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(Live Review) THE BEARD'S TOP 10 LIVE SETS OF 2024

Well, readers, we have finally made it to the end of the 2024 best sets top forty list. Below are what the Beard considered the ten best sets of the 2024 calendar year. Now, a bit of context. These choices were made for a combination of reasons. This was not just the ten most technically proficient sets, nor the ten sets with the biggest special effects or best singing, playing, lighting, etc. These were the sets that stood apart from the rest.

   

Over the last four years I have reviewed over nine hundred acts and no matter how much you love what you do, when you do it enough you begin to get jaded and then you have to guard against complacency. You often feel a sense of DeJa’Vu, (like you have seen this same set of music before.)

      

These ten (for various and often unique reasons), stood apart from the rest. While watching them I got to emotionally experience just why I enjoy doing this and that made them special and therefore my favorites of the year. I fully understand they may well not be anyone else’s, but for me (to every band on this list,) Thank You for taking me somewhere special in the performance of your craft.


Top 10 live sets of 2024

10: The Keening     6-26-24     Thalia Hall, Chicago, IL

The Beard w/The Keening's Rebecca Vernon, Chicago 2024
The Beard w/The Keening's Rebecca Vernon, Chicago 2024

Rebecca Vernon’s newest project took the layered compositions of her former band Subrosa and more directly applied her unique lyrical context to them. Vernon’s lyrics are a bit like a metal Dylan’s in that the words were chosen specifically, but the meanings are not always directly obvious.

    

I got to hear most of her six-track release “Little Bird,” and I came away extremely impressed with what she had created. Although as an opening act, she only got about thirty-five minutes, Vernon’s Keening was the best set of the evening, (and both other bands performing that evening also made my top forty, making this one of the best overall “shows” of 2024.)

   

After the set, I got to chat a bit with Rebecca Vernon and when I described the sensation her music gave me, (the beauty of a waterfall from a distance, but also the terror of a waterfall once immersed within it), gave me a huge smile and replied, “That is perfect, and I AM going to steal it.”

      

If you have never checked out The Keening, start with some Subrosa and work your way forward.



9. Avatar:     5-19-24     Milwaukee Metalfest     Milwaukee, WI

Avator live at Milwaukee Metalfest 2024
Avator live at Milwaukee Metalfest 2024

Despite being around for over two decades, I had never heard of this Swedish death/prog act until this year’s Milwaukee Metalfest. This made Avatar the highest-ranking act of the year that I knew nothing about prior to their taking the stage.

   

Avatar was a visual cross between cirque-de-soli and Marilyn Manson. Musically, Avatar had an ultra-polished stage show with lots of progressive rock layers to their songs, even though lyrically they were more death metal like.      

    

Creating great band synchronization, Avatar from start to finish crafted a “show” They were fun to watch, fun to listen to, and despite the craptastic sound quality afforded most bands in the Eagles Ballroom, Avatar got out of Milwaukee still sounding like a good band. Very much a surprise hit for me and if they tour America again, I will definitely want another opportunity to see them.



8. Uli Jon Roth     4-19-24     The Arcada     St. Charles, IL

Uli Jon Roth live St. Charles, IL 2024
Uli Jon Roth live St. Charles, IL 2024

This was the highest-ranking show of 2024 from the Arcada Theater. This smaller sized venue, (at just under a thousand seats), lent itself perfectly to the Uli Jon Roth show.

    

Basically, it was two completely different sets. For the first, Mr. Roth gave us neo-classical material comprised of both songs he wrote himself and masterpieces from Mozart, Vivaldi and the like. Roth designs his own unique guitars, (the Sky models) and had ten of them on the stage, including a model with thirty frets to it, and a nine-string acoustic. This 80-minute set of music was brilliance personified and as I wrote in the original review, when Yngwie Malmsteen refers to you as influential, you are in rare air.

    

While for most musicians, an eighty-minute set would be plenty, Roth gave us a second set with his full band performing tracks from his time in the Scorpions and Electric Sun. In all, Roth played well over two hours and for a man in his seventies his fingers remain incredibly nimble and fast. Truly a virtuoso performance.



7. Municipal Waste     5-18-24     Milwaukee Metalfest     Milwaukee, WI

MUNICIPAL WASTE live at Milwaukee Metalfest 2024
MUNICIPAL WASTE live at Milwaukee Metalfest 2024

Completely on the other side of the spectrum (from graceful artistic brilliance), was the wildest and craziest set I would see anywhere all year long. Right away, even though it was still early, Municipal Waste pulled a HUGE crowd for their set. The main floor was full and when I witnessed full sized inflatable rafts in the crowd, I already knew this was going to be something to watch.

