[George] Back in 1992 I came across the music of SKYCLAD. Those first two albums, The Wayward Sons... and A Burnt Offering... changed my view for Heavy Metal entirely. Thrash Metal riffs with pagan attitude! Searching the musicians' history I discovered SABBAT and I still remember my surprise listening to Dreamweaver. Being used to the brainless American side of Thrash, I was face to face with a completely different approach of it. Theatrical and so progressive with philosophical lyrics. As for the History Of A Time To Come -that was one of the first anti-Christian Metal albums with sharpening lyrics-, still remains a bible for many Black Metal bands.
Back in those days I never thought that I would have the chance to see this historical band live... but never say never. Dreams came true as A Cautionary Tale sounded like the alarm of a pagan mystical hour. Martin Walkyier greeted the crowd and said: Let me see you moving now. This is a song about the fight between heaven and hell. And then came Hosanna In Excelsis that is an all time favourite SABBAT anthem.
Despite the fact that I was headbanging, I still could notice the sound problems, with the guitars trying to be heard and their drummer suffering to qualify the songs. For example, tracks like The Clerical Conspiracy were played a little bit slower. Behind The Crooked Cross, I For An Eye and one of the songs with a Thrash Metal riff collection Do Dark Horses Dream Of Nightmares?.
Martin talked about how happy he felt being back at Alexander's land. The crowd reacted mainly well to their music making a small pit in front and some crowd surfing here and there. During How Have the Mighty Fallen? the sound was getting better and better and as usual Martin was talking and talking before every track and promised to return soon with a SKYCLAD project. Martin threw his anger to George W. Bush and all the fucking politicians who started war for money and religion and it was time for The Church Bizarre. Their show ended with the well known (mainly because of the CRADLE OF FILTH cover) For Those Who Died. A great show and I'm anxiously waiting to see them again in the future. As lights went down again it was time for some Death Metal. ENTOMBED got on stage and my friend Yiannis D. will tell you what happened.
[Yiannis D.] After a not so satisfying performance - in my humble opinion - by the UK thrashers SABBAT, here came ENTOMBED with their bluesy MOTORHEAD-esque Swedish Death Metal. Better sound, better performance, more booze! ENTOMBED is one of those bands with the huge hairy balls hanging between their legs. What I like to call masculine music. Death & Roll and plenty of booze were more than enough to make the hundreds of metalheads that attended the venue have a nice headbanging experience. With songs like Crawl, Stranger Aeons, Left Hand Path, Sinners Bleed and many more they proved to be one of the most pleasant drunk bands in the Metal scene! They kicked our sorry asses and their heavy down tuned guitars were about to tear the fucking venue down. Since both the band and the crowd had a really nice time, they thought it would be nice to do an encore, too, so they almost broke our remaining unharmed bones.
And it was about time to come across a living Thrash Metal legend, EXODUS! Even though the delay until they showed up on stage was pretty tiring, I think it was worth waiting since the Bay Area thrashers came to destroy what was left of us. To tell you the truth I was expecting to see a more cold and professional band. How ignorant... I realized my mistake right from the start since Last Act Of Defiance came to spread death and destruction. EXODUS fucking defined the lyrics there's blood upon the stage. There was some blood shed indeed on Sunday night. Many were disappointed with Rob Dukes' more extreme performance, but what the fuck, you knew what you came to watch. I personally think that Dukes is a great singer and frontman for the Californians and he proved that with a hot as hell performance. The band was live and energetic as fuck with Gary Holt beating the living crap out of his guitar and Barker being a real shovel headed kill machine behind his drum kit. It is really amazing seeing how easy he makes his drumming seem (and it definitely isn't).
Thrash Metal at its best by the masters with a wall of riffs, relentless drumming and a bestial singer causing non stop mosh pits, crowd surfing and... in general good friendly violent fun! The band was in a really good mood being in constant communication with the crowd and playing all the time. Rob Dukes also had his birthday, so you can imagine the party atmosphere that was floating around the venue. After the end of their set, they left just for a while, just to return for a bone crushing encore! Bonded By Blood, Toxic Waltz and Strike Of The Beast were more than enough to form a wall of death and leave us beaten and helpless from the good friendly violent fun I was talking about earlier. Before they played Toxic Waltz it seemed they wanted to play a game, performing some riffs that ranged from METALLICA's Motorbreath to RAINBOW's Man On The Silver Mountain. They challenged us to scream our lungs out or else they wouldn't play the damn song! Of course we accepted the challenge! Everyone had a nice time, even if they were bleeding...
EXODUS setlist 2009
01. Last Act Of Defiance
02. 44 Magnum Opus
03. Fabulous Disaster
04. Piranha
05. Children Of A Worthless God
06. Blacklist
07. Iconoclasm
08. Brain Dead
09. War Is My Shepherd
10. A Lesson In Violence
11. And Then There Were None
12. Metal Command
Encore:
13. Bonded By Blood
14. Toxic Waltz
15. Strike Of The Beast
PS: I think the setlist is ok, but just in case I have made a mistake forgive me since I was too busy banging my fucking head until it fell down.
