By Andrew Bansal
The Holy Grail/Night Demon US tour moved into its final third, with shows in Denver, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas and Flagstaff. This part of the ‘Heavy Metal Utopia’ tour blog brings you all the adventures and misadventures from these shows, but before that, read Parts 1 and 2 if you haven’t yet.
Day 8 (12/11): Return To Earth
The high of the Kansas City show was followed by the low of the next show at Casselman’s in Denver, Colorado. After driving for more than ten hours, we arrived at the venue, and looking at it I knew straightaway that it was far, far too big for a show of this size. Just to give you an idea, it would take somebody of the stature of Testament, Exodus or a band like that to sell this place out. Besides booking the show at the wrong venue, the folks in charge also put as many as five local openers on the bill, which was ridiculous and didn’t help the turnout any more than a total of one of two local bands would have. On the plus side, the great Denver power metal band Cellador was part of the show and put forth a solid performance, although they played second out of seven, and should really have been slotted directly before Night Demon. Holy Grail and Night Demon put their 100 per cent effort into their respective shows despite the highly discouraging environment. Turnout and excess of bands aside, the show was running really late as Holy Grail finished their set at around 1:30. It was a very long evening for us, starting with load-in at 5 PM and ending with load-out at 2 AM. Trust me when I say that it’s extremely hard to find the motivation in such cases, and one has to commend both bands to be able to continue to do so without fail every night. Denver has never been a great town for Night Demon, but there are enough diehards in attendance every time to indicate that a good show here isn’t far from the realm of possibility.
Day 9 (12/12): Snow And Steel
As we’ve discovered on this tour, late shows and long drives to the next destination do not mix well. We got only three hours of sleep after the Kansas City show and just about the same after Denver, departing at 7:30 AM for another long drive to Salt Lake City. We encountered heavy snow during the first third of the 9-hour drive. Having ran out of deicing fluid (readers in California won’t know what that means, but google is your friend) and our windshield viper blades kept freezing at a rapid rate. As a result, we had to keep stopping every 20 mintues to clean them up and be able to move forward. Thankfully the snow cleared up for the next 200 miles or so, but the sun was low on the horizon and beaming straight into our eyes. Then getting into Salt Lake City at the crack of dusk, it snowed heavily again and the snow-covered mountains were a truly ominous sight. During these long drives, more so on this tour than on past ones, I’ve finally come to the conclusion that coffee with cream and sugar puts me to sleep and makes me a terrible co-pilot, while Coca Cola keeps me wide awake. This was by far the worst drive we’ve ever had between shows, but unlike Denver, it was well worth the ordeal and then some.
Holy Grail and Night Demon were sharing the stage with Salt Lake City’s finest metal band Visigoth, and based on Visigoth’s stellar efforts here for past Night Demon shows, we felt like it was the right thing to do to have them play after Night Demon, and they deservingly took the main support slot for this gig. The Metro Bar was our favorite SLC venue amongst the ones we’ve visited so far, and as Eli Santana from Holy Grail pointed out on stage during their set, this was hands down the best show of this tour. The Night Demon set was a mixed bag of emotions for me, as I was extremely disturbed by the fact that one particular light on top of the stage remained switched on for the entire set despite repeatedly telling the front-of-house crew that I needed all house lights to be turned off. It ruined the crucial blackout moments during the set and I was not happy about it, but I finally got over it as soon as I stepped on stage as Rocky. It was a real release for me, probably like never before, and it felt amazing to see so many people watching the band and cheering so loudly when I got up to the front. Because of the stage setup, I had to come out from the space between Dustin’s drumkit and Jarvis’ Marshall stack, something I was really paranoid about prior to the set but was happy with how it worked out.