    

By the third song, singer Tony Foresta had already challenged the balcony people to come down and fight the main floor people. By the fifth song, he challenged the audience to throw trash cans at the band. For the remainder of that set, security had to keep intercepting trash cans headed for the stage like giant Rubber-maid crowd surfers. When that did not suffice, Foresta decided to up the ante and challenged the audience to throw each other at the band. Never actually had a band ask to have audience members thrown at it.

   

Between the mosh pits, the crowd surfers, (a few on the giant rafts), intermittent trash cans, and waves of actual audience members who were surfed to the front of the stage and then chucked at security by the crowds passing them, this entire set was mayhem.

      

There were technically better sets of music, louder sets of music, even more visually stunning sets of music, but there was no wilder set of music than this one right here. Municipal Waste brought the crazy better than any other band this year.



6. Queensryche     3-22-24 & 4-9-24     Hells Heros Houston & The Coronado Rockford, IL

QUEENSRYCHE live at Hell's Heroes Metalfest 2024
QUEENSRYCHE live at Hell's Heroes Metalfest 2024

I saw the same set of music twice within twenty days of each other, but they could not have been more differently executed. At Hell's Heroes Queensryche headlined night two of the fest on the giant outdoor stage. That set was big, bold, and extra loud.

      

The second set at the far more intimate Coronado Theater was more acoustically correct (less bombast and feedback than the outdoor one), but lacked the emotion because mostly people just sat in their seat’s vs going crazy on the open-air lawn.

    

Todd Latorre is not Geoff Tate, but he is damn close on the numbers from early catalog album “Warning.” These shows created a great and spirited debate as to whether Tate and his new band or Latorre and former Queensryche members did a better job of performing the music.

      

While a bit split on that personally, I would say for the earliest Queensryche material, Latorre does a great job. Not as much on anything after Rage for Order.

   

On a normal year, Queensryche does not make my top ten of the year, but the huge enthusiastic crowd in Houston and marvelous renditions of “Warning” and “Sanctuary” won the day (and in this case the year) for Queensryche.



5. Boris     10-10-24     The Vivarium     Milwaukee, WI

BORIS live in Milwaukee, WI 2024
BORIS live in Milwaukee, WI 2024

Normally, the Beard does not stand during shows. Sure, I will get on my feet for big moments, numbers, appreciation, and acknowledgement, but to attend a show knowing I am going to stand in a crush of people the whole time? Well, you had better bring something damn special. Japanese chameleons Boris did just that by playing the entire Amplifier Worship album live on stage.

    

From the opening strains of “Huge” that threatened to low end rumble everything in the place off the shelves, through the doom thunder of “Ganbou-ki,” the cathedralesque “Hamas”, and of course the fourteen minute thunder bomb of stoner doom incarnate “Kuruimizu”, Boris wins “Heaviest” set of 2024.

    

The fact that the guitar duties for that monolithic slab of heaviness was produced by soft spoken and waif framed Japanese woman Wata still amazes me. A set of Boris music is like being slowly crushed to death by an 800-pound sea slug. A great set to be sure.



4. King Diamond     11-7-24     Chicago Theater     Chicago, IL

KING DIAMOND live in Chicago 2024
KING DIAMOND live in Chicago 2024

I have seen the mighty King Diamond and/or Mercyful Fate seven times, and he has never been out of the top five. Twice he was my pick of the year. I acknowledge the King as my lifetime favorite metal artist of all time. This year, King once again did a great show.

    

Visually, (by utilizing the diorama approach,) and audibly, (by adding great female vocalist Myrkur to fatten up the sound), King Diamond delivered his usual amazing set to Chicago Theater.

   

Keeping him outside the top spot though was the “icon rule”- I know who you are. I know how great you are, and therefore my expectations are sky high, meaning even a little drop off here or there can lower the overall grade. King does not drop off much, but every now and then it is not perfect from a man who has made perfection a synonym to his concerts. King continues to be my lifetime choice, but this year there were just a couple sets I enjoyed a little more.



3. Lacuna Coil     5-19-24     Milwaukee Metalfest     Milwaukee, WI

LACUNA COIL live at Milwaukee Metalfest 2024
LACUNA COIL live at Milwaukee Metalfest 2024

Milwaukee’s best act at the 2024 metalfest (sorry Doro) was the beautiful Christina Scabbia and her Italian cohorts of Lacuna Coil. Pre-show, I got to meet and spend some time with the band, and being as old as the hills, I was able to recite my first ever viewing of them back in 2001 supporting Moonspell.

