Festival Review: Chicago Open Air 2016 Day 1

There’s nothing quite like a music festival. As long time veterans of Rock on the Range and Louder than Life, the folks here at The Music Pill were extremely excited earlier this spring when the first annual Chicago Open Air was announced. This brand new three day festival was held on a beautiful summer weekend at Toyota Park in Bridgeview, IL (a Chicago suburb). It featured a spectacular lineup of hard rock and heavy metal bands from all over the world. The Music Pill was there all weekend, taking notes, snapping pictures, and digesting all the music so we could give you the gory details on how the weekend went down. If you missed the action, our goal is to make you feel like you were there to see the magic happen. If you WERE in Chicago that weekend, then this is simply an excuse to relive the madness.

To get us started, this post will cover Day 1 (Friday) of Chicago Open Air 2016. We’ll touch on many of the great bands that played on Friday, and split them up into three categories: rock solid shows, slight disappointments, and mind-blowing performances. Because of the logistics of the festival, we can’t review every band, but what you’ll find is a thorough analysis of a multitude of great bands from all different genres. Friday gave us fantastic bands like Periphery, Chevelle, Trivium, Meshuggah, In This Moment, and so many more, ending with the almighty Rammstein as the headliner.

Without further ado – here we go: Day 1 (Friday) of Chicago Open Air 2016, you are officially under way. Let’s do this.

Festival Review: Rock on the Range 2014 – Day 2

Rock on the Range Day 2. As I gathered my old, nearly-30 year old self up on Saturday morning to get in the shower at 8am and get ready for the day (which included recovering from some ill-advised White Castle sliders the night before), I’d be remiss if I didn’t utter “man…this thing used to only be two days…”. But, nonetheless, I was excited, and we were out in the parking lot at 9am, getting the grill ready and preparing for a great day of music. This would prove to be one of the strongest days of the weekend, and one that came out of nowhere a bit with some great side stage bands.

Without further ado – Here’s Rock on the Range 2014 Day 2 broken down.

Music Pill Update – April 2014

A brutally cold winter in Indianapolis, coupled with limited music releases, had me shaking with the desire to dive into some music. Still nothing on the concert calendar, but there has been a lot of great music released as we inch closer to spring.

Now, I don’t fancy myself an album reviewer – people who review albums need to use phrases that have big words and sound official but don’t really actually mean anything. Actual example I read recently: “Each and every aspect of this record breathes with dynamic feeling.” Since I have no idea what that means (does anybody?), I’ve never really felt adequate to write official album reviews. Rather, I focus the blog on live shows and the experience that music gives me, because nobody can tell me I’m wrong. 🙂

BUT…..zero shows in months and a craving to write leaves me no choice. So….here’s a few notes on some albums that have surfaced recently. A couple major hits, a couple disappointments, and a couple in between. Enjoy!