Review: WICKED WISDOM Laugh Off 'You Suck' Chants At OZZFEST Kick-Off

July 18, 2005

Chris Harris of MTV.com reviewed the opening show of this year's Ozzfest, which took place Friday (July 15) in Mansfield, Massachusetts. An excerpt from the review follows:

"The scorched asphalt of the Tweeter Center's parking lot started to fill up at the unforgiving hour of 9 a.m., when one of this year's most anticipated (if for all the wrong reasons) bands was welcomed onto the stage by tour manager 'Big Dave' Moscato: WICKED WISDOM, the aggressive new metal target fronted by black-garbed Jada Pinkett Smith. The 'Woo' star was greeted with relentless booing and 'f--- you's from a furious sea of extended middle fingers as her five-piece band launched into 'Fakeness', a KITTIE-like tune that featured an almost spoken-word delivery from the headbanging Jada, spattered with unintelligible barks and growls.

"'You think I don't know, don't you?' she asked the crowd. 'But I do.' Pinkett Smith laughed off the 'you suck' chants and the concertgoers ridiculing her with grossly exaggerated moshing and neck-snapping headbangs through WICKED WISDOM's entire 20-minute set capped by a DISTURBED-ish track called 'You Can't Handle This'. Screaming 'Go Red Sox!' would have been Jada's best option for scoring applause.

"Sporting band and Sox T-shirts, bikini tops, intricate tattoos, and an early-morning buzz, the crowd erupted at the site of Bjorn Strid, the towering singer for SOILWORK. 'We're SOILWORK from Sweden. You must be the U.S.A.,' Strid said, borrowing a line from 'Spinal Tap', after the metalers ripped through 'Stabbing the Drama', the opening salvo of a thunderous set that sparked frenzied circle pits, horn throwing, and crowd surfing. (Even Jada's husband, Will Smith, was banging his head offstage.) Minutes after SOILWORK capped things off with 'As We Speak', Buffalo, New York, hardcore heathens IT DIES TODAY delivered a brutal, breakdown-dense battering via 'Freak Gasoline Fight Accident'."

Read the rest of the review at MTV.com.

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