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Nonpoint and Sevendust Rock The HOB

Heather, Ger, Michelle, Mike, Greg, Paul, and I went down to the House of Blues (HOB) in Anaheim last night to see Nonpoint and Sevendust play. The two opening bands were One and Socialburn.

My first impression from last night is that there was a huge disparity between the two opening acts and the two main acts. The “dud” of the evening for me was Socialburn, but I still enjoyed their set. I recognized a couple of their songs, but the rest of the songs were just kind of there. They were more polished than the first band, One, but they didn’t have the catchy riffs that One had. Plus, the lead singer for One did an excellent job trying to get people involved, especially considering the club was at best one third full during his band’s set.

The battle for best act of the evening comes down to Nonpoint and Sevendust. Personally, I liked Nonpoint the best. Sevendust was awesome, but I think my familiarity with Nonpoint’s material pushed me them up a notch. I have Sevendust’s most recent album, and I’ve listened to it several times, but besides it, I would only recognize Sevendust songs that received a fair bit of radio play. With Nonpoint, on the other hand, I have three of their four albums, and recognized almost every song they played.

The first three bands all played on a truncated stage, with a curtain cutting off what turned out to be the back half of the stage. When Sevendust came out, the staff opened the whole stage and used more/fancier lights than they had used throughout the earlier part of the evening. That certainly helped to get people amped up. And, Sevendust is Sevendust. It’s hard not to get moving around when they play. Their stuff is built to rock a club like the HOB. And the people responded.

Of course, a couple of mosh pits got started, and as opposed to last time I went to the HOB, it wasn’t just one big drunk guy who started them. Some bulldozer-looking dudes got out there and really hammered on each other. There was one fall a guy took that I thought he might not get up from. It looked like a head-first-into-concrete type spill. But each time the fallen guy would find help from his brethren as they yanked him up from the floor and sent him right back into the frenzy. Fortunately I avoided much of that and was able to enjoy the show in relative peace.

Overall, an awesome show, and definitely worth the price of admission.