though :( They were just selling pre-signed copies of his most recent cd. During the main stage acts he showed up at the soundboard in the middle of the amphitheatre and signed stuff for a few people who walked up, but after a while security guards started turning people away so he could have some privacy and enjoy the show.
In Flames was the first band on the main stage. I missed their first song because they started playing only about 5 minutes after Rob Zombie closed out the second stage. Unfortunately that song happened to be the one I was looking most forward to, and I only got to hear it from a distance. As I already mentioned, I met them also and got stuff autographed.
Black Label Society played next. That's Zack Wilde's band (Ozzy Osbourne's solo band guitarist). They were pretty good, but I'm not that big of a fan. I was glad to hear them proclaim their support for our troops in Iraq. They put it in a pretty conservative way too.
Next was Shadows Fall. They sounded good, but I wish they had played "Act of Contrition" or "Those Who Cannot Speak." The lead singer has dreadlocks that go down to around his knees...they're insane. I could have met them, but I was waiting in line for KSE at the time I think.
Mudvayne's banner hanging up before their performance. It's a skeleton's torso with a heart but with two heads: one with horns and one with a crown of thorns. Pretty evil lookin.
Mudvayne performing. Sounded pretty good, and they also made some pro-troops comments and said that they were fighting a good fight.
Now you can't really see much of anything in this picture. It was getting dark at the time I took it. But you can get an idea of how many people were there by realizing that I was standing at the back of the crowd and the small square of light in the center of the picture is the stage. There were people crowded together all the way up to it.
I took some other pictures too, just didn't put them all on here. Lots were just more pictures of the same bands and others were ones that didn't turn out too well. Unfortunately, all the ones I took of Black Sabbath were included in those that didn't turn out. It was just too dark and I was working with a disposable camera...
After Mudvayne, Velvet Revolver performed. They didn't seem to really fit in all that well, but kinda helped with the transition from modern heavy metal to the more classic-style that came up next with Black Sabbath. And Black Sabbath kicked total ass. It was the original guys, and Ozzy sounded great. I had never really been that familiar with them before Ozzfest, but I definitely want to get a cd or two of theirs now. It was really cool to watch Ozzy on the big screen cause you could see he was really happy to be there and that everyone was having such a great time. I also just found out that this was the last year that Ozzy was going to headline Ozzfest. He will still perform in just a few select cities, but from here on out he's turning over the main act to someone else. That's kinda sad....
But in conclusion, Ozzfest was really awesome. As many bands as I showed pictures of here, would you believe that there were more there? I just didn't get a chance to see them or take pictures of them because I was off meeting my favorite bands. Altogether there were 20 bands there. All I know is that if Ozzfest doesn't come to Nashville next year, I'm gonna have to find another city to go to for it.
