Holy Hell, that was amazing.... I was speechless for hours last night, and I still cant stop thinking about it and feeling amazing...

Actually yesterday I had to write an English paper, and I didnt finish that before the show so I had to do it after, and you can imagine how fun that was.......

So my ride fucked me over by leaving late, and we got there 10 minutes into the first band Priestess, and then we stood in the middle for Black Stone Cherry who was pretty good, actually. I havent heard their studio stuff, but if its as good as they sounded live, ill be hitting that up soon...

Then we tried to get closer for Zakk, and ended up about 10 feet from the cage, so we saw pretty good. The huge BLS banner was down and we couldnt see, except for the red sirens blaring. The intro to "New Religion" started playing, and everyone went nuts (everyone who actually knew enough of their tunes anyways... the posers just stood around like idiots....) and then the curtain dropped and they were all up there and played the rest of New Religion and we rocked hard... In the middle, Zakk brought out the piano which was sweet... we got an older one for that, and then he played "Last Goodbye" which was fun, except we all thought we was playing that instead of "In this River" which would have been lame, but he lead us in a badass chant for Dime, and one guy was holding up his Dime shirt in the air and Zakk jumped down and grabbed from him and took it on stage and held it up, and then kissed Dime. He gave the kid his shirt back, and then played "In this River" which was cool, especially with the nice piano arrangement at the beginning. (I really like all Zakk's piano stuff, so thats why I was so excited when I heard New Religion was the opener from a guy at an earlier show...)

uh, lets see if I remember most of the tunes he played... Concrete Jungle, Black Mass Reverands, Fire it Fucking Up! (after that one, he just shred for a while, which was insanity... nice behind the head solo, and the star spangled banner and part of Eruption), Suicide Messiah, a nice little Iron Man jam too, he closed with fucking Stillborn which was one of my favorites of the night, Suffering Overdue, BLEED FOR ME! (holy hell...), Funeral Bell was insane, several more, but how the hell should I remember all of em...

On a final note, when Zakk played In This River, everyone could feel Dime there with us... It was like, all the feelings I remember from that December morning came flooding back to me for the tune, and I could tell everyone was feeling it too. Dime was with us last night, and Zakk fuckin played beautifully for him... R.I.P. Brother Dime...

oh yeah, and I was given a free ticket to Primus next weekend as I walked in the door.... so now I need to find someone who wants to take another 2 hour trip to see them....

Black Label Society