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...

I'm not finished with my recap, but that's all I have for now.