Review & photos by Andrew Bansal
December 17th 2013, City National Grove Of Anaheim, Anaheim CA: Following the release of their latest album ‘Super Collider’, heavy metal giants Megadeth have been on a typically busy touring run, and are now about to bring the curtains down on yet another prolific year, with the home stretch of the ‘Super Collider’ US headline tour along with support acts Fear Factory and Nonpoint. A long queue of people started wrapping around the Grove, and despite concerns surrounding the ticket prices, a good turnout was expected. Doors opened at 7 PM. A few nonsensical Christian protestors attempted to sabotage the peaceful entry of the fans by yelling slogans through loudspeakers, but the venue’s security staff drove them away before they could cause any further trouble and all ticket holders calmly entered the Grove’s premises.
Promptly at 8 o’ clock, the opening act Nonpoint took the stage. This Florida-based modern metal band has been around since 1997, and I saw them live once sometime in 2009 but I didn’t remember enough from that show to have any kind of expectation from them on this occasion. In all fairness, even though their musical style can be best described as ‘entry level metal’, they brought forth some strong grooves and put in good amount of energy in an endeavor to entertain this crowd and win over some new fans. Led by vocalist Elias Soriano, the band gave a good account of themselves, and their 30-minute set was largely met with positive reaction from the crowd. For fans of groove-based modern metal, Nonpoint is a band certainly worth checking out.
Set List:
1. Broken Bones
2. Dirty Little Hole
3. International Crisis
4. That Day
5. Rabia
6. Buscandome
7. There’s Going To Be A War
8. Bullet With A Name
Los Angeles’ very own industrial metal veterans Fear Factory took the stage at 9 PM, opening up with the title track off of their latest album ‘The Industrialist’ and belting out an eight-song, 40-minute set as main support for Megadeth. This latest album of theirs has been met with mixed response from the fans because of the band’s usage of programmed drums instead of a human drummer, but ironically, live drummer Mike Heller put on the best individual performance for Fear Factory at this gig, aside from the obvious impact and strength of Dino Cazares’ machinegun-like guitar riffs which have become the signature aspect of Fear Factory’s sound over the years. Bassist Matt DeVries did his bit, but sadly vocalist Burton C. Bell was not up to par this time, specially during the first half of the set. He did raise the quality of his vocal delivery when the band dived into some of the older material like ‘Demanufacture’, ‘Self Bias Resistor’ and ‘Replica’ towards the end of their set, but he’d perhaps be the first one to admit that this wasn’t one of his best performances. So while this set here wasn’t bad overall, Fear Factory has a headline show at the Whisky on January 18th, and it’s almost a certainty that they will put on a better show then.
Set List:
1. The Industrialist
2. Shock
3. Edgecrusher
4. Damaged
5. Martyr
6. Demanufacture
7. Self Bias Resistor
8. Replica
As the clock neared Megadeth‘s scheduled start time of 10:10, Diamond Head classic ‘Lightning To The Nations’ was played on the PA as a fitting tribute to Brian Tatler who was Dave Mustaine’s biggest influence back in the early days. Following that, the lights went out and a video intro was played along with the opening bit of ‘Prince Of Darkness’ as its soundtrack, and as soon as the Megadeth logo was revealed on the giant screen, the band members appeared on stage, greeted by loud cheers from this enthusiastic Anaheim crowd, and wasted no time in laying straight into ‘Hangar 18’.
In typical fashion, they blazed through one song after another, the initial portion of the set consisting of tunes like ‘Wake Up Dead’ and ‘In My Darkest Hour’, and everyone was glad to note that they kept ‘Set The World Afire’ in the set after reintroducing it at the Los Angeles show last October. This particular rendition of the song sounded a lot more solid, and it was evident that the band had become accustomed to playing it on a nightly basis, hence sounding tighter with it as a result. The song was followed by the ever-amazing ‘Sweating Bullets’ with Mustaine in his element, and then came ‘Devil’s Island’, another old tune that has been brought back into the live set very, very recently, making this three-pronged attack the most powerful segment of the set.
Staples like ‘A Tout Le Monde’, ‘Trust’, ‘She-Wolf’, ‘Tornado Of Souls’, ‘Symphony Of Destruction’ and ‘Peace Sells’ were part of the set as always, along with ‘Kingmaker’ off of the new album which has become a staple in its own right through Megadeth’s tours this year. The set was divided into segments wherein a clip from ‘Wayne’s World’ would be played while the band took a break, to inject humor into the atmosphere, and they would reappear with Mustaine donning a different guitar for each segment, starting off the show with his Angel Of Deth guitar, then switching to the black, bright red and silver guitars and closing the show with the blue Rust In Peace. Aside from the quality of musicianship, the band’s stage show with the usage of visuals accompanying each and every moment of the set made even the most generic Megadeth tunes enjoyable for the audience, and the band truly brought an arena-level production to this stage.
The show seemed to be running down the usual Megadeth course, but there was still one special treat in store for us. They decided to play ‘Rattlehead’, a song labelled as a ‘may be’ on the set list taped to the stage. After that thrash classic, they ended the show with a typically solid version of ‘Holy Wars’ and excellently encapsulated a good portion of their huge catalog. With each of the first seven studio albums well-represented in the set list, Megadeth have seem to have come to grips with the unenviable challenge of putting together a set list they would themselves enjoy performing and at the same time please the fans. ‘I love Megadeth, but they need to change their set list!’ has been the general outcry from the average Megadeth fans in recent times, but with this set list the band went a long way towards addressing such complaints. In my opinion, the set is extremely well-rounded now but could still use some material from ‘The System Has Failed’, ‘United Abominations’ and ‘Endgame’, three very underrated and often overlooked albums.
Overall, Megadeth delivered a memorable performance here at the Grove, one that surpassed the band’s recent Southern California appearances, not only because of the set selection but also in terms of the sheer quality of musicianship. When it comes to live shows, Megadeth is a band firing on all cylinders at the moment, and are doing so in a very professional manner. As long as they continue to maintain and raise this level of performance, they will always have the unwavering support of the Southern California faithful.
Megadeth photo gallery (49 images):
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Set List:
1. Hangar 18
2. Wake Up Dead
3. In My Darkest Hour
4. Set The World Afire
5. Sweating Bullets
6. Devil’s Island
7. A Tout Le Monde
8. Kingmaker
9. Trust
10.She-Wolf
11.Tornado Of Souls
12.Symphony Of Destruction
13.Peace Sells
Encore:
14.Rattlehead
15.Holy Wars
Remaining North American tour dates:
12/18 – San Francisco CA – Warfield Theatre
12/19 – Reno NV – Grand Sierra Resort