After spending an afternoon watching over 30,000 metal fans sun themselves on the lawn at Metrolina Expo with the sound of heavy guitars and aggressive vocals soaring overhead, I now see that metal is NOT dead in Charlotte... only sleeping. I've been a listener of 106.5FM for almost 15 years and a supporter of the Charlotte hard rock scene pretty hardcore for about three years and as a casual fan even longer than that and I was really starting to think that metal just had a niche market, but no... metal is HUGE around here, apparently.
Driving to the venue was one of the biggest traffic jams I’ve seen in Charlotte in the nearly 15 years that I’ve been here. I was thinking to myself while baking in my hot car (to go 1.5 miles in one hour) that they should perhaps change the name of the concert to Carolina Clusterf*ck… ‘cause that’s what it was, traffic-wise. As I approached the venue, I watched the price for parking go from $10 to park in some rednecks’ yard and take a shuttle, to $20 to park and walk a mile, to $30 at the actual Expo parking lot—which was full by the time I got there at 2PM (when my GPS said I should have arrived at 12:30PM).
Patrons were allowed to bring in ONE sealed, 24-ounce water, but security made us take off our bottle caps and throw them away before entry. Not that security was really that tight—there were no actual purse searches or metal detectors. I must say, in a sold-out field full of metal-head rednecks, I expected at least a pat-down. Now I wish I would’ve snuck in some sandwiches and beer.
With 30,000 tickets sold for an all-day festival where patrons aren’t allowed to carry in outside food, nor can they leave to picnic at their vehicles and be re-admitted, the event really ought to have had significantly more food stands. Waiting in line for food for somewhere between an hour and two hours is a bit ridiculous. I missed at least two bands’ sets waiting for my $9 chicken tender “basket” (more like “snack”). The line to meet bands at the autograph tent (I met Alter Bridge!) was shorter than the food line—that’s just sad.
Enough about the logistics of the show; let’s move on to the music, which was AWESOME. The three stages operated like clockwork, with each next band starting literally seconds after the previous one had finished. Only the savviest of crowd-movers could manage to meander through the acres of people in order to be up front for all of the bands on the bill, but there was always live music playing that could be heard throughout the grounds. The Carolina and Rebellion stages sat in tandem at one end of the field with the Jagermeister stage off near the gate.
The first band that I saw upon arrival was Pop Evil on the Jagermeister (small) stage. I have to say they had the best stage presence I saw all day. I’m not really into their music, but the front man knew how to work a crowd and the band was very animated and into their music. It seemed like the bigger the bands got in popularity, the smaller their stage presence became. Though Adam Gontier ‘s (vocals, Three Days Grace) scaling the lighting scaffold, illuminated by a spotlight, was pretty ballsy and interesting. Corey Taylor (vocals, Stone Sour) had a shining moment in crowd involvement, himself. During Stone Sour’s set was the first time I’ve ever heard a crowd, en masse, shout “motherf*cker.” (It was practice for something that went with the song—you had to be there.) It was like a redneck Woodstock for metal heads.
As a sat through a few more sets, I started to think the tour organizers told all of the bands about the way Charlotte operates regarding live concerts, because a lot of bands played a cover song. Theory of a Deadman’s “Cocaine” was alright, and Three Days Grace throwing in a verse of an Eminem rap in the middle of a song was interesting. 3DG also brought one of their backstage guys onstage for a surprising cover of Limp Bizkit. Yes, indeed. The guy did sound a lot like Fred Durst, but really, Three Days Grace? The best cover of the night, hands down, was Seether’s rendition of Nirvana’s “Heart-Shaped Box.” If I closed my eyes and forgot that Kurt Cobain was dead, I might have thought it was the real thing. Wow.
Seether had other surprises as well: they brought on Lizzy Hale from Halestorm to do Amy Lee’s part on “Broken.” Now, don’t get me wrong; Lizzy Hale has a great, strong voice, which was great on many parts of the song, but she overpowered Shaun Morgan on the first verse, lacking almost completely the delicacy and tenderness of the song at that point. I was disappointed, but that was one of few things, musically anyway, that disappointed me. A plethora of pre-recorded backup vocals (does anybody sing real harmony anymore?) and short set times that prevented bands from playing my favorite songs were the only other things.
As I made me way to the exit, stepping over passed-out goths and rednecks on my way out, I smelled the unmistakable odor of stale beer and B.O., but I felt energized by all that I had just witnessed. Despite my grievances, would I go again if they made it an annual event? ABSOLUTELY. Would I sneak in my own food and liquor and camp out on site the night before? HELL F*CKIN’ YEAH.
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