The Mega-Monsters Tour is a co-headliner tour with Mastodon and Gojira featuring a raft of Robe fixtures.
The tour has creative and lighting designers Eric Price (Mastodon) and Pete Cary of Summit Production Design (Gojira), who share an overhead rig of primarily Robe moving lights specified by both, to which they added some individual floor elements and SFX.
Gojira’s set features a single circular riser with extensive video elements while Mastodon has two risers and lots of lasers. Apart from that, around 95% of the lighting is shared.
Lighting equipment was supplied by Jason Reberski at Chicago-based rental specialist JRLX with the FORTES a recent investment by the rental house.
Thirty-two Robe FORTES featured on the second leg of the tour, FORTE is currently Robe’s highest-powered LED Profile and these were supplied together with 30 MegaPointes, 38 Spiider wash beams and some other lights.
The final choice of fixtures was ultimately a five-way collaboration between the two LDs and the relevant artist production, tour, and stage managers, but Eric reveals that once he and Pete had nailed the production truss and video design, they both unanimously agreed that they wanted Robe moving lights.
While they essentially designed the rig together, the base elements were initially Pete’s ideas. “It evolved extremely quickly,” explained Price who was on the road when it was confirmed, so Pete presented the first design, “which was brilliant for both artists, so we went with that.”
12 FORTES were now on the front truss for the second leg, with eight more on two upstage side hangs of truss. The extra 12 FORTES joining the tour for the second leg are rigged on a run of GP truss upstage on the floor that also has strobes and blinders.
The large upstage block of LED screen is flanked by two left and right columns of LED. All the band risers, Mastodon’s two and Gojira’s single circular one, are bordered with video, and LED panels are attached to the fronts of all 8 over-stage finger trusses that are arranged in a chevron shape.
The MegaPointes and Spiiders are alternated along these finger trusses. Price and Cary wanted MegaPointes for their scope and ability to change the dynamics of the space, and enabling both to differentiate their shows by looks and programming styles. For Eric, MegaPointes are his ‘fun fixtures’.
Another couple of Spiiders are positioned on the downstage corners of the deck, a great position for interesting side light.
“Both of us have used MegaPointes and Spiiders for many years,” stated Cary who has worked with Gojira for 7 years, trusted with complete creative freedom on the stage design and lighting programming. He mentions that he also used MegaPointes and Spiiders on his very first Gojira tour.
Cary maintained that MegaPointes are still “by far the best” beam light on the market in his opinion, and he loves their punch and flexibility.
Spiiders are another favourite. He appreciates the quality of the light output, the texture and depth of the wash, the colour mixing and the “excellent” zoom which can also transform the unity into a nice tight, clean beam, “On top of that, there’s the flower effect and the individual pixels. It’s a physically small fixture in appearance but with a HUGE potential and output,” Cary explained.
Pete loves Gojira’s music which he described as “very technical in terms of informing much of what I do with the lighting”.
Price commented that the co-design concept worked “very smoothly” but the challenge came with it being a sizable system – suspended on 64 points, an operation overseen by rigger Mike Queally and lighting crew chief Parker Shore. Not over-using the fixtures was another goal for both. “We really needed all these Robe luminaires to give us both enough latitude to deliver for our artists,” confirmed Price.
On the road, the running order is alternated each night in true flip-flop style, with a few obvious scheduling exceptions, like Mastodon closing at their hometown Atlanta, and Gojira playing last in Montreal. Much initial discussion was on how changeovers could work, so a lot of attention was paid to details and making the rig functional without sacrificing any of the entertainment value or spectacle that fans enjoyed as both bands played their respective 1-hour and 20-minute sets.
Pete operated with a grandMA3 and a custom Resolume set up for video, while Eric uses a Hog4 for lights and lasers with an M-Box server running Mastodon’s video playback.
“It’s a pleasure working with Pete,” concluded Eric, “he’s a very smart guy, very easygoing and fun to be around.”
Cray reciprocated with “Eric is as relaxed and calm as it gets and a great LD. It’s a pleasure working with him on this project.”
The two-stage managers are Darren “Bubs” Sanders and Ryan Tarby, and the tours production manager is Taylor Bingley.
The lighting crew are Dan Arnold, Pepe Salas and Jeff Giancaspro; the video crew chief is Caleb Strong, working alongside video techs Steven Harkins, Joe Rich and Thomas Ramirez, with pyro and SFX co-ordinated by Elliott Evans and Rick Russ.
