Wow! Three years ago today, America took a big step into combating the eeeeevil (!) dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein. And with good reason too! Well, at the time at least- See here in America, we don’t much care for thinking things through, or thinking at all really. And why should we! It’s not like over 2,300 U.S. soldiers and 33,000 Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the brazen ignorance among our executive branch. Oh no, not at all.

In fact, we had good reason for goin’ into Iraq 3 years ago. Here, lemme show you:

“We know that Saddam Hussein pursued weapons of mass murder even when inspectors were in his country. Are we to assume that he stopped when they left? The history, the logic, and the facts lead to one conclusion: Saddam Hussein’s regime is a grave and gathering danger. To suggest otherwise is to hope against the evidence. To assume this regime’s good faith is to bet the lives of millions and the peace of the world in a reckless gamble. And this is a risk we must not take.” – President George W. Bush to the United Nations General Assembly, September 12, 2002.

“Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.” – President George W. Bush in an address to the nation, March 17, 2003.

Oh.. GOD! Saddam’s gonna kill us all! Grab the children! Prepare the bunker! Ready the shotguns! Stockpile spam! We gonna die!!

Or…not:

“The ISG has not found evidence that Saddam possessed WMD stocks in 2003, but [there is] the possibility that some weapons existed in Iraq, although not of a militarily significant capability.” – Charles Duelfer, U.S. Iraq Survey Group Final Report, September 2004.

Oh, whew! We’re safe. But what about the Iraqi people?! The poor, tortured civilians who die everyday (we’ll put a stop to it! No, really!) and whose rights we would never, ever, ever violate (NOT EVER)? Huh, what about them?! Well, we better stick around to save ‘em, ’cause that’s our job as a nation- in fact, we should just save ourselves a lot of trouble and make our national slogan “The United States: Kickin’ oppression in the pants. Hard.”

And when we’re done with Iraq, we can look forward to invading even more countries to save their poor, poor civilians from tyranny, ’cause we wouldn’t wanna be unfair or hypocritical. So we could start with the little guys like Sudan, Somalia (hey, it worked in ‘93!), The Democratic Republic of Congo (that fancy name is sooo not gonna fool us!), Belarus, Cuba, Myanmar, etc. After we’ve got all warmed-up, we can move onto the biggies like North Korea and China. Hey, just ’cause the latter has nukes isn’t gonna stop us! No siree! We’re here to knock oppression the fuck out, whatever the cost!

Well, that’s about all there is to discuss on this happy, happy anniversary of our invasion into Iraq. Let’s summarize:

Total Cost: Over $200 Billion. Fun fact: $19 billion a year would cut world hunger in half by 2015 (Borgen Project). But let’s not lose focus here: Terrorists can’t fight on an empty stomach!
Total Dead: Over 35,000 as a result of military conflict.
Current reason for occupation: Fixing our (unjustifiable) mess.
Issues Resolved: A cruel dictator is no longer in power.
Issues stemming from said resolution: A country on the brink of civil war.

I think I speak for the Bush administration when I say, “Thanks America! Thanks for supporting an administration that has mislead and trampled all over you with barely a squeak of concern, thanks for making sure our leader could never get impeached for doing something far more insidious than taking a BJ in the oval office, and thanks for egging us on as we pave the way for future administrations to slit your throats without consequence. Now please, go back to sleep.”

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Ahh, the benefits of living in the middle of nowhere: It’s rare that even one of my favorite bands will play a show within 2 hours of where I live, let alone more than that. But somehow Opeth and Dark Tranquillity (and Devildriver) ended up in Spokane at the Big Easy on Friday, and yeah, it kicked ass.

I’d love to be posting a bunch of pics with this, but there’s this wonderfully moronic trend with venues not allowing cameras inside, DESPITE the fact that people can bring in cellphones capable of generating the same quality photos as a low-end digital camera. But oh well. Onto the important bits!

Dark Tranquillity (setlist):

The Wonders at Your Feet
Lost to Apathy
The Treason Wall
Damage Done
The New Build
Punish My Heaven
My Negation
Final Resistance

DT played a fairly well rounded setlist, though it obviously favors latter-day material (not that I’ve bothered listening to anything prior to The Gallery at this point, but still). Great sound quality, though the overall volume was a bit low. It’s hard to put my finger on it, but it was the same deal when I saw Soilwork live: Both bands have been around for a damn long time and started out in the same genre (with DT helping to invent it and still actually playing it), and on stage they look as though they’re just going through the motions. Don’t get me wrong, Mikael Stanne was great to watch- cheesy song intros and all (“You guys familiar with the new album? Yeah? Good! That means you’re not… Lost to Apaaaaathy!!!”), but they just never really “hit”. I dunno, it could’ve just been that they were the warm-up band and nobody was really getting into things yet. At anyrate, it was a great performance and hopefully if I ever see them again they’ll get to play closer to a full set.

Devildriver

I’m not at all familiar with either of Devildriver’s albums, so I have no idea what they played aside from End Of The Line (so-so opener) and Sin & Sacrifice (halfway through, pretty good). Anyways, it was clear from the moment they walked on stage that most of the crowd was there to see them, which wasn’t much of a shock given that Dez is somewhat of a celebrity. But they put on a surprisingly good show, and I found myself enjoying it. They may not be anywhere near as talented as DT or Opeth, but it was heavy, loud, and fun to watch.

Opeth (setlist)

Ghost of Perdition
White Cluster
The Amen Corner
Baying of the Hounds
Closure
Under the Weeping Moon
The Grand Conjuration
The Drapery Falls

Encore:
Deliverance

Onto the main attraction. I’ve seen Opeth before, but it was on the Damnation tour so they didn’t play anything heavier than Face Of Melinda. This time, however, they did. As far as their performance, there’s not much to say: It was Opeth. Crushing, precise, and damn near perfect in every way. The only complaint I have is that for the first few songs it was somewhat of a wall of noise, but they balanced things out later. And apparently Martin Lopez (drummer) is sick again, because the drummer from Bloodbath and Witchery (Martin Axenrot) was filling in for him- and did an outstanding job as far as I’m concerned.

As far as their setlist goes, I would’ve rather heard The Leper Affinity (which they’ve been playing) than The Drapery Falls, and any song from Still Life other than White Cluster (not that it’s bad- far from it- it’s just my least favorite from the album). Closure, their “soft track” of the night, was better than I thought it’d be since they threw in a different, much heavier ending, but I still would’ve preferred any non-Damnation acoustic song (especially Harvest). Oh well though… It’s kinda pointless to bitch about what Opeth played, since even their weaker songs kick ass.

And of course, Akerfeldt was his usual goofy self. Some quotes:

“Yes, we’re Opeth, and we’re from Sveeden!”
“…And if you don’t like Uriah Heep, you can get the fuck out.”
[introducing The Grand Conjuration] “This is the first song we did a video for and lo and behold… It wasn’t very good.”

The encore was especially amusing: After taking their sweet time before coming back out (the bastards), Akerfeldt tells the crowd we’re gonna have to do something for him first: Name the band and song of each riff he plays. They were all from classic rock/prog bands and I only knew the first one (Smoke on the Water), but it was hilarious. He did about six (including Deep Purple and Black Sabbath) before they launched into Deliverance, thus ending the show.

Afterwards, the three of us (Jed, my brother, and I) felt compelled to wait outside for the band since their buses were parked out front. Martin from DT was out signing stuff for awhile, talking to fans, etc. But moron that I am, I completely forgot to bring anything to get signed (more on this in a moment) nor did I have a camera, so I didn’t even bother. Anyways, an hour goes by… No Opeth. One of the band’s security guards came out the door and told us it’ll be another 2 hours. Bear in mind it’s probably below freezing at this point…

1:45 am. The show has been over for a solid hour and half a dozen of us are outside freezing our collective asses off, wondering what the hell Opeth is doing. Then their keyboardist (Per Wiberg) pops out, signs some things, and gets on the bus (said he’d be right back). Best part was that right after that, Martin came back out of DT’s RV- I’m assuming because he was wondering what the hell was taking so long too- but couldn’t get back into the venue. Per comes back out at that point, and they figure things out in Swedish in front of us.

Anyways, around 15 minutes later the rest of the band finally show themselves. It was funny, Martin (the drummer) walked by Jed and me with two boxes of pizza, a beer, and some bread, and said “Hungry? Ha, kidding, kidding.” In actuality, we were fucking starving. But I guess he didn’t believe Jed when he yelled “YES!”

After that, Akerfeldt (vocals/lead guitar, Opeth) came out and gave us this absolute “what the fuck?” look before coming over and saying “I don’t know what you guys were waiting for.” But he was great; signed everyone’s stuff, took pictures with some, and headed off. The same went for the other three members, and sadly, the only piece of paper I had was a paycheck stub (it was payday), so I didn’t get anything terribly cool written on.

And that was more or less it. It was good to see some of the kids from Troy show up and prove that not everyone around here has shit taste in metal music (granted, they left halfway through Opeth’s set to go party, but oh well). Hopefully next time I’ll bring back some pictures so these massive posts have some entertainment value to the majority of you who don’t care and who, not coincidentally, can’t understand why I’d wait 2 hours in the freezing cold just to get a piece of paper scribbled on.

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