If you've been following Pants lately (and revelling in the uncharacteristic flow of updates), you'll notice that this is the third music festival I've been to in the past month. One month ago I was at the Showgrounds for the Big Day Out, then the week after I was at the Laneway Festival and now today was the Soundwave Festival at Bonython Park.

Looking back at my last two gig reviews, I was planning on trying something different for this Soundwave event summary. For BDO 2009 I ran through my day and only rated the acts I saw, but for Laneway I didn't really talk much about any specific band at all. So to mix things up for this gig review, I was planning to comment on every single band, including the acts I didn't see.
Unfortunately Soundwave is one of those festivals where I'm not in a good position to offer much in the way of insightful commentary. When the festival was announced, a friend of mine described the lineup as "an emo wall of shame" and I'd have to agree. There were around 55 artists on the Soundwave lineup & timetable, but I'd only really heard of around three of them.
To make my review easier, I've grouped the following 52 artists all under the category of "didn't see them perform but I don't care because they probably were shit".
- Mike Herrera
- Riverboat Gamblers
- Alesana
- Madina Lake
- Finch
- Ace Enders
- Less Than Jake
- All That Remains
- Goldfinger
- Jack's Mannequin
- Maylene & The Sons Of Disaster
- Silverstein
- The Subways
- Unearth
- Forever The Sickest Kids
- Saves The Day
- Jaguar Love
- Attack In Black
- Evergreen Terrace
- Underoath
- Moneen
- Straylight Run
- Rival Schools
- Anberlin
- Poison The Well
- The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus
- Innerpartysystem
- Minus The Bear
- Hellogoodbye
- Every Time I Die
- Dillinger Escape Plan
- 36 Crazy Fists
- The Audition
- Valencia
- Alkaline Trio
- The Bloodhound Gang
- Lacuna Coil
- Chiodos
- Houston Calls
- Horse The Band
- Devildriver
- New Found Glory
- Say Anything
- From First To Last
- In Flames
- Emery
- I Am The Avalanche
- Face To Face
- Lamb Of God
- Bayside
- Bedouin Soundclash
- Funeral For A Friend
Needless to say, I sorta skipped a large chunk of the festival and it wasn't by accident either. Just to finish off the review, here is a list of the bands I actually did see at Soundwave, plus my comments:
I'm not going to deny it — I have a huge man-crush on Trent Reznor so when I found out NIN were going to tour Adelaide there was no doubt that I'd be there, even if I had to walk among crowds of fans of those other 50+ bands listed above.
What made the deal even sweeter was that today is my birthday. Trent with his band put on a great show tonight and as much as I seriously enjoyed NinchCON '05 in Melbourne, I'm thinking that this concert tonight has topped it to become my new Best Concert Evar™.
The night's setlist was excellent, with many of the classic NIN songs played alongside newer material and rarer songs like Non-Entity. Some slower songs like La Mer and Hurt helped give the crowd time to settle and it was a good shift in pace.
Guitarist Robin Finck has rejoined NIN for this tour, plus it was also good to watch Rob Sheridan hover around the stage recording photos/videos with his Canon EOS 5D mkII. Professional camera gear and Ninch: two of my great loves in the same place at the same time...
Today was a good day... :)