Hello fellow music fans. I know, I know... I said I was going on a hiatus. But I couldn't let Thanksgiving pass without giving you a short rundown of my recent live shows. After the tryptophan induced coma that I plan to go into on Turkey Day, I'll be back in a week or so complaining about SOMETHING. In the meantime, here are a couple of shows of note.

Audioslave w/ Seether & 30 Seconds to Mars- November 6th- Fox Theatre

Audioslave was back at the Fox Theatre playing to a near capacity crowd of 5,000. This outing was pretty much the same show as their late April State Theatre date. The two hour set included covers from Rage Against the Machine (“Sleep Now in the Fire; an instrumental version of “Bulls on Parade”), and Soundgarden (“Black Hole Sun”, “Spoonman”), and the band performed with much of the same fury as the set earlier in the year. One twist though; the band did add an older song to the repertoire: the Temple of the Dog classic “Hunger Strike”, which caught the audience off guard, and had them singing along as well.

South African band Seether was a solid surprise. The band, whose CD’s seem as about as entertaining as watching grass grow; pulled off a hard rocking, 40 minute set that had the crowd into them, almost as much as Audioslave. Rock radio hits, such as “Fine Again”, and “Remedy”.

While Seether impressed, actor Jared Leto’s moody behavior ruined 30 Second to Mars’ 20 minute set. The actor/lead singer berated the Detroit crowd for not showing any emotion for his band, promptly gave the crowd the middle finger and mouthed some four letter words as he walked off stage a few songs early.

Someone needs to tell Jared to chill out; the whole moody thing was old when “My Called so Life” was cancelled.

Black Label Society- November 9th- State Theatre

Zakk Wylde rocked his way through a 100 minute set, which brought new meaning to the word “monotonous”. The five piece group, from all over the U.S. did their best to make most of their songs sound the same. While the opening “Fire It Up” provide some musical ammo early on, most of the group's other material did not seem engaging enough to even care. They mostly played to the faux-biker and beer drinking crowd, and used the most of infamous derogatory name for gays like it was a Kleenex during a cold - it all seemed to grow old very quickly.

During the ballad “In This River”, Wylde’s tribute to fallen guitar hero Dimebag Darrell, it seemed that Wylde was trying something new, but the song just seemed sappy and didn’t seem to spark much energy.

The crowd was with the band all the way through; and Wylde’s playing is as stellar as ever, but this crowd would more than likely follow Wylde off of a cliff, so the crowd reaction was expected.

H.I.M.- November 12th- State Theatre

If you haven’t heard of H.I.M. by now, you need an introduction to one of the strongest underrated current bands. The Finnish five member group played an impressive 80 minute set, which pleased the Hot Topic crowd, as well as the others in the crowd. The group, led by singer Ville Valo, ignited the crowd with the chords of the current single “Rip Out the Wings of a Butterfly” to start the set. The show’s best song was the 2003 track “Soul On Fire”, which seems ready for some NFL special or arena style crowd right now.

Valo seems to have the Jim Morrison/Scott Weiland stage interaction style worked out almost to perfection. He kept a shroud of mystery with the crowd, but seemed affable enough to be likeable with the crowd.

The biggest crowd reactions were for the Bam Margera approved “Buried Alive by Love”, among others. But forget the association with Margera, this band could have the chops and the crowds (the Detroit show was nearly sold out) to stay in the collective consciousness long after Margera’s show is over.

Welsh band Skindred opened with an entertaining set that had mosh pits going surprisingly early. The rapid succession of the songs “Set It Off”, “Pressure” and “Nobody” made sure if someone wasn’t moving by that point, they were going wild during the last three songs of the group’s set.