Deathcore's cool live. It's when it's recorded that it gets boring.

My sentiments exactly. The vocalist from Suicide Silence was on it; his endurance was incredible. The whole band's energy was awesome but after a 45 minute set the vocalist looked like he could've kept going for another 2 hours.

All in all, I really had no complaints about any of the bands. There really weren't any duds this year unlike last year which had 3 Inches of Blood, Shadows Fall, and In This Moment.

Yup, pretty much every band there was great, even Straight Line Stitch. My favorite performances were probably Kingdom of Sorrow, Hatebreed, and Godsmack.

And I got to see a bunch of freaks so I feel a little bit better about myself ;)

Man, Shadows Fall doesn't deserve to be lumped in with those terrible bands

If you had seen the performance I did, you'd think otherwise. The vocalist couldn't reproduce his already nothing-special shout vocals live and they had this really lame "shadow-mother****ing-goddamn-falls" crowd chant that no one really got into. If memory serves, Chimaira came on next and made them look like a joke to be honest.

I understand that bands have bad days and Mayhem is a pretty grueling tour in terms of playing shows back to back and such. I will say that instrumentally speaking they were solid. The duel-guitar thrash attack they had going was cool but the set as a whole just wasn't very good.

I've never seen Shadows Fall live, but I keep hearing that their live shows are going downhill. After their last album they do sound as if they've stopped caring. Threads of Life had a few good songs, but the whole thing just makes me snooze.

People always tell me the War Within is their crowning achievement but its pretty bleh to me. Overall, Shadows Fall is just like a lesser Unearth to me. I haven't listened to their melodeath stuff from the late 90's however. Phil Labonte from All That Remains was singing for them then so idk maybe i'll like it.

I like The War Within, but I don't love it. It's just really competent sounding metalcore. Nothing really inspirational or new or interesting. Just well done metalcore. I only listen to it every now and again these days.