    

As my story went on, Scabbia laughed saying, “Oh my God, that was our very first tour in America. You HAVE been around from the beginning.”

       

I have already described the Eagles Ballroom as a torture chamber for band’s sound wise. An oval room with nothing but contoured hard metal surfaces everywhere. Bands honestly sound like they have been dipped in mud when they play in that room and 98% of the metalfest bands suffered from it.

    

Somehow, Scabbia’s operatic vocals (still stratospheric even as she enters her fifties), rose above the room’s hindrances and soared like a proud eagle sailing over a canyon river gorge. Scabbia was majestic and her band was on point behind and beneath her. That lady can SING!!

    

Although I have not been as much of a fan of Lacuna Coil's later releases as the first four albums, I don’t think there was a song in that set I didn’t enjoy both hearing and watching as she commanded the stage with regal grace. I knew when this show ended that they had a chance of being set of the year. They ended up number three. Brilliant performance by a twenty plus year old band.



2. Halestorm     7-21-24     Credit Union One Arena     Tinley Park, Il

HALESTORM live Tinley Park, IL 2024
HALESTORM live Tinley Park, IL 2024

My third time seeing Lzzy Hale and her band and every time they blow me away. In fifteen years of being together, Halestorm has logged over two thousand stage appearances. This is a workhorse band and therefore they are as practiced as you can get on stage.

    

Lzzy, may not have the operatic range of a Christina Scabbia, but she is metal's Janis Joplin. Totally unique and nobody can match her for volume, passion, or charisma in her style of singing.

    

Add in her brother Arejay on the drums and it is the absolute best siblings’ band on the planet “currently touring”. (Sorry Black Crowes).

   

Finally, their thousands of shows have allowed them to have one of the most technically perfect sets of music every time they play. The sound is right there. The lighting was as good as it gets on a major show. All the big things and all the little things came together on this set, and I really thought this year Lzzy was going to win it all in my heart and on my rankings. Number two though (out of 243) is nothing to be sad about. I will continue to see her every single year.



Jeff Lynn’s ELO     9-27-24     United Center     Chicago, IL

JEFF LYNN'S ELO live Chicago 2024
JEFF LYNN'S ELO live Chicago 2024

The most expensive show of my calendar year, in the largest venue. This was the farewell tour of legendary rock icon Jeff Lynn, and he spared no expense in putting together the final Electric Light Orchestra show.

     

It is possible that Trans-Siberian Orchestra, or Brit Floyd have as many lights, and talented musicians on their stage as Mr. Lynn did in the United Center that evening, but I have never heard ELO music rendered so beautifully.

    

Over the years and decades, I have seen bands claiming to have an authentic ELO member and thereafter playing their music to varying degrees of success, but it was never truly authentic.

      

Mr. Lynn stood center stage playing his guitar and singing his lyrics (trademark dark glasses in place) while around him two other guitarists, three keyboardists, several background singers, multiple violinists, and a cellist made sure each orchestral note was correctly played or voiced.

    

No, not EVERY song was rendered perfect. That is sort of the beauty of live vs Memorex, but in a world of A.I. interfering in our music more and more each year, Mr. Lynn went out with no backing tracks, and the only magic on that stage was the hit “Strange Magic.”

    

The slide from the instrumentally flawless “Fire on High” into a version of “Living Thing” may well have been the audial apex of my 2024. That was Jeff Lynn and company at their best and although each year I knock off box after box of bands I have never seen, seeing Jeff Lynn before he retired and still having him THAT good was something that just was not topped this year by any other live set. Number one in 2024 Jeff Lynns ELO.

    


So, there we have it, as always the longest article of the season and thank you for taking this ride along with me. I am not sure how much the Beard will be doing next year in 2025, but I assure you I will be out there covering some music along with other material. This may not be my “calling” and many people may say my choices and/or opinions are batshit crazy, but I am giving you what I believe and how I feel.

      

Once more to any of you out there that gave me your time, and your attention, thank you from the Beard. You ARE appreciated. I wish you a fantastic 2025, the opportunity to see great concerts and awesome festivals and the ability to enjoy live music in all its forms.

    

From the Beard, until we meet again, remember…Live Life! Stay Heavy! & of course, Horns Up!.   

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