By Avinash Mittur
(photos by Raymond Ahner)
March 28th 2013, Regency Ballroom, San Francisco CA: Every year, the Metal Alliance tour seems to take on a new style of heavy metal to showcase. It began with classic stoner and sludge metal in 2011, then it made a total about-face towards metalcore in 2012, and now the tour is representing old school thrash metal in its third iteration. Last Thursday night, the Metal Alliance tour stopped by the Regency Ballroom in San Francisco. With tickets being sold out nearly a week in advance, the bay area was certainly chomping at the bit to see Anthrax, Exodus, Municipal Waste, High on Fire and Holy Grail play high energy sets. Despite a couple of jarring organizational issues, the show was a great deal of fun, and a wonderful night out for over a thousand metalheads from all over the bay area.
For me, the evening was already a mess in the making long before the show started. On Thursday morning I woke up to find that the venue had a completely different time listed for the doors opening than what was given by the bands themselves. At about 5 PM fans were already lining the outside walls of the Regency waiting to be let in, and fellow members of the press were attempting to establish contact with the appropriate parties in order to conduct their business. We all soon found out that doors would open at 7 PM- this fell in line with what was originally listed on the Regency’s website, doors at 7 and showtime at 8. However, this is where things began to go wrong. I returned to the ballroom at just around 7:35 and was shocked to find out that Holy Grail had already finished their set. The band told me that they began their set literally the minute the doors opened. This was something I have never heard of a venue doing, and I felt nothing but pity for the folks who went by what the Regency listed on their website and arrived at around 8 PM. If my past experiences with Holy Grail are any indication, those poor people and I missed what was probably a very killer set.
The first band I got to see on this night was Municipal Waste. As always, the band was a raucous presence and treated the pleasantly large crowd to a short, but very fun time. Lead shouter Tony Foresta seemed very aware of this, running back and forth with a extra sense of urgency. Guitarist Ryan Waste seemed plagued with monitor issues throughout the set, but pressed on with a reliable performance as always. Within the span of just about twenty minutes or so, Waste crammed in nearly a dozen tracks and of course, a massive spray of confetti for ‘The Art of Partying’. The crowd was already in top form, with a large and active circle pit remaining lively for the set- of course, we were all too eager to chant “Municipal Waste is gonna fuck you up!” before the show even began. When the band ended their short, but very strong set, the crowd made sure to make their disappointment and sadness known.
Municipal Waste Set List:
1. Intro
2. Unleash the Bastards
3. The Thrashin’ of the Christ
4. Sadistic Magician
5. You’re Cut Off
6. Authority Complex
7. Beer Pressure
8. Thrashin’s My Business (And Business is Good)
9. Headbanger Face Rip
10. Mind Eraser
11. The Art of Partying
Sadly, I was forced to miss local heroes High on Fire due to an interview with Holy Grail and some trouble re-entering the venue. This would have been my sixth time seeing the group, so I have total confidence in their ability and power as live performers. That being said, High on Fire were a bit of an ill-fit for this bill. Their music can be fast, and there as some thrashy elements here and there, but slow and doomy songs like ‘Madness of an Architect’ more than likely left the denim and leather-clad crowd confused and upset rather than cheery. High on Fire are a fantastic band, certainly one of my favorite modern metal acts, but they were definitely the black sheep on this tour.
Luckily, the rest of the night was able to continue without any interruptions to the music. Exodus once again returned to their home turf to cause sheer chaos, and they were a success in every way. The band tore through a 45 minute set that accounted for every one of their mandatory classics and a couple of newer tracks. This was the biggest stage I’ve seen Exodus play on yet, and all of the members took the opportunity to make use of it. Guitarist and mainman Gary Holt was his usual commanding self, strutting about the stage and eliciting violence from wall to wall as is his wont. Fellow axeslingers Lee Altus and Jack Gibson were much more active presences now that they had room to stretch out, and vocalist Rob Dukes was more often than not patrolling the stage. The architect of thrash drumming himself, Tom Hunting, was a well oiled machine on this night, executing every track with deadly efficiency and precision. At one point, Rob told the crowd “let’s make Baloff proud!”; the audience answered the call by summoning some truly beautiful pit action for the entire set, culminating in a five minutes of utter mayhem during ‘The Toxic Waltz’.
