Gigantour 2013
Mohegan Sun Arena
Uncasville, CT
July 5, 2013

This summer, Megadeth is bringing Gigantour back on the road! Gigantour 2012 had a high quality lineup, which I felt was one of the biggest bangs for your buck around. How does Gigantour 2013 compare to last year? Let’s find out.

Death Division

In 2012, Gigantour had four bands (Megadeth, Motorhead, Volbeat and Lacuna Coil), who were all established to some degree or another. This year, they expanded the bill to have six bands. Kicking off the bill, is a new and relatively unknown band, Death Division, who are managed by Dave Mustaine’s son Justis.

They played a short set, as opening acts do, but they had a pretty good energy, getting this night started with a bang.

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Newsted

After playing their first US club tour less than two months ago, Newsted makes their return to the area. This was a special show for them, as both guitar players, Mike Mushok (of Staind) and Jessie Farnsworth are from the Connecticut area.

Heroic Dose
Soldierhead
…As the Crow Flies
King of the Underdogs
Twisted Tail of the Comet
Whiplash

Two of the songs played are from their upcoming album Heavy Metal Music, being released this August. The album promises to rock as hard as January’s Metal EP.

They played a snippet of Metallica’s “Creeping Death”, as well as closing with “Whiplash”, which both got the crowd going crazy.

Newsted shows a lot of promise, and hopefully this project will be around for a long time to come.

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Hellyeah

The supergroup Hellyeah, made up of members of Mudvayne, Pantera, Damageplan and

Nothingface, is touring in support of their 2012 album, Band of Brothers. They definitely have a sound of their own… a grooving metal, with a definite cowboy influence. They put on an energetic show, and they definitely have some die-hard followers. I talked to more than one person later in the show that had arrived late, and was upset that Hellyeah was so early on the bill that they’d missed them.

War in Me
Drink Drank Drunk
Cowboy Way
Matter of Time
Rage/Burn
You Wouldn’t Know
Hellyeah!

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Device

Device is the new side project from Disturbed mainman David Draiman. They fall more on the industrial side of metal than Disturbed.

The first thing I noticed when they came out, is that there’s no bass player! Just vocals, guitar and drums. Obviously they had backing tracks with bass and other sound effects.

They played my favorite song off the album, “Out of Line”, although the studio version has a great appearance from System of a Down’s Serj Tankian. Perhaps we’ll see the two on the same tour in the future!

Penance
You Think You Know
A Part of Me
Out of Line
Opinion
Haze
Recover
Vilify
Wish

When they got to the final song of the set, I was caught off guard. Everything up to that point had a similar feel… you could tell they came off the same album. Then the final song was much more upbeat, had kind of a punk feel to it. Doing research later on, I discovered it was originally a Nine Inch Nails song, which was on the UK release of Device’s album.

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Black Label Society

Like always, Zakk Wylde is always bringing metal to the children. The Black Label family was out in full force, and BLS put on an great show, full of all the pinch harmonics you could ever wish for!

Godspeed Hell Bound
Destruction Overdrive
Bleed for Me
Forever Down
Guitar Solo
Parade of the Dead
Overlord
Guitar Solo
Suicide Messiah
Concrete Jungle
Stillborn

The set started off a little slow for me, but the second half, once we got through Zakk’s awesome 10 minute guitar solo, really picked up for me. A few of the songs I realized I hadn’t listened to in a long time, and I’ve been binging on BLS a little bit since the show.

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Megadeth

Megadeth just released their fourteenth studio album, Super Collider. They played a powerful 90 minute set, full of the major hits you’d want to hear, a few less played tracks, and a couple of new ones to top it off.

Trust
Hangar 18
Kingmaker
She-Wolf
Hook in Mouth
Architecture of Aggression
Sweating Bullets
Ashes in Your Mouth
A Tout Le Monde
Public Enemy No. 1
Super Collider
Symphony of Destruction
Peace Sells
—–
Cold Sweat
Holy Wars… The Punishment Due

I love that they’re still opening with “Trust.” It’s the song that first really got me into Megadeth, and I personally feel the way it builds up is the perfect way to start a show.

The title track of Super Collider is a little bit of a disappointment for me. There’s no real strong riffs in it, just a lot of hanging chords. “Kingmaker” was definitely the better of the two new tracks. And it’s nice to see them keep “Public Enemy No. 1” in the set, off of 2011’s TH1RT3EN.

When it got to the end of the set, Dave said they were having so much fun, they wanted to add a song. I had seen the setlist on stage before the show, and was expecting that this was just standard stage talk before they would bust into “Holy Wars,” but they ended up adding a cover of “Cold Sweat” by Thin Lizzy. Definitely not one of Thin Lizzy’s more well known songs, but the people who knew it were going nuts for it!

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For a ticket under $50, Gigantour has an insane amount of talent on it. I’m excited to see what future Gigantours hold!