The only band not from America, Birmingham, England's Napalm Death kicked off the night. It's hard to tell how many people were ready for this, compared to the rest of the bands, Napalm Death are the epitome of raw, extreme metal. The second Napalm Death start, Budweiser Gardens is hit with a wall of noise. With a career spanning 30 years, Napalm Death have a huge catalogue of songs to choose from. Starting off with a clue tracks from the band's most famous album, Scum, the heads started banging instantly. “Multinational Corporations” and “Instinct of Survival” start us out, it's always funny to see how quick these songs start and end. Frontman, Barney Greenway is about as full of energy as the music, thrashing and flailing around what little of the stage the band have to occupy. Bassist, Shane Embury is probably one of the nicest dudes on stage, waving to the fans in the audience with a big smile on his face. The crowd got really into Napalm Death, which isn't too surprising, but it's not common you see a pit open to the first band, especially at a concert that's gonna last 6 hours! Highlight of the night was the band playing “Dead” from their album From Enslavement to Obliteration. Anyone familiar with the song knows it spans an astounding 2 seconds. Meaning if anyone missing the count in, they missed the entire song. Greenway missed the count in, so we got to hear the song twice. Once as an instrumental and again properly and this is one of those moments where you realise we are all human. We all make mistakes and have fun and that's the point of going to concerts. Napalm Death closed out with their infamous cover of Dead Kennedys’ “Nazi Punks Fuck Off”, which is always a blast watching everyone sing along. They left as quick as they came and that was the end of Napalm Death’s set.
Next up was the only band on the bill I hadn't seen before, Testament. These guys are thrash icons right alongside their tour mates Slayer and Anthrax. Testament played a good mix, kicking of the show lighting up the eyes of the snakes on their banner, which is the Brotherhood of the Snake album cover. We are first met with Gene Hoglan hyping everyone up and blasting into the title track from the new album and the only one they play from it tonight. Testament went backwards through their history, starting with the newer songs they've released like the aforementioned “Brotherhood of the Snake” and “Rise Up” from the band's 2012 album Dark Roots of Earth. Main highlights of the bands set was watching vocalist Chuck Billy air guitar throughout the set, complete with throwing guitar picks into the crowd when not actually singing. Although a little disappointed not hearing anything from Souls of Black, specifically the title track, getting to hear “Practice What You Preach” and watching the pit go wild during “Into the Pit” was a crazy experience. As per usual from what I've seen online, the band closed out with “Over the Wall”. A last hoorah for the pick ensured and the floor opened up, showing Testament what London has to offer.
Anthrax has actually been here recently, playing just around the corner with Killswitch Engage in November 2017. As a tribute to the late Vinnie Paul, the set kicked off with a jam to the intro of Pantera's “Cowboys From Hell”. I was kind of hoping they'd play the whole thing, after seeing Joey Belladonna sing Dio’s “Holy Diver” with Killswitch Engage I'm sure he would have nailed this as well. Instead, after jamming the first 30 seconds or so, Belladonna joined the rest of his bandmates onstage and kicked off “Caught in a Mosh”. Anthrax stuck with the songs everyone knew, they had the time tick-tick-ticking in their head as they jumped right into their cover of “Got the Time”. The only song played from the band's most recent album For All Kings was the single “Evil Twin”. Guitarist Scott Ian threw out more than enough guitar picks to trigger California after their ban of the plastic straw meaning everyone within 10 rows of the barricade probably got a souvenir from the show. Anthrax closed out with “Indians”, arguable the band's most well known song. Following the end of “Indians” Anthrax closed out with an outro jam of “Cowboys From Hell”. If you're gonna start with the intro, you may as well end with the end right? All in all another great performance from the most underrated of the Big 4.
Coming up closer to the end, the main support for the tour comes from the newest band on the bill, Lamb of God. Kicking off with a very distorted version of the intro tape from “Omerta” off the band's biggest album, Ashes of the Wake, fans new what was coming. One thing was missing as Chris Adler has had to back out of touring with Lamb of God for this tour. Adler’s replacement for this leg of the tour is Art Cruz (Prong, Winds of Plague) and Cruz is definitely making the most out of getting to fill in. It's been a few years since the last time I caught Lamb of God and while they haven't technically released a new album in that time, the setlist has changed a fair amount. “Omerta” was one I was stoked to finally catch, as well