Overqualified. And I’m Buying a Ticket.
I never thought a Godsmack show would land on my calendar. Then they put Mike Mangini behind the kit, and here we are.
Mangini — yes, that Mangini, the ex-Dream Theater guy who beat out six of the planet’s best drummers for that gig in a filmed three-day audition — has joined Godsmack to finish out their “Rise of Rock” tour, which is rolling right now. The band’s fill-in, Wade Murff, played the opening stretch and then bailed on June 6 to cover for Black Veil Brides in Europe. Mangini stepped in with, by his own account, zero rehearsal, and made his debut June 12 in Riverside, Missouri.
Let’s be honest about the mismatch. Mangini is a clinician — a Berklee instructor, a technician who spent 13 years making Dream Theater’s impossible arrangements look effortless. Godsmack is meat-and-potatoes hard rock. On paper he’s wildly overqualified. In practice, that’s the whole reason this is fun. You don’t drop a player like that into a four-on-the-floor band and get less. You get a guy who can make “I Stand Alone” hit like a freight train and grin the entire time. The early clips back it up. He’s killing it.
And here’s the part the band probably didn’t plan for: Mangini drags a different crowd to the door. Prog nerds, drum obsessives, people like me who’d never have bought a Godsmack ticket. Now I’m looking at dates.
He called them his “Boston brothers” in an Instagram post, thanking the band for trusting him with no rehearsal. Massachusetts guys, all of them. It tracks.
A temporary gig, sure. But for however long it lasts, Godsmack just got a lot more worth watching.
Source: Mike Mangini (Instagram)