Progressive Nation 2008 (Dream Theater, Opeth, Between the Buried and Me, 3)
Tuesday, May 6th, 2008I was in Seattle yesterday to see Progressive Nation 2008, a package tour of prog/prog metal bands headlined by Dream Theater. Summary: it kicked ass.
The venue was the WaMu Theater at the Qwest Field Event Center. The venue was conveniently located just south of Qwest Field near downtown Seattle (in SoDo), and had acceptable acoustics for a rock concert. Since I want to lead with the positives, this is all I’m going to say about the venue at this point.
At 6:30, we were treated to a short set from a band I had never even heard of before, Three. They were definitely my favorite of the three opening bands. Three weren’t especially heavy, but they were an incredible mix of different influences, thoroughly progressive and constantly inventive and interesting. Definitely recommended.
Three was followed up by Between the Buried and Me. While I wasn’t especially impressed with them, they did manage to kick some ass with two, 15-minute songs that packed plenty of punch, complete with death metal vocals.
Opeth came on next with a one-hour set showing their chops both in death metal and in more melodic rock. Opeth frontman Mikael Åkerfeldt, incidentally, has a great, strong, understated stage presence, and related to the audience using understated humor between songs. After a couple death metal songs he introduced a ballad with a short speech that began, “We used to be a death metal band.” Afterwards, he introducing perhaps the heaviest, darkest song in their set, with another speech beginning, “We used to be a death metal band.”
Dream Theater’s set began with a short video introduction, leading straight into “Constant Motion”, which led off a powerful but surprisingly brief set. (In retrospect, the set was probably longer than it seemed at the time, but for someone who came mostly to see Dream Theater it wasn’t quite long enough.) Bassist John Myung briefly joined Mike Portnoy on the drums a few songs in, and John Petrucci had several beautiful guitar solos both introducing songs and stringing them together. It was also the birthday of lead singer and citizen of Canada James LaBrie. As is Dream Theater tradition, Portnoy came down from the drumset to present James with a birthday cake: “On this cake it says, ‘Happy Birthday, You Fucking Canuck’”. After the audience joined in a rendition of “Happy Birthday”, LaBrie got the cake in his face. (He was also given a throwback Seahawks jersey, or at least that’s what it looked like from my seats. Speaking of jerseys, Portnoy, who’s been known to wear a personalized Knicks jersey on stage, wore a Kevin Durant Sonics jersey at least during the encore, if not during the entire set. Given the possible relocation of the Sonics to Oklahoma City, the show of support was much appreciated.)
The set was followed by a spoof video, “The Dark Nintendo Night: Super Majesty Brothers” that featured a remix of “The Dark Eternal Night” with Super Mario Brothers. It was an inside joke to Dream Theater fans, but also a pretty decent parody of certain other bands who go for that kind of sound.
Their encore was even better, at least to me, leading in with “Trial of Tears” (one of my favorite Dream Theater songs) and ending with the stirring and operatic finale from “Octavarium”. Overall, I would have been happier if Dream Theater’s setlist had more songs I knew and enjoyed, but it was still a very strong and powerful set, and it had enough to keep me happy.
To conclude, though, I want to note something about Wamu Theater at Qwest Field that’s frankly annoying. Like almost any venue they had restrictions on cameras, recording equipment, weapons, outside food and drink, and so forth. There were two things I didn’t realize going in: first, they enforced this by doing a patdown search of everyone who came in (which was intrusive and annoying, but brief). Second, their idea of “weapon” extends to 2 inch pocketknives. I didn’t think quickly enough to try and smuggle it in (instead of just taking it out when they asked if I had any knives), but in my defense I thought they were checking for knives that could actually be dangerous. They weren’t willing to hold it for me, but they did give me the opportunity to go back and leave it in my car. Since I was parked on the other side of Puget Sound that wasn’t exactly feasible. I didn’t want to take my chances just going to the back of the line and trying to smuggle it in, because if they already knew I had it I wouldn’t be able to get away with it. Nor did I think quickly enough to realize that if I found a hiding place for it somewhere in Sodo, I would at least have some chance of getting it back. My recommendation is to stay away from the Qwest Field event center if you don’t want to be treated like a criminal. This may or may not extend to Qwest Field itself, if you’re going to see the Seahawks or (as of next year!) the Sounders FC.
