208 miles traveled, almost $150 spent out of pocket, countless (well, not countless) hours of sleep and immeasurable productivity lost, but Lacuna Coil seen live in concert. I am happy with this trip.

As you might tell, going to this show was a fair bit of hassle; our tickets weren't mailed properly, my brilliant plan to have a comprehensive travel guide on Baltimore went kaput, a fender-bender at the on-ramp to the beltway completely stopped us for a precious half-hour of non-rush-hour time, it rained all day and all night Wednesday (then all day the next day, and subsequently all day today, but that's another subject) so exploring the town during the three and a half hours to kill before the concert was not an option, and the opening act had the most unruly, potty-mouthed singer you've ever seen. Oh, and I had a headache for almost the entire time! BUT BOY WAS IT EVER WORTH IT!

Probably ever since getting their album Comalies sometime in 2005 I have wanted desperately to see Lacuna Coil perform live. I missed their US tours for Karmacode in 2006 due to various issues, and it seemed that pattern was to repeat itself with their newest album, Shallow Life. I had to pass on two more tours and was sure I would not get another chance to see them until they started promoting another new album, sometime easily three years from now. So I was understandably ecstatic when I heard they were a part of the Hard Drive Live Tour 2009 with All That Remains and Maylene And The Sons Of Disaster and were going to be in Baltimore on a Wednesday evening. I instantly snapped at the opportunity, I was NOT going to let this one pass me by without at least a monumental effort to go.

Normally, I do not praise myself, but basically I put the entire trip together. Baltimore is reachable from where I live, but it is not a casual drive, nor is it someplace you want to have to drive back from in the wee hours of early morning, which I fully expected, but I was determined to go, and brothers (who has the driver's license I do not) and wanted to as well. So I planned, made arrangements with our grandparents to crash at their house afterwards (they live much closer to Baltimore and thus we would have to drive the least distance), bought tickets, put lunches together to keep costs down somewhat, and we went!

If you are a Lacuna Coil fan, or even just a fan of really good rock music, I can tell you that there is absolutely no substitute to seeing them live, in person. I have their live DVD but even that is incomparable to being there, scarcely twenty feet away from the stage they are rocking as if they own it. Try as I might, there's just no more words to describe how awesomely awesome they were.

I would have been a happy man to have seen Lacuna Coil and then driven home. But due to the fact that Rams Head (the best concert venue I've ever been to) had a place for us to sit down during the opening acts, and All That Remains, another favorite of ours, were playing next, we decided to stay for the rest of the show.

Now I would just like to say that if you hate heavy metal, I do not blame you in the least bit. It's rather like black coffee; an acquired taste that not everyone can acquire. I have, though, and All That Remains are among the groups who are to metal what fine Sumatran blends are to coffee; to wit, one of the best.

Captained by the once and former Shadows Fall vocalist Philip Labonte who, on this night, looked like a tiny John Cena in his baseball cap, sleeveless shirt, and long shorts, All That Remains brought a blistering array of songs that nearly blew the roof off the building. Labonte's full range of voices from an impassioned tenor (that's my best guess, I have no idea what classification he is) to bestial growls, screaming guitar solos in almost every song, and the surprise of surprises; bassist Jeanne Sagan's terrifying backup vocals. That woman's growls were even scarier than Labonte's, and my respect for her grew substantially that night.

What's more, however, Labonte was not only an excellent showman on stage, but he demonstrated a lot of sincere gratitude towards our country's armed forces (it was Veteran's Day) and us, the crowd, who had spent our hard-earned money and time to come to see them. So despite the fact that between songs he was not as clean on the mic as were MSD or even Lacuna Coil (he was nowhere near as bad as Taking Dawn's guy, though), and sometimes I didn't appreciate his sense of humor (he made some rude comments while dedicating the song Forever In Your Hands to the ladies in the audience), this did not cause me to lose my respect for him.

This marks the first concert I've been to where I knew all of the songs my bands played. ~IndigoWolfe knew most of Lacuna Coil's songs, but only one of ATR's. I own every studio album Lacuna Coil have released so I was very prepared. The songs they played were, in roughly this order:
I Survive,
Fragments Of Faith,
I Won't Tell You,
I'm Not Afraid,
Underdog,
Fragile,
Heaven's A Lie,
Spellbound,
Our Truth.

All That Remains' set was, again in roughly this order:
Before the Damned,
Not Alone,
The Air That I Breathe,
Chiron,
Become the Catalyst,
The Weak Willed,
Forever In Your Hands,
Six,
Focus Shall Not Fail,
Tattered On My Sleeve,
Undone,
This Calling,
Two Weeks.

All That Remains had more stage time, and Phil Labonte did more talking than did either Cristina or Andi, but I think Lacuna Coil stole the show. They absolutely owned that stage and were, in the end, I think much more dynamic than were All That Remains. Plus, they are still my favorite band.

Okay, now that I've finally finished recapping my concert experience (it only took me ten days) we will return to our regularly scheduled programming with the next journal.

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