if there's a poisoned fear, a wasted year, a man must learn to cope; if his obsession's real, the suppression that he feels must turn to hope.

I have arrived. Petrucci and his hair in the flesh. Myung’s calculated tapping to what I suspected was a blatant inclusion of that part from Metropolis. Rudess’s fingers whenever they do that 4-man-in-unison thingy. Portnoy banging the sides of his head with his hands in time to his abuse of the skins and crashes. And uh Labrie throwing his larger-than-life ass about whilst prancing around the stage in leather pants which have seen better days serving a somewhat more robust derriere. Okay I’ll admit I don’t really agree with the group’s direction in the frontman department but hey you’ve gotta admit that it works. ‘You’ meaning all the die-hard fans out there of course. And how fucked up they must have felt. ‘They’ referring to the band members. After years upon years of flirting with the ‘you’s, what with cancelled concerts and igniting petitions and all that, ‘they’’d have thought that the online signatories should’ve amounted to more with regards to the piteous state of ticket sales which ‘they’ described modestly as ‘They’re selling well’. Uh. ‘They’ in the immediately above case referring to them tickets. Shit it’s gonna go fucked up really soon if I keep this up.

That aside, there’s something innately weird when you consider the fact that you’ve got maestros doing their thing both on and off stage, and that as a result of that, the people you have downstage should be maestro-wannabes; and the parallel fact that instead of aspiring shredders and double-pedal-ers you get psycho-motor-deficiency-sufferers jerking spasmodically to perfect Portnoy beats. Okay perhaps a possible dodgy mitigation is that that’s their take on moshing techniques, but there’s no excuse when you get to the obligatory waving-in-supposed-unison numbers. I mean, there Labrie is (still in his ridiculous excuse for pants), showing everyone how it’s done with exaggerated clapping motions; and here my neighbours are, suggesting to me that they’re just as surprised as I am concerning the orientation of their arms with respect to the rest of their bodily organs, and the music (read: none whatsoever). And there again you get people seemingly nodding to the music, but on closer scrutiny you realize that they’re only there in the physical sense; their souls have ascended and they’re really nodding to the secret beat of the Tabezo drums of the metaphysical rock group by the name of Epiphenomenal Qualia playing the intricate melody of the Gulugulu Heavenly Tribe.

But they played Pull Me Under. I mean ‘they’, not Epiphenomenal Qualia or the Gulugulu Heavenly Tribe. To the delight of the dude behind me who kept up an hour-long nasal whine/scream/yelp/battle cry/orgasmic yodel which probably traversed the length of the concert hall and resonated with the perpetual feedback and drove Labrie insane enough. That and perhaps the uncomfortable hunk of leather which kept on riding up his impossible butt crack. I mean his annoyance. Ok bad running joke, bad pun on the song name. At least I’m writing?

Alright probably no mitigation.