Ozzfest @ San Bernadino,California, 20/08/05

Mon 29th Aug, 2005 in Gig Reviews

This year marks the 10th Anniversary of Ozzfest. The San Bernadino, California show is located in the middle of the desert, 100 miles east of Los Angeles. The show is divided into two stages -Second Stage and Main Stage, where the first half of the day was held in the heat of the dusty Second Stage area where the new up and coming bands perform to an audience, creating dust storms from moshing. In the evening, the heavyweights of metal grace the audience on the arena style main stage that spans the entire face of the one of the hills of San Bernadino.

This year’s Ozzfest headed with an impressive line-up, but highlight bands of the day were definitely Trivium, Black Dahlia Murder, As I Lay Dying, In Flames, Slipknot and Iron Maiden.

The show started off with new up and comer and favourite amongst the bands, Bury Your Dead taking the stage at 9.00 in the morning. Today’s set times were running half an hour a head of schedule to make room for a special appearance from Slipknot.

The first celebrity sighting of the day was during Wicked Wisdom’s set – otherwise known as Jada Pinkett Smith’s (a.k.a. Mrs Will Smith) band, who rocked it out to a very impressed audience, including one very supportive husband, Will Smith who was standing by the pit beside the moshers.

Black Dahlia Murder definitely turned heads. Although they didn’t look like your “typical” metal band, (the lead singer, Trevor Strnad has “Napoleon Dynamite glasses” and a tattoo on his stomach that says “heartburn”), despite physical appearances, the guys brought back metal to how it should be played.

San Diego’s newest metal import As I Lay Dying played the best set out of all the second stage bands. This punk/metal crossover band were as well prepared as the Main Stage bands, giving us the promise that the Second Stage success omen may just rub off on these guys.

Another stage favourite was Killswitch Engage. Guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz was wearing a Superman-esque cape, pink t-shirt and pineapple print boxer shorts amusing the likes of Sharon and Kelly Osbourne at the side of the stage.

Sweden’s In Flames were the first band to perform on the Main Stage to an appreciative crowd. Since they’ve been around since the early nineties the band are the superstars of Swedish metal and proves that metal crosses all language boundaries.

This particular Ozzfest show is the only one on the tour that is sold out, and it is no coincidence that it happens to be the same one that Slipknot are appearing in. Like always, the band owned the stage and delivered a fifty-minute set compressing as much energy into a shorten set as one of their solo shows.

Iron Maiden’s final Ozzfest show was truly momentous, and not just because they had pyrotechnics, massive stage lifts, a 20ft high animatronic Devil and a guest appearance by band mascot, Eddie.

The set was plagued by on-stage mishaps, including getting eggs thrown at them, having their flying Union Jack flag upstaged by another flying the American flag in the audience, and having their sound being cut-off six times during the performance. It was later revealed that the person responsible for all these coincidences was none other than Sharon Osbourne. Apparently, Sharon and Iron Maiden’s frontman, Bruce Dickinson had a fight prior to the show and in true Sharon behaviour, she concocted a “revenge” for the band that resulted in an unforgettable Iron Maiden performance. It is rumoured that Sharon asked the guys from the Black Label Society to fly the American flag in the audience and paid a guy in the audience to throw eggs at the band. To add more fuel to the fire, after the set, Sharon came on stage wearing an Ozzfest t-shirt to tell the audience “Let’s hear it for Iron Maiden (loud applause from the audience)... I love Maiden, but Bruce Dickinson is a fucking prick!”

The show ended with a performance from the original members of Black Sabbath performing a medley of classics from War Pigs to Iron Man  – which made not only a memorable show, but for the definitive line-up for Ozzfest.