Last weekend Louder than Life proved to be one of the greatest hard rock music festivals in the country. This year’s lineup featured hard hitting bands such as Rob Zombie, Incubus, Prophets of Rage, Stone Sour, and the Prince of Darkness himself Ozzy Osbourne. This year’s festival was truly a special opportunity to see Ozzy Osborne, the man who invented Heavy Metal with his band Black Sabbath in 1970. Louder than Life is located in Champions Park in Louisville Kentucky and features three stages, lots of Bourbon, and enough food and entertainment to keep festival goers very happy all weekend. Louder than Life Fest treats its VIP patrons very nicely. I would recommend anyone who wants a more luxurious experience to upgrade their tickets to VIP next year. Included in the VIP package is a giant set of bleachers to watch the bands in comfort, a huge tent with chandeliers, leather couches, upscale bars and air-conditioned bathrooms. This year we had absolute perfect weather thanks to the festival being held at the end of September. 

Our personal favorite performance of the weekend was Rob Zombie. We have wanted to attend a Rob Zombie show for a long time and it did not disappoint. Everything from the spooky hit songs, awesome costumes and wardrobe and stage presence made it one of the best metal shows we have ever seen. Rob Zombie wore skin tight golden pants, a metallic fringed leather jacket, corpse paint makeup and his signature dreadlocks while dancing and jumping around the whole stage. He played some of my favorite songs such as “Thunder Kiss 1965,” “Living Dead Girl,” “Dracula,” and even covered the Ramones most popular song “Blitzkrieg Bop”. We would like to say that Rob Zombie’s band had the coolest guitars we have ever seen on stage, that featured led Lights, guitars filled with liquid and some shaped like wooden crosses and Frankenstein heads. 

Ozzy Osbourne is one of the most notorious men in heavy metal and is respected by all as the prince of darkness. Black Sabbath is on the same musical level as Led Zeppelin and their music has scared and captivated people for almost 50 years. Ozzy is known for such outlandish behavior such as urinating on the steps of the Alamo, and he helped get his band a record deal by biting a head off of a live bat. We felt like for us personally this was a once in a life time opportunity to see the legendary front man perform such classic songs as “Paranoid,” “War Pigs,” “Mr. Crowley,” and “Iron Man.”  Ozzy Osbourne looked very happy to be on stage, had great vocals, energy and delivered an awesome one and a half hour set. Ozzy’s guitarist Zakk Wyld (of Black Label Society) played hands down the best guitar solos we have ever heard in our entire life. Listening to Zakk play guitar is truly amazing.

Sunday was an exciting lineup and we were entertained watching In This Moment, Stone Sour, Incubus, Rise Against and Prophets of Rage. In This Moment was one of our anticipated shows of the day as their performance features many costumes, dancers and other theatrical elements. It was a change of pace to see Slipknot front man, Corey Taylor perform without a mask in his second band Stone Sour. Corey Taylor is most known for performing with Slipknot, but watch Stone Sour proves that he is multi-talented and able to write songs that are more melodic than slipknots brutal music. At the end of the night Prophets of Rage Closed out the festival with a bang. This project consists of members of Rage Against the Machine, Public Enemy, and Cyprus Hill. It was truly an epic set to hear songs such as “Jump Around,” “Guerilla Radio,” “Sleep Now in the Fire,” and “Bring the Noise.” Tom Morello gave an emotional tribute to Chris Cornell as the band played the Audioslave song “Like a Stone.” There were no vocals, just spot lights on an empty microphone as a tribute to Chris Cornell. 

Louder than Life is one of the hardest rocking exciting festivals in the country. This is a must attend weekend for anyone who wants to see the biggest names in rock music. You cannot get the energy and entertainment that heavy metal brings from any other genre of music. Going to a place like that feels like you are a member of a giant community. We are looking forward to next year.