Dillinger Escape Plan / Mastodon / Norma Jean

live in Orlando (2002)

Kevin

I bought my ticket for the escape plan a few weeks before the show, it was supposedly sold out earlier this week, but still many people showed up without tickets, and some got in, others watched from outside of the social, an intimate venue of a 450 capacity.

The first band of the night, to my surprise was Norma Jean, who immediatly grabbed the crowd's attention from the first note. The singer had incredible energy right from the first intense scream, which was followed by a stage dive. His stage movements resembled that of Geoff from Thursday, but seemed to have more energy. This was an incredible impressive set, which featured incredible crowd participation, and amazing guitar work.

The next band was Atlanta, Georgia's Mastodon, who began the set with a joke about the lead guitarist looking like Sammy Hagar and the singer from the spin doctors. They began the 45 minute set with a slow, heavy song that featured incredible guitar work and death metal vocals, this song seemed to set the tone for the rest of the set, that the crowd seemed to enjoy immensely. At this point the pit is quite crazy, however it wouldn't prove to be anywhere near as intense as dillinger's pit. Mastodon then ended thier set with a thin lizzy cover, which i think was pretty cool. Overall an excellent set.

During the wait for The Dillinger Escape Plan, the crowd seemed very anxious, the social was absolutely packed at this point. One man in the crowd continued to yell "Dillinger!!!!!" every 30 seconds for the 30 minute wait. During the wait, Jazz was played, a change of pace from the rest of the night, but enough to cause a pit from the overly anxious crowd.

The lights dimmed at the social, and an NWA song came blaring over the speakers, the floor started thier decent into insanity at this point, then the band took the stage, they started off with "Hollywood Squares" off of the new EP on Epitaph, this sent the floor into an absolute frenzy, Dillinger's set included strobe lights for every song, it was incredibly intense. every member of the band, had great stage energy, with Ben litterally bouncing off the walls of the social at many points, one such instance had him jumping on top of his amp, however the amp fell onto a mic, and broke the amp, this delayed the set about 5 minutes, but once the songs resumed, so did the energy. They ran through songs from all of thier releases, including 4 songs off of the new EP. however the best was yet to come.

During the last song, which i believe was "running board", the singer, who had already torn down the curtains on stage, pulled out a torch from behind one of the amps, he lit the torch on fire and began to run around on stage, the crowd went absolutely wild, then, he kneeled down, and drank a bottle of what seemed to be kerosene, he then stood up, and spit the kerosene at the torch, which made flames shoot through the air over the pit, this was amazing, he did this about 10 times, he would have kids hold the torch while he spit it, it was truly one of, if not the the best set i have ever seen.

Seeing this tour is an absolute must.