Menomena - Rotten Hell

Thanks to a sudden rush of tickets from Ticketweb after the show had been listed as sold out all month, I was able to succeed in a valiant effort I'd been making to see them without paying triple the ticket price. The show was pretty good, not out of the park. The most unfortunate part of the show was undoubtedly the over-focused butchering of "Rotten Hell", one of the best songs on the album. The last song of their regular set, which would cause me to skip the encore, had a completely unnecessary ten minute intro in which the audience was instructed to chime in in rounds, which took about half the time to explain for no good reason, and then forced to practice. Add in a lot onstage patter and you've got ten minutes of waiting after cheering when the song was announced. When it finally came, all the rounds were off and unclear and they fucked up the song a few times. Sometimes it's best to skip the audience participation and just play your amazing song as best you can.
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