Hershey, Pennsylvania, September 22nd, 2007 Options

[SJN1279]

LIVE with Collective Soul, 3 Days Grace, Breaking Benjamin, Seether, and Skillet

Found it on Seether's Myspace! I knew I just had to dig properly! Thanks Chook for leading us to the answer!

[SJN1279]

Newspaper review stolen from SOY:

The Hersheypark Stadium summer concert season closed with an exhaustive bang Saturday: an economical, if emotionally confusing, five-band bill.

Opener Seether began with a brief, albeit thundering and angry, set highlighted by its hit "Broken" (minus Evanescence’s Amy Lee) and Shaun Morgan running through bits of the other bands’ tunes to let the audience know what they were in for.

Collective Soul was an interesting, if odd, choice to come next, playing its insightful, optimistic tunes. "Where the River Flows" was marred by singer Ed Roland’s quivering falsetto, but the insistent "December," a rollicking "Run," a crunchy "Hollywood" and a beautiful "World I Know" made up for the strange start.

The band ended with its first hit, a looser, easier version of "Shine."

It seemed as though most people were in the stadium to see neo-metallers Three Days Grace, and the band didn’t let anyone down. While its persistent blend of loud and soft, sweet and heavy got repetitive, it cranked out songs like "Just Like You," "Drown," "I Hate Everything About You," "Riot" and "Never Too Late" with crackling speed.

"Scared" got the pit on the ground moving like a giant amoeba (the seats had been removed for moshing), and the haunting "Home" wrapped things up on an eerie note.

Wilkes-Barre native Breaking Benjamin was another crowd favorite, probably because it sounded very much like Three Days Grace. It seemed as though the less, shall we say, intellectual or thoughtful bands got a better response overall, which made the combination even more interesting.

Starting with "The Diary of Jane" and blasting through "Until the End," "Breath," "Breakdown," "Shallow Bay" and "Sooner or Later," Breaking Benjamin couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a rock band, a metal band or a death metal band. Singer Ben Burnley favored a Cookie Monster-esque roar with his open-throated bellow throughout. "Break My Fall" and "So Cold" ended its hourlong set.

The organization of the night was stellar, with bands efficiently booking through their sets.

York’s Live was the peace-and-love portion of the show, maybe to its detriment. Singer Ed Kowalczyk was by far the finest singer of the night, breezing operatically through "All Over You," "Waitress," "River" and a lovely "Mirror Song" in his Cat Stevens-like voice.

Other set highlights were "Where Do We Go From Here," a fascinating take on Johnny Cash’s "I Walk the Line" (which Live made so much its own it almost sounded like it had done the song first), "Wings" and a hair-raisingly tense "I Alone."

So if the mental tug of flat-out aggression and self-loathing vs. optimism and spiritual uplift didn’t jar you, this was your show.

KIRA L. SCHLECHTER: 257-4763
or kschlechter@patriot-news.com

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/patriotne...ticle172645.ece