By Andrew Bansal
December 16th 2013, Hollywood CA: Making a slight diversion from their ongoing North American headline tour, heavy metal titans Megadeth made an appearance on the late night television show ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’ with a mini-concert last evening on the outdoor parking lot stage of the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, with two songs filmed for broadcast and two played just for the audience gathered here. The last time Megadeth played this show, it was on Halloween night in 2011 and they surprised everyone by performing in full costume. The queue of fans that had arrived here to see their favorite band started forming long, long before the scheduled show time of 7 PM, and it remained to be seen whether Megadeth would pull off something special on this occasion as well.
Doors were opened at 5:45, the fans peacefully made their way onto the general admission viewing area facing the Jimmy Kimmel outdoor stage, and it only took a few more minutes to get the place chock-a-block full of people. While everyone waited, the live feed from the in-studio part of this Jimmy Kimmel Live episode was being shown on two screens placed either side of the drum kit. Aside from the stand-up comedy, celebrities and everything else that’s usually the norm for an episode of JKL, one particular Christmas spoof video called ‘Thrashing Through The Snow – A Very Megadeth Christmas’ had the entire audience in splits as Dave Mustaine and his band mates were seen having a bit of good-spirited holiday fun. This served as the ideal appetizer for the concert that was to follow. One aspect of heavy metal bands performing these kinds of shows is, the television crew’s job becomes easier as they really don’t need to offer too much encouragement for people to raise their voices and go crazy, as metalheads are always already prepared to do that anyway. At around 7:10, Jimmy Kimmel introduced the band onto the stage, and the moment this crowd was waiting for had finally arrived.
As expected, the band opened up with ‘Kingmaker’, the single off of their latest album Super Collider which they were promoting through this TV appearance. The mosh pits were kicked into motion straightaway as this crowd began enjoying the show, and the intensity levels rose drastically as Megadeth followed it up with ‘High Speed Dirt’ off of the Countdown To Extinction album, a song they’ve hardly played in recent times. Not many were expecting to hear this tune, and it came across as a pleasant curveball. Mustaine and Broderick were laying down those delightful guitar leads to perfection, and Mustaine was handling the vocals a lot better than most of his critics and haters would want or expect him to. At the end of this song, the camera crew disappeared and it was time for the audience to rejoice in the unfilmed portion of this mini-concert.
“Good evening! Thank you for coming. Now we’re going to play a couple of very old songs. This one’s called Rattlehead!” yelled Mustaine, and as soon as the song title emanated from his mouth, the mosh pit was already set into top gear. While a majority of this crowd indulged in creating what appeared to be perhaps the biggest mosh pit Jimmy Kimmel Live has ever seen, another section of fans looked overcome and overjoyed with disbelief at the realization that Megadeth were actually playing the song Rattlehead, and didn’t quite know how to react. The band breezed through a solid rendition of this classic tune. ‘Rattle your goddamn head!’ shouted Mustaine to bring the song to a close, and the general feeling of shock and disbelief amongst the audience was about to be amplified tenfold as ‘Devil’s Island’ came next. Now this was a song no one ever hoped or expected to hear Megadeth play live in the year 2013, but it was there to be seen and believed as Mustaine ripped through the opening guitar lick of the song and the crowd went wild. Fans sung along to the chorus lyrics out loud, and with the end of Devil’s Island this concert came to a close. There was no encore, and it was time for the audience to disperse.
Up till now, Megadeth fans thought that the band’s previous JKL gig was special, but in more ways than one, this particular concert surpassed the wow factor of that 2011 Halloween-centric performance with some truly deep cuts from the catalog. Megadeth have their fair share of fans and critics, but when a band like theirs does a hilarious Christmas-related video and then comes out on stage to perform three of their most coveted, beloved rarities back-to-back, and all of it free of cost for the audience, it’s absolutely impossible to hate them for it. All in all, this mini-concert was like a wet dream come true for any Megadeth fanatic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO3AbBBtHwY