Every Exodus show in the bay area manages to be special, and this one proved to be no exception. Former guitarist Rick Hunolt could be spotted backstage rocking out and playing some mean air-guitar, and the guy finally joined the band for a rousing rendition of ‘Strike of the Beast’. Rick jumped and sprinted about like a small child introduced to caffeine for the first time, and his joy and enthusiasm was absolutely infectious. His and Gary’s embrace at the end of ‘Strike’ was certainly the most heart-warming moment of the night- after all these years, no one can fuck with the H-Team.
Exodus Set List:
1. The Ballad of Leonard and Charles
2. A Lesson in Violence
3. War is My Shepherd
4. Piranha
5. Blacklist
6. Bonded by Blood
7. The Toxic Waltz
8. Strike of the Beast (with Rick Hunolt)
9. Good Riddance
The last act of this long show was Anthrax, who treated the crowd to a performance of their classic Among the Living in its entirety. The way the band structured the performance was actually very clever and cool; they kicked the set off with the original Side 1 tracks, tore through a couple of newer cuts, and finished off with Side 2 of the record. The band’s performance this time around was much more focused and tighter than the last time I saw the band headline- that was at LA’s Club Nokia in the fall of 2011. Guitarist Scott Ian cut his lame break during ‘Indians’, the ‘Antisocial’ chant was shortened, and the general between-song banter was kept to a minimum. Anthrax trimmed much of the fat in their previous headlining performances for this show, and the set was all the better for it. Singer Joey Belladonna was also a standout, offering an amazingly strong vocal performance. The guy has offered a huskier shout during the past couple of years, but this show saw his higher range in vintage form. It was almost scary how close he sounded to the Joey of twenty years ago at times. As always, bassist Frank Bello gave a hyperactive and youthful show, always hopping and skipping about with a big smile on his face. He and Scott did a hilariously great job rapping ‘I’m the Man’, I was in stitches after not hearing that song for so long.
The two variables at this show were temporary guitarist Jon Donais and Jon Dette, the fill-in for a surprisingly absent Charlie Benante. Donais did an admirable job of playing the original parts, nailing the riffs perfectly and sticking to the main themes of the solos well. Donais often added sweeps which weren’t on the original solos, but the guy smartly didn’t overdo the shredding. His stage mannerisms differed from the others, as he was more content to swing his long hair about in a circle rather than stomp about like Scott and Frank. Charlie’s absence at this show was extremely unexpected, and as of this writing it is unknown why he was missing at this show in particular. Dette had some amazingly big shoes to fill, but the guy did an admittedly stellar job. Clearly his sets with Slayer have prepped him well; Dette wasn’t just hitting Charlie’s parts perfectly, dude was headbanging and swinging his whole body during ‘In the End’ like no tomorrow. Sure his playing style lacked the fluidity and flow that Charlie wows audiences with every night, but Jon Dette did about as great a job filling in for the original article as anyone could have asked for.
As for the set itself, it proved to be a ton of fun since I have seen the band twice already. Seeing rarities from Among the Living for the first time was real delight, as was hearing the band’s cover of ‘T.N.T.’, with Metallica’s Kirk Hammett on hand to lend some wah-free guitar wizardry. However, fans seeing Anthrax for the first time may have felt a little short-changed; no tracks from Fistful of Metal, Spreading the Disease or my personal favorite Anthrax album, Persistence of Time, were given airings on this night. That being said, this was still a killer set for the die-hard Anthrax fan, and the performance was easily the best out of the three times I have now seen them.
Anthrax Set List:
1. Among the Living
2. Caught in a Mosh
3. I Am the Law
4. NFL (Efilnikufesin)
5. Skeletons in the Closet
6. In the End
7. TNT (with Kirk Hammett)
8. March of the SOD
9. I’m Alive
10. Indians
11. One World
12. ADI/Horror of It All
13. Imitation of Life
Encore
14. I’m the Man
15. Antisocial
Despite my somewhat mixed experience with the night as a whole, I can assume that most of the fans at this sold out show came out with grins on their faces. Fantastic sets from the acts I got to see alone were enough to justify the 30-40 dollars that patrons paid for their tickets, and the sheer chaos on the floor was downright wonderful to bear witness to. This tour package really is a very well assembled one, and if other reports are to be believed, the disorganization at this date was the exception rather than the rule. It’ll be interesting to see what direction the Metal Alliance tour takes next year, but for now their year’s thrash-infested version is undoubtedly a killer one.
Related Links:
SF Photo Gallery
Vegas Photo Gallery (Anthrax only)
Anthrax interview
Holy Grail interview