When I first saw the lineup for Gigantour I was pretty stoked to say the least. Even though both Nevermore and Symphony X have been in existence for ten years now, this was their biggest tour so far in their careers and to combine these talents with veterans Dream Theater and Megadeth brought possibilities that I could only imagine. As it turns out the show that I attended, the August 1st date in San Antonio, was a “first stage only” concert and because of this Symphony X wasn’t in attendance. Regardless of this fact I still went into the venue with only the highest of expectations for this would be my first live experience with Dream Theater even though I have been an ardent fan and follower for many years now. What greeted me however was a roller coaster ride of emotions that ranged from sheer satisfaction at seeing musicians perform in their prime to simple disgust and hollowness at certain aspects of the festival and how it was run.

The very first thing to happen to me and my traveling companions upon entering the festival grounds was a member of the F.Y.E “autograph crew” presented each of us with a flyer that said , “Buy the cd! Meet the band!” I didn’t take much notice of this because I had brought my own cds to get signed and shoved this into my pocket as the three of us (Damien, Andrew, and myself) made our way around the site and browsed the merchandise wares. Shirts were a steep thirty five dollars a pop and tour books were a hefty twenty bucks and as much as I would have liked to purchase some Dream Theater swag, thirty five dollars is better spent on This Godless Endeavor and I still need to get the new Vanishing Point so I decided to forego the overpriced cotton advertisements. After being disappointed that I wouldn’t be walking out with a shirt I went over to the only booth selling cds, the F.Y.E. table and it is here where my first rant begins. Other than Dream Theater (for reasons which will be explained shortly) I do not fault any band on the roster for the scheme that F.Y.E. is pulling on this and every tour that they are a sponsor of. Everything I am about to rail against I hold the For Your Entertainment corporation responsible and because of this I will never shop in their stores again. Lying on the tables were overpriced copies of every bands’ latest release (and only the latest release) that ranged from a minimum of eighteen dollars to a whopping thirty five for the new Megadeth compilation that came with the bonus DVD. Taped down between every artists’ album and hanging on the tent itself was a sign that said this “Due to time constraints only cd’s purchased at the F.Y.E. table will be autographed.” I’m sorry but what the fuck did you just tell me? Are you saying that the fact that I went out and bought these cds the day they came out for years and years means nothing and that I have to spend twenty dollars on something that I already have just to have the band sign it? Just to be obstreperous I did a little calculating. Using Dream Theater as an example I have bought eleven albums and three DVD’s by the band. Six Degrees and Once in a Livetime were twenty four each due to the fact that they were double so I'll just say that on average I spent twenty dollars each on the eleven cds which comes out to two hundred and twenty bucks. As for the DVD’s Live at Budokan and Live Scenes From New York were each twenty five and the double set of Images and Words in Tokyo and Five Years in a Livetime was a good fifteen. So in total I have spent around two hundred and eighty one dollars on Dream Theater alone. Damn near three hundred dollars on a band in my lifetime over the years and yet without purchasing a cd I already own at that location I was to be denied a chance to meet the band. To be honest I would have bought the new Nevermore had the Euro digi version been available but surprise surprise, it wasn’t. I really cannot see how F.Y.E. can get away with this extortion and it makes me sick to my stomach to even think about how much money they made off fans who wanted nothing more than to meet their heroes and were forced to spend their hard earned money on something they already own. I can just imagine corporate suits sitting around an office giving each other high fives and whooping as they came up with this plan. What was even worse than this was that Dream Theater didn’t even put forth the effort to come out and sign in person, they had F.Y.E. lackeys walking around the site all evening with a crate of pre-signed copies of Octavarium for twenty dollars a cd. I’m touched that we mean so much to them. After ranting to my friends about this we made our way into the stage area to catch Nevermore where my only thoughts were, “These guys better come out and kick my ass because I am livid.”

Coming out to a packed crowd yet with little fanfare, Nevermore stormed the stage and lit up the Lonestar Pavilion like it was New Year’s. Opening with Born they never relented in their punishing aural assault for the next thirty five minutes. Warrel looks shockingly skinny now due to his recent abolishment of alcohol and new found weight lifting passion and his voice was in great shape, the guttural vocals of Born bled into his trademark banshee wails without the slightest hint of difficulty. Jeff and Steve were a stellar guitar duo playing off each other and complementing each other perfectly throughout the set however due to sound problems they were a bit muffled until the second song. With just a short bark of the proceeding songs title the guys then jumped right into Never Purify off of Enemies of Reality. I haven’t heard the remixed version of the album yet but I was surprised to find out that live the songs sounded much better than on plastic. The fan favorite Narcosynthesis followed and it was a good chugging song to get everyone riled up. At around this time I started to look around me and saw quite a few more people with their hands in the air and cheering than when the band first hit the stage. The crowd was definitely warming up to the Seattle quintet and their energy only fueled the band more. After Narcosynthesis Warrel spoke briefly to us and introduced the next song which is, “the first single, video, radio song whatever you want to call it,” and broke into The Final Product. Following this the crowd was in a fever pitch and when The River Dragon Has Come was aired a decent sized mosh pit formed in front of me. Seeing as how moshing is not my thing I just waited for it to cool down and then Andrew and I made our way up several rows for a better vantage point to catch the last minutes of the set. Enemies of Reality closed out Nevermore’s allotted time and when they left the stage they left to sizeable roar of approval from everyone in attendance. I just want to say that these guys were the only band that night that came out and played with a purpose, like they were grateful to be there. Because of their obvious appreciation and intensity I would be wrong if I said that they didn’t walk out with more fans than they went in with.

I’ve never been what you could even call remotely interested in Fear Factory so I used this down time to go grab something to eat and to quench my thirst because I was already a walking sweat box. As the three of us were munching out Andrew quickly puts down his burger and exclaims that various members of Watchtower are a mere ten yards to our right. He proceeds to go introduce himself while I continue to eat my turkey leg and drink some fine homemade lemonade from the Gordita stand. We also run into Danni from Magistral during this timeframe and proceed to catch up with each other for a good fifteen, twenty minutes. To all the Fear Factory fans out there I apologize for being ignorant in the band’s songs, all I can remember about their set was that one song sounded remarkably like Mercenary’s 11 Dreams and that I was glad when they wrapped their set up. Up next was Dream Theater the band I was most interested in seeing and as the lights went down I put aside the tackiness of selling pre signed cds and let myself get ready for what I hoped to be an unforgettable experience. Needless to say, watching them play was an experience I will never forget even though I wish I could.

With as many excellent songs as they have in their catalog Dream Theater should have wiped everyone off the stage and reigned supreme but this was far from what happened. It also didn’t occur to me how they have been on a steady decline since Scenes From a Memory until I heard their setlist and this point was hammered home. Opener The Glass Prison was bearable even if the opening vocal tradeoff between Mike Portnoy and James Labrie sounded flat and toneless. As their set went on however I began to realize that fans such as Andrew, Damien, Jim, a fellow Prog Power fan that we met up with, and myself were not the people that Dream Theater were catering to that night. Out of the entire hundred minutes that they played only twenty minutes were filled with even a remote flicker of true excellency. Under a Glass Moon is my least favorite song off the groundbreaking Images and Words release but it was still nice to hear when what surrounded it was Just Let Me Breathe and Panic Attack. Home was great although I had walked out by that point and hearing the band plod through Pull Me Under as lazily as possible didn’t exactly blow my skirt up and make me run back up to the front. Where was the beautiful and gorgeous Surrounded? Where was Wait for Sleep, Learning to Live, Caught in a Web, Peruvian Skies, Strange Déjà Vu, Hollow Years, Lifting Shadows Off a Dream, 6:00, Lines in the Sand, Finally Free, hell the list of songs that were missed could fill a page if I were so inclined to write them all out. There were zero songs from Awake, two songs from Images and Words, the atrocious Just Let Me Breathe from Falling Into Infinity, nothing from When Dream and Day Unite, and one song from Scenes From a Memory. Instead of hearing songs that made them the (until recently) undisputed Progressive Metal pioneers we were given such lackluster numbers like As I Am, Panic Attack, Endless Sacrifice, and a handful of others that did nothing but bore me to death. I know that the Gigantour crowd is a young one but Dream Theater’s magic lies not in their heaviest songs as they so believe, but in their intricate and technical songs. I would rather have had the band open with Another Day and go right into Speak to Me than to have heard what they played that night. Still, I do have to be thankful that they didn’t play This Dying Soul, I saw that this song was on the setlist for a few nights and was ready for this eleven minute atrocity so I at least was spared this. The band itself looked bored onstage, other than Jordan Rudess I can’t recall seeing one other band member even remotely crack a smile while they played. They looked like they were more interested in going back to the bus and looking over the sales of their pre signed Octavarium cds than on putting on a good show. Because of their obvious boredom I too found myself distracted, not by dollar signs and cd sales but by the two hot teenage girls jumping up and down in front of me rather than the bands antics. As disappointed as I am in Dream Theater after seeing them that evening I will go see them again if they come back as a headliner and do their usual three hour gigs. I would hope that all logic points to them playing at least a few of the songs on my bemoaning list if they were given three hours to play.

When Dream Theater finally left the stage I got in touch with Nevermore’s tour manager and with his help was able to do my interview with Jim Sheppard. The interview came out great, and talking to Jim only solidified the idea that Nevermore was truly thankful for their slot on Gigantour. Walking back from the buses I met up with Andrew again and let him use the V.I.P. pass to get back and meet the Nevermore guys and when he came back beaming from his encounter with Jeff I knew that his Gigantour experience had been saved. Feeling in a much better mood after the interview I sat back and watched Megadeth play from my vantage point on the railing. Throughout the set I had mixed feelings on the bands’ performance. Some songs had that spark of old from when I saw them play five years ago and others just seemed dull. Highlights included hearing Trust, Tornado of Souls, Holy Wars, and In My Darkest Hour. Sweating Bullets, an awful song to begin with, was made worse due to Mustaine’s obviously worn out voice. A very mechanical set, the band simply plowed through a huge number of songs with little to no onstage banter and this worked in their favor because the good outweighed the bad. Just to clarify so I don’t sound like a bitter cynic who only wants to hear songs over fifteen years old I personally would have been glad to hear Family Tree, Train of Consequences, or The Killing Road. Actually, now that I think of it, Dave might have actually been sick that night because right before Peace Sells… he did the band introduction and his voice sounded bad as if he were trying to speak in the same snarl that he uses to sing. Megadeth played a solid if machinelike set and I think I’m in the minority when it comes to being slightly indifferent to them because the roar from the crowd between each song was monstrous. It was obvious who the people came to see.

I really don’t know why there wasn’t any second stage action that night in San Antonio. Located approximately a hundred and fifty yards from the main stage was a small empty second stage just sitting there looking lonely and unused. Even though it was insanely small it still would have left the same amount of room to play on that Nevermore and Fear Factory had on the main stage playing in front of Megadeth’s drum riser and equipment. Looking back I really wish Symphony X had been there because they might have actually given Nevermore some competition that night for the most lively band. I left the Lonestar Pavilion that night with thoughts spinning around wildly in my head. I find it ironic that the band I was most excited to see gave the worst performance and the band I was simply thinking “I hope they’re good” about turned out to be the best band of the evening. If you do go see this tour package go early to cheer on Symphony X and Nevermore, they deserve it. As for Dream Theater well, your enjoyment will depend on how much you enjoy their recent outings and Megadave is at least satisfactory.