Concert Review: Slayer at Riot Fest

Concert Review: Slayer at Riot Fest

Douglas Park, Chicago, Sept. 14, 2019

Kerry King projected on the big screen.

Slayer killed during a 90-minute headlining set that seemed to be cut short on a perfect late-summer evening in Douglas Park. At 9:56, minutes before the 10 p.m. curfew for music, singer-bassist Tom Araya told the crowd: “They are making us cut it short. Thanks for sharing your time with us.”

The massive crowd registered its disapproval with boos, but the band--who is in the midst of a “final campaign” if band retirement announcements can be believed--probably wouldn’t want it any other way: leaving the crowd wanting more.

The set ended with the seminal thrash metal classic “Angel Of Death,” making it hard to imagine a more fitting closer to perhaps the last ever Slayer show in Chicago (the band will play the appropriately named TaxSlayer Center in Moline, Nov. 14, for the last scheduled stop in Illinois). “Repentless,” one of the band’s most recent songs from the 2015 album of the same name, opened the set as a literal example of how the band hasn’t changed its death-obsessed brand of heavy music since forming in 1981--becoming one of the most ground-breaking and controversial bands along the way.

Guitarist Gary Holt--filling in for Jeff Hanneman who was an integral part of the band’s sound until his death in 2013--was possessed on stage. The big screen featured his tortured facial expressions  and string-bending guitar solos during “World Painted Blood” and “Hate Worldwide.” His shirt read “No Lives Matter,” with the “O” a pentagram and “kill the Kardashians” stitched on his wrist-bands. On “Raining Blood” and other songs later in the set, Holt played a guitar covered in what seemed to be the Heineken beer logo but instead read “Hanneman.” 

Hulking guitarist Kerry King--his pony-tailed goatee ever threatening to get tangled in his riffage--hunched over for his solo on “War Ensemble,” shredding the strings on his flying-V guitar with twisted horns. King’s frantic and discordant solo style is as iconic as his look: bald head and thick, tattooed arms like a villain from DC comics.

Even the heavens cooperated: a near-full moon rose just to the right of the stage with ephemeral clouds slightly obscuring its glow. Onstage, bursts of fire balls added to the pummeling beat and helped illuminate the anti-religious imagery in the background curtains.

A fire burned on stage for nearly the entirety of “Hell Awaits,” a song from the band’s 1985 second album. The song featured rapid-fire lyrics and the big screen may have caught  Araya fumbling the last verse. “Seasons In The Abyss” and “South Of Heaven”--perhaps two of the most evil-sounding songs in the band’s discography--had the crowd singing along, especially the heretical wail “before you see the light, you must die!” 

Testament and Anthrax, contemporaries of Slayer since the 1980s, played inspired sets on the same stage leading up to the headlining performance, further showing that Slayer is indeed going out on top.

Set List

Repentless

Evil Has No Boundaries

World Painted Blood

Postmortem

Hate Worldwide

War Ensemble

Gemini
Disciple
Mandatory Suicide

Chemical Warfare

Payback 

Temptation

Born Of Fire

Seasons In The Abyss

Hell Awaits

South of Heaven
Raining Blood

Black Magic

Dead Skin Mask

Angel of Death

Link to post of review on Illinois Entertainer magazine website

Anthrax played before Slayer took the stage.

Testament was the first of three classic thrash bands that day.

Roller Coaster Review: Maxx Force, Six Flags Great America

Not since the 2014 debut of Goliath has Six Flags Great America in Gurnee, Ill., had the chance to tout a new roller coaster. Maxx Force boasts three world records: fastest launch roller coaster (obtaining 78 mph in under two seconds), fastest inversion and tallest double-inversion. 

But given the 20 second total ride time, the coaster should have been named The Flash, which would be in line with other D.C. comic-themed rides in the park. The launch is a thrill for sure, but the ride is over too soon.

I rode Maxx Force twice on Thursday, July 25, 2019, about three weeks after its debut. At 1p.m. I only had to wait 35 minutes, which made me seriously question the ride’s appeal. Later at around 5:45, I had to wait 1:15 minutes to ride, which included a 20-minute delay in service.

Here are my thoughts about each aspect of the ride:

The Launch: Anticipating the take-off and acceleration to 78 mph in two seconds is the best part of the ride. The operators keep you guessing--there is no countdown to launch. When it occurs, everyone around the park knows it: a deep “boom” marks the moment, adding to the anxiety of those waiting in line. On the ride, one doesn’t really hear the boom, only feels the g-force of being pressed back into the cushy seat. And, since riders are being launched up and into the first inversion, there are no stomach-flipping drops to endure.

The Inversions: Due to the ride’s speed, the inversions are smooth and over quickly.

The Seating: The coaster is designed like a race car (with faux wheels front and back seats like those in a car). Riders are secured by a lap bar (as in Goliath) and hold onto handles in front. Each train only holds 16 riders. A second train is loaded even before the first is launched. It’s a comfortable and secure ride.

The Waiting Area: This ride was erected at the park’s entrance, in the footprint once occupied by the Pictorium (touted as the “world’s largest motion picture experience” and Chicagoland’s first IMAX when it opened in 1979). The line area is compact and unfortunately architects didn’t include any shade for those waiting in line.

Bottom Line: This is a better ride than the past two revealed by the park in 2018 and 2017: The Mardi Gras Hangover is billed as the world’s largest loop at 100-feet tall, but is just a one-trick pony. And The Joker is an aptly named schizophrenic track that lacks multiple ride appeal.

Link to POV footage of Maxx Force.

Link to my review of Goliath

Link to my review of “Justice League: Battle for Metropolis”

Album Review: "Gold & Grey" by Baroness

BARONESS
*Gold & Grey*
(Abraxan Hymns)

Baroness's glorious new double album wastes no time announcing what it is all about: perseverance. Singer/guitarist/songwriter/artist John Baizley declares in the opener "Front Toward Enemy"--a hard-charging, bass-driven rocker--"we're headed for disaster...we can only fight front toward enemy." It's a frantic start to what turns out to be one of the most heart-felt hard rock albums of its time: this is about survival, hope and desperate measures, a theme that makes sense in the band's timeline after a near-death and life-changing bus accident in 2012.
The second album since that accident, 17 songs in length, establishes Baroness (Baizley as the only original member) as survivors. Baizley wails on the ever morphing rocker "Seasons," "we fall, we rise, we bend, we break, we burn, but we survive" before breaking into thrash riffage along with new guitarist Gina Gleason, Baizley's nimble foil whose interplay meshes perfectly with the band's uptempo and emotive instrumental aesthetic. 
Short, free-form instrumental explorations bridge the gaps between sprawling compositions, a highlight being "Tourniquet": "Somebody throw me a tourniquet, I'm openhearted." Once again, a thudding bassline provides the backbone to Baizley's wear-it-on-his-sleeve, full-throated singing. "Throw Me An Anchor" ups the hard-rock tempo and furthers the theme: "This is an emergency." The mid-tempo tracks on the album showcase the band's subtlety best: On the sprawling "Borderlines," the band's tightness is on display--evidenced by the dueling guitar solos and Baizley's plaintive realization: "Borderline, get me out alive...When it rains, I am right where I belong."
9/10
Appearing July 23, 2019, at Durty Nellie's in Palatine, IL
Link to print version of review in July 2019 issue of Illinois Entertainer magazine. Navigate PDF file to page 28.

Album Review: Pelican's "Nighttime Stories"

PELICAN
*Nighttime Stories*
(Southern Lord)

There might not be a more thrilling trio of instrumental hard rock songs than three found on Pelican's new full-length album, the first since 2013. About three minutes into "Midnight and Mescaline" through the end of the song, the post-metal pace slackens and allows the band to explore stunted power-chord riffing amid a groovy, repetitious beat. It's that rough, groovy texture that Pelican has honed like no other band over a near two-decade career. The mesmerizing end to that track quickly transitions into the bouncy pop rhythm of "Abyssal Plain," which soon transitions into grindcore and then to wide-open mid-tempo jamming of layered guitars and headbanging time changes--and back to grindcore again. "Cold Hope" finishes the trifecta--a bottom-heavy and relentless burner with even bigger grooves and riffage than the previous two. It closes out the trio with air-raid siren guitar solos. The six other tracks help cement this offering as the band's best, most complete album: the title track ups the ante on the dirty-sounding, distorted riffage, and "Full Moon, Black Water" shows the band's widest range of hard rock styles over its eight minutes in length. At the four-minute mark of this track the band once again breaks it down into the muted and frantic riffing for which it is best known, only to end with a shoe-gazing passage that evokes the pleasurable feeling of awakening after a long night of dreaming.
9/10
Link to the print version of this review in the July 2019 issue of Illinois Entertainer. Navigate PDF file to page 28.

Concert Review: Mudhoney at Lincoln Hall, Chicago

From left: Guy Maddison, Mark Arm, Dan Peters, Steve Turner.

Concert Review: Mudhoney at Lincoln Hall, Chicago, May 26, 2019

Thirty years after releasing their debut Sub Pop EP “Superfuzz Bigmuff”--the seminal grunge album--Mudhoney is on the road in support of 10th studio album “Digital Garbage,” a scathing rundown of current social-political flash points. The sold-out crowd of 40-somethings enthusiastically embraced the Seattle legends who ripped through classics as well as at least seven songs from their latest effort.

The first half of the 90-minute set featured singer Mark Arm playing rhythm on a black Gretsch guitar, flanked by red-shirted lead guitarist Steve Turner and bass player Guy Maddison, with the relentlessly nimble drummer Dan Peters behind. Genre-defining songs “Touch Me I’m Sick,” “Here Comes Sickness,” “Suck You Dry”  and “You Got It”--released decades ago--still bristled with manic fury and seaminess and heavy reverb, the undeniable superfuzz-bigmuff aesthetic and nostalgia compelling those close by the stage to form an old-school mosh pit.

Arm discarded his guitar about halfway through the set and, as if suddenly free from the confines of playing rhythm guitar, channeled his inner Iggy Pop on new song “Paranoid Core,” singing “I stoke the fire of your paranoid core / I feed on your fear.” “Evangelical hypocrites / laying hands on a pile of shit” were the target of Arm’s ire on “21st Century Pharisees,” representing the band’s most blistering religious commentary. “Prosperity Gospel” allowed Arm to lament everything from the industrial-military complex to the mortgage crisis to the greed of Big Pharma, backed with angst-inducing post-punk/grunge immediacy. These topical tracks from “Digital Garbage” were received slightly less fervently from the crowd, even if Arm and the rest of the band never let up their intensity.

“Kill Yourself Live,” about social media addiction, is the best song--musically and lyrically--on the new album. The live version lacked the backing organ on the studio version--an organ sound that harkens back to 1992’s “Piece of Cake”--but the energy of the instrumentation and urgency of the message was felt.

But in the end, it wasn’t the progressive social-political commentary that worked up the crowd the most. It was reveling in the edgy, no-bullshit Pacific Northwest mystique that tweaked the crowd into writhing action: to acknowledge this, the band’s multi-song encore featured “In ‘n’ Out of Grace,” with Arm snidely biting off the naughty lyrics amid Turner’s furious--and fuzzy--powerchord riffing: “spill my seed, suck my waste / sliding in and out of Grace”...suddenly, it was 1989 again and the musical possibilities were endless.

Link to set list.

Bonus fanboy/geek-out moment: As I was watching opening band METZ--an energetic noise rock/post-punk outfit from the Sub Pop stable--from the balcony, purely by chance Mudhoney bass player Guy Maddison appeared next to me. No one around seemed to notice him but me.

At the end of the next song, I awkwardly said to him, "Hey, man, great to see you," and he politely shook my outstretched hand. I then said, "I'm really looking forward to tonight's show."

A few songs later, I asked him how the tour was going. He said fine, that they were headed back home Tuesday, and that he "had to go to work." I laughed and said, "me too."

As if that wasn't cool enough, I next found myself standing next to Mudhoney singer-guitarist Mark Arm. It was at that point that I realized I was in the part of the balcony closest to the green room. I was standing next to grunge royalty--next to someone just as responsible (if not more so) for pioneering this culturally influential musical genre as Kurt Cobain or Eddie Vedder.

I turned to Mark, shook his hand and also told him how much I was looking forward to Mudhoney's set. I told him how much I liked the new album ("Digital Garbage") and how much I appreciated the lyrical messages too.

Lastly, I told him I was a fan from way back. He said, "I could tell from your shirt." I was wearing a Mudhoney shirt purchased from their tour in support of 1992's "Piece of Cake."

Speechless.