Reviews

GRAND PRAIRIE – Even on bad days, great bands still somehow sound awesome.

Wireless transmitters fuzzed out, guitar tones and balance wavered like a studded-leather seesaw, and vocals were buried beneath sonic mire during Megadeth's 85-minute headlining Gigantour set at Nokia Theatre on Tuesday. After a limp-sounding rocket salvo of four early thrash classics to open the performance – the third selection, "Skin of My Teeth," was more interference than music for the first minute – it appeared that perhaps this monumental metal band may be forced to pack up early.

Frontman Dave Mustaine, a noted perfectionist and organizer of the three-year-old Gigantour, has always been more intelligible than most as an extreme-metal vocalist. That half the time his singing was mixed too low to hear clearly only compounded the frustration, especially compared with last year's near-perfect Gigantour stop at the same hall.

But a 2007 Megadeth track, "United Abominations," finally introduced the slicing, so-lethal-it-should-be-licensed tone that Mr. Mustaine's known for. And by the time the evening's big surprise came along – back-to-back performances of "Symphony of Destruction" and "Trust," two 1990s Megadeth hits that he loathes playing live – the band had mostly turned its fortunes around.

Mr. Mustaine's aim to expose influential extreme-metal acts to American audiences via Gigantour is thriving thanks to sure-footed turns by two Scandinavian openers. The influential Swedish melodic-thrash quintet In Flames was steady but not demonstrative (that's not the act's forte, anyhow), and it was plain that singer Anders Fridén's age is affecting both his stamina and screechy, on-or-off pipes. Much younger and flashier Finnish death metalers Children of Bodom – which just released the metal album of the year to date, the inventive and unrelenting Blooddrunk –needed more rehearsal and smaller doses of elfin leader Alexi Laiho.