hahninator Posted December 12, 2009 Share Posted December 12, 2009 One day when I'm really bored I'll do a huge ass review of every show I went to in Europe this year, but I thought I'd do a smaller one for LPL now. Flew to Europe after extreme panic...leaving my house 2 hours before a flight from Atlanta to Chicago and almost didn't make it...then got to Chicago and had to find a way to get to Frankfurt...ended up getting it handled. I made a few calls at the Chicago airport to Amanda and Nick, who told Jonas (who was picking me up in Frankfurt) what flight, etc I was on, and I was on my way. 8 hours later, I arrive in Frankfurt and find Jonas with no problem in his LP shirt at the airport. We talked for a while, went back to his place and hung out, and bought some groceries at the store for the next day to go to Graz. We fixed some sandwiches and snacks for the train and fell asleep really late that night. Unfortunately, we had to wake up very early the next morning for a really long (10 hours I think??) train ride to Graz! GRAZ I think I got like 3-4 hours of sleep because I was so nervous, but we made it up and boarded the train to Graz. We passed the time by listening to Tokyo 10.25.03, some PR08 shows and Club Tattoo 2006 on my iPod and Jonas's mp3 player. Once, when we had to board a bus because the train track was under work, we had a pretty funny moment. I was VERY tired on the bus so I laid my head down against the seat in front of me, but we had a CRAZY driver that swerved so hard I almost fell out of my seat. The same driver almost ran over a motorcycle at one time too. I looked over and saw Jonas laughing his ass off and smiled, haha. So we board the last train which was a big event because it was SO FUCKING HOT outside on this day. We sweated our asses off, leaned out the window, etc, but it didn't work lol...extremely hot day and misterable. Then we get to Graz's main train station and we walk around the park area. Jonas figures out how to get to the venue and we make our way on a smaller trolley/tram that runs throughout the city. On the trolley we were all smashed in very tightly against as many people that could fit in as possible since a lot of people were going to the show. All of a sudden, we heard a big "OOOOOOHHHHHHH" and looked to see the venue. Except the venue had 12,000 people outside of it in one huge line!!! We picked the tickets up and got in line, but I was almost panicking. I thought there was no way we'd make the show since we are so far back in line and it's 40 minutes until the opening band. However, we made it in, bought a live CD and headed into the concert hall. It was a very nice concert hall, so big but perfect size for LP. We saw that FOH was "elevated" a bit, so we went over to look and saw that a PC monitor was on (belonging to AJ the lighting guy). I zoomed in on my camera and confirmed to Jonas that the LP setlist was the same as it was for Istanbul and Athens. Damn! Funeral For A Friend ROCKED. They played like 45 mins to an hour and were fuckin' AWESOME. I really enjoyed them!!! Once they finished, I saw that Pooch was at FOH so I yelled over to him. We talked for a bit about the tour, LP, and life (catching up from Atlanta 2008) before he had to get to soundchecking LP. Good to see him again. His friend Cookie recognized me and said "Hey aren't you the dude from LPLive?". Cool shit. The wait for LP is always the hardest thing EVER. Jonas and I were very anxious/nervous as always, and since I didn't have a way to keep track of time (no watch/cellphone), I had no idea how long it was until the show. Interesting but wild! Anyway the lights finally went down and the place was REALLY loud. Session started it...we saw Joe rise up and the sample started coming in as the whole place threw their arms up. Joe was killing it; I really loved Session. Given Up came and the crowd exploded, and god damn LP was loud as FUCK. Pooch cranked the hell out of the sound!!! The good thing about Given Up was that Chester was going totally crazy on stage. I was really worried his back injury in 2008 was going to mess him up live because they said he probably couldn't go nuts on stage anymore. Well I guess he can because he was all over the place!!!! He lost his mind on the outro, lol. Then came FTI. The badass lights were back and I sure was glad. Istanbul didn't have the classic FTI lights and I was really worried, but once I saw them in Graz I knew it was all good. FTI really rocked as the 2nd song...they should keep that for future sets. SIB was cool, the crowd loved it and sang loud as hell with Chester. I'm a big fan of the drumming at the end so I thought it was great. Next it was time for my favorite part of the show - the long No More Sorrow intro. Fuck yeah!! The lights went down, the crowd got really quiet, and then it started. A lot of people recognized the intro and it was kinda surprising. Anyway as it built up it gradually got louder and louder which makes the intro so badass...the crowd was clapping and was ready to explode. Song kicks in and the whole floor erupts...fuck yeah man. Some good ole LFY next with Mike telling everyone to throw the hands up, good stuff. Then POA. New intro sounded just badass hearing it live for the first time; this was one thing I was really excited to check out in the set. Mike threw Petrified verse 1 over it (YUCK), and messed it up which made both Jonas and I laugh, but it's all good. POA was fuckin' sick with the hands up in the air halfway through. I knew in Athens Mike rapped APFMH over the ending so when Brad and Mike went to talk right before the outro, I fuckin' screamed HE SAID IT (as in, he said APFMH), but nope, he did There They Go. Oh well! I had 3 more chances to hear APFMH so I was sure he'd do it at one of those shows. WID long intro is one of my favorite parts of the set with the lighting and epic buildup, so I'm glad LP kept it. One good thing after WID is that there was no big break before LOATR. Sweet. LOATR is pretty boring to me usually but holy shit for some reason I thought LOATR in Graz was the best thing since sliced bread. I just stood there in awe as Chester belted it out on vocals with my eyes transfixed on him holding the micstand. I was really into LOATR, which surprised the hell out of me. Then they played Numb, which always blows the crowd up but I really am tired of hearing Numb, so I wasn't that interested, lol. Something needs to be done with Numb...I'm really sick of it in the setlists. I heard Mike was doing a new Numb -> BTH transition on this tour so I was intrigued as to what it sounded like. He seemed like he was just messing around after Numb before he went into what I thought was something new he had come up with specifically for this tour, and damn did it sound good. He started that really big keyboard buildup that he was doing on PR07 I believe which sounded GREAT and got the crowd into a frenzy. They started clapping fast when it was still slow (lol) and kept it going the entire time, sweet. As it kept building, the louder they got. Once he hit the climax of the intro and stopped, the crowd LOST IT and screamed louder than I had heard all night. Then the BTH sample came in and I thought the roof was gonna fall in. Damn that was the best buildup to any LP song I had heard yet...I'm sure like 500 Austrians jizzed their pants on that one, lol. A cappella outro for the first time for me and I thought it was nice, yeah. Shadow was next...I like seeing Chester play guitar and yell OH YEAH and shit on it...good stuff. Then Crawling! I am THE biggest fan of KRWLNG as the intro. There was almost a minute and a half break after Shadow. Mike said "I still need to play it, yeah" which made me go ..."what??". Then he said "We'll do it a little different" as the KRWLNG sample came in; I was really anxious. Bam! Hands Held High verse 2! A debut of something @ an LP show I was at, fuck yeah that really made me happy. He NAILED it too. Crowd lost it on Crawling and In The End as usual. Bleed It Out had the drum solo intro which I REALLY liked. Nice job Rob...it's an excellent way at getting the crowd into the song because they all clap wildly. BIO had a new outro on it as well. While doing the ending of the song, all of a sudden it speeds up REALLY fast really quickly and crashes into an ending. Nice!!!! Encore break and I was like "Holy shit already?" lol. I was really pumped to hear New Divide live. Mike came out on his keyboard and did the synth intro. It surprised me as well since he played with it for so long, speeding it up and slowing it down for a good minute. All of a sudden, Joe rose out of nowhere and BLOW hit the sample for New Divide which made the entire crowd scream bloody murder. Hoooooly hell and then they all started jumping. Definitely the most energy of the night. New Divide was SWEET. Chester sounded fuckin' great and I was instantly a fan of it opening an encore. Not a second passed after ND before the Faint sample started and it just erupted the floor again, jumping, throwing hands everywhere, everything. DAMN. The outro was awesome watching Chester jump around the stage like an animal. The opening riff to One Step Closer came and blew it up AGAIN for the 3rd song in a row. LP definitely knows how to get the crowd going. I lost my mind on the bridge and outro as usual and was really happy with the show. Only complaint was LP didn't say hardly anything during the show to the crowd. Afterwards, I talked to Pooch for a while with Jonas, and then was introduced to AJ, the lighting guy. We talked about LPLive, his career with LP, etc. All of a sudden I got a tap on the back and as I turned around someone said "Hey are you Mark from LPLive?". Yep! And it was Marth! Cool shit, that was a nice surprise. Jonas talked to him and eventually the both of them left but I got caught up talking to Pooch for a while. When I finished, I noticed I was the last fan inside the entire concert hall. Security had kicked everyone out, so I was like "WTF" as I was leaving, lol. Anyway I found Jonas/Marth and we talked for like 20 mins before meeting a drunk Austrian that was really surprised I came from the US for LP. Marth had to go but promised to meet us at a future show, so Jonas and I grabbed some posters (LPU M&G sign, oops) from the venue and left. We walked around the city for a good while before crashing in the park and catching the train back the next day. The funny thing was all the people passed out both inside and outside the train station after the show. Like 50 people sleeping on benches, on concrete, on the train station floor, etc. Hilarious!!! We passed the time by listening to our recordings of the show on the train. Awesome show but I was REALLY tired and ready to get back so I could catch up on sleep. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sckofelng Posted December 12, 2009 Share Posted December 12, 2009 hell fuckin yeah awesome review as always Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DecanoLP Posted December 12, 2009 Share Posted December 12, 2009 Pretty nice review. Love how you described every single song and your feelings for it. Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpikeMinoda Posted December 12, 2009 Share Posted December 12, 2009 nice review mark!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LPPRJKT4 Posted December 13, 2009 Share Posted December 13, 2009 Nice, not only did u get to see LP but u got to live through a real fan's concert experience. Not many fans get to do that at an LP concert. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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