Oh my fuckin' god! When this surprise gig was announced about two weeks ago, I almost peed myself. DevilDriver in a club will be unheard of very soon and I am stoked that I got to see them before they explode into rock stardom.

The opener for this gig was Daath. They are a good band that I saw open for Behemoth back sometime around may. Their set was pretty much what I saw a few months ago and the band was just as good as they were then. If you want more detail about Daath and want to read my previous review CLICK HERE .

When it was DevilDriver's turn to take over I was glad the wait was over because I was damn ready to see them and prayed that they would rule. Yeah, they pretty much did. Whew! The 300 or so fans in attendance held their horns high non-stop and went berserk. The pit rapidly shifted in levels of participation. One second everyone would be headbanging, the next would be a vicious blitzkrieg, then it would die down, and then every once and a while it simply went nuclear. This was probably the nastiest pit I have seen at Jaxx this year, well except for those insane hardcore pits at Bury Your Dead. With the DevilDriver pit, you really never knew what was going to happen. But even with the violence of it all, I didn't see anyone get hurt and I didn't see a single cheap shot or fight... Just good clean pounding.

The singer was shorter than I had thought. He was sporting a grisly road beard and marched around the stage with a big ole' bottle of some kinds of whiskey. When he was in Coal Chamber he was a lean and fit looking dude, but at Jaxx he looked road worn and was packing the start of a classic beer belly. I actually thought it was kind of cool because the whole image conscious Coal Chamber part of this dude was totally wrecked... He matured to the, "fuck you if you don't like who I am" dude... So much more human than he used to be I suppose. He was a very talkative guy who gave tons of love to his bandmates and spoke aggressively on the state of our government, but also made damn sure that you understood that he will beat down anyone who doesn't support the soldiers who are just trying to make a living. He also took a little stab at Coal Chamber by thanking his boys for never wanting to stop touring and never wanting to go home... It was just the way he bitterly spoke about it... It had to have been directed at his past band. On the stage the vocalist simply owned. He was all over the place. He was mean. He was out of control and most importantly, he sounded like he should have. You knew it was the DevilDriver dude.

As for the rest of the band, they were full of energy too. The bald guitarist was a wildman who made lots of funny faces and interacted with the crowd endlessly. The other guitarist was a lay-low kinda guy, but he milled around and liked interacting with his band mates. The bass player was a whirlwind machine, so seeing his face wasn't something that you got to see very often. As for the drummer, I always felt that DevilDriver was a drum driven band since DD is all about the beat. The drummer played exactly what he was supposed to, which made it all feel right. The unexpected thing to me was that I don't think they weren't running a sequencer or click track for the band to synch to, which is so popular these days. The tempos of the songs were sometimes slower or faster than the album. I actually liked that fact because they were as raw as they could be and it let them just play how they felt like playing without being driven by the midi. The only downside to this gig was that the guy mixing the audio did a shitty job. I can't remember hearing a single solo. The whole mix was dirty and cluttered. The levels wandered all over the place. It was just an audio mess. It really didn't matter though because I had an absolutely fabulous fuckin' time. DevilDriver met ever expectation that I had. Shit, I even followed them 6 hours away for Ozzfest the next morning! If it wasn't for that fuckin' sound guy they would have scored the perfect score, but I had to drop 'em to a 9 out of 10.

In my next report I hope to give you the scoop on the Nile show on 8/27 ! Stay tuned.

Go to the BGR gallery (CLICK HERE) and check out my pics from last night's the show.

BE SURE to check out our friends at JAXX NIGHTCLUB! www.jaxxroxx.com

If you would like to attend a Jaxx show please let me know. I might be able to drag you along with me.

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And oh yeah...

Peace and Metal Grease!

berube