Lamb of God, Trivium, Machine Head, and Gojira 

Review by Alan Ralph
www.metalXcore.com
www.Guitar-Picks.com

The Catalyst In Santa Cruz, Ca.

All four bands put on a great show! I was most looking forward to the French band Gojira; their record 'From Mars to Sirius' is remarkable. Unfortunately, the lack of space for the opening bands basically reserved the members of Gojira to their respective post on stage, without much movement. Still, there was room for Randy Blythe of Lamb of God to appear on the stage for a minute during one of the songs. Overall, they sounded amazing, and I really hope that they get approached for more US touring.

Although 90 minutes south of San Francisco / Oakland, I think this was to be considered Machine Head's 'hometown' show. So many of their friends, wives, girlfriends drove down to Santa Cruz that it almost felt like we were in San Francisco. Machine Head's setlist prompted me to think of them as the 'Opeth' of this tour; for their 35 minute set, Machine Head played only 5 songs. One of the new songs "Imperium" is like 10 minutes long, so right there is nearly 1/3 of their set time! With the same small amount of stage room, Machine Head was still (and are always) amazing. It was almost amusing to see a headliner band such as Machine Head have to literally climb over their drums and stage monitors just to get to their spot on the stage. As with Gojira, there was not too much movement either, as there was also not too many places they could move to (with the drums taking most of their given space!).

Trivium was the only band to elicit negative feedback from some of the crowd. I don't know why, but people love to hate Trivium. I do think that maybe they can come off very egotistical, because they have opened for Metallica and Iron Maiden, but give 'em a break, any band would kill for that honor! Every time I saw and/or met Trivium, I always thought that Matt Heafy (singer/guitar) had an ego, but as I stood backstage at the moment that Trivium entered the building, it was Matt who actually recognized me first to say hello, before I could say anything. So that was really cool. Much respect!

Trivium had an equally small amount of space on the stage and Matt used as much of it as he possibly could, escaping his perch in front of his stage right microphone as often as he could, to solo in the center or meet up with Paolo Gregoletto (stage left) once or twice. Their set was very similar to the past couple of times that I've seen Trivium, as they don't have any new material released since Ascendancy came out last year.

Although many thought that Machine Head should have played as direct support to Lamb of God, Phil Demmel (guitar) told me that 'the Lamb of God / Trivium combination was already put together before Machine Head was asked to join.' That's perfectly fine, as with their new record coming out at the end of March, they will be back (and hopefully closer to SF so I won't have to drive another 90 minutes to see them play for only 35)!

Lamb of God took the stage at 10:30pm to close out this great tour package, and played an amazing 90 minute set, reaching out over their three albums, playing the staples that we expect to hear, and even going further back to play a song from the days they were known as Burn The Priest.