Aside from the show itself, I had an interesting time at the merch table. In case you couldn’t tell, I’ve been in full-on Holy Grail geek mode on this tour, and to that effect, as Eli was my partner in crime for merch at this show, I asked him about an unreleased song that Holy Grail used to play all the time up until 2011, and why it isn’t played anymore. He said it wasn’t likely to be played live any time soon but he would send me a studio recording, which no one has heard. I was thrilled. Aside from that, I was brought food from a place called Wingnutz and it was great, and our drink tickets were good enough for me to get a couple of pints of a delicious pale ale called Nut Brown. A longtime Night Demon fan brought me a care package of Testament, Overkill, Coroner and Vio-Lence cassettes. Then there was a dude who was clearly a Visigoth fan and took his enthusiasm for the medieval times much too seriously, as he paid me for Night Demon merch in 11 1-dollar coins. I’ve sold merch at more than 100 shows for this band, but this was a first. And at one point a random girl came up to me and asked whether I liked Rush and Barry Manilow. I said yes to both (I lied, I hate Rush), and apparently I aced her quiz with flying colors because she walked around the merch table and started making out with me. After the show I got high on some super potent Colorado green. If every show was as much fun as Salt Lake City, I’d never want to go home.
Day 10 (12/13): Vegas Blues
From Salt Lake City we drove to the next show at the Dive Bar in Las Vegas. The exterior of our van was thoroughly dirty from the snowy drives, and stuck out like a sore thumb as we pulled into the glitz and glamour of Las Vegas Blvd. This town has been a disappointing one on past visits, and unfortunately this was no different. We were told the band wouldn’t be allowed to load in any gear until right before their set because ‘the place was too tiny’, although based on what I saw, there could have been plenty of room to hold the bands’ gear if the venue had a better layout. There was no flyer at all for this show, and strangely enough, this has happened on more than one occasion throughout our tours. If you don’t even make a flyer for your show, I have no idea how you expect people to turn up for it. As for the Night Demon set itself, the ruining of the blackouts in Salt Lake City was one thing, but here in Vegas the sound guy said he couldn’t even turn off the front stage lights because the switch was in a room that was locked. After the set, I went to the bar to cash in my last drink ticket and asked around whether the bar was still serving as I didn’t see a bartender on duty, for which I was laughed at because how can a bar not be serving in Vegas. This place is rightly called the Dive, because when you enter, it takes you into a depressing world far removed from the ecstasy the average human being normally associates with Las Vegas. Before the show, I was thinking it would be so much more appropriate if Vegas was the last stop of the tour, but after what happened, I’m grateful that it was not.
Day 11 (12/14): Cold School
It could only get better after that Las Vegas show, and thankfully it did, as the Green Room in Flagstaff, Arizona gave both bands a show and a response that justified their unwavering efforts on stage to a much greater extent. Flagstaff got its first snow of the season on this day and we encountered some of it on the way as we were alerted with heavy weather advisories. According to the promoter, the snow affected the turnout, but fans still turned up and it was a good venue for the bands to perform in, with a solid stage and sound system. They even have a European-style setup with band apartments on the second floor, which I’ve never seen anywhere in the US and have only heard of in Night Demon’s Europe stories. Fun fact: At an evening low of 7 degrees F, Flagstaff was recorded as the coldest city in America on December 14 2015.
The morning after, we made the long drive back home. Even though it felt like a really short tour to me and I seriously wished for it to be a lot longer than just 11 days, seeing the ‘Welcome To California’ sign on the state line was a good feeling, as always, and after the end of our run with Holy Grail as the headline act, we now look forward to two regional Southern California shows with both bands opening for Flotsam & Jetsam. I hope you’ve enjoyed the ‘Heavy Metal Utopia’ tour blog. Keep following Metal Assault for all things metal, and more stories from the road through my future travels.
Shows Played:
12/04 – Scottsdale AZ @ Pub Rock Live
12/06 – Albuquerque NM @ Sister
12/07 – Austin TX @ Dirty Dog
12/08 – Dallas TX @ Gas Monkey
12/09 – Oklahoma City OK @ 89th Street Collective
12/10 – Kansas City MO @ Riot Room
12/11 – Denver CO @ Casselman’s
12/12 – Salt Lake City UT @ Metro Bar
12/13 – Las Vegas NV @ Dive Bar
12/14 – Flagstaff AZ @ Green Room
Upcoming Shows w/ Flotsam & Jetsam:
12/17 – San Diego CA @ Brick By Brick
12/19 – Santa Ana CA @ Malone’s
If you like what you’ve read, support Metal Assault and buy us a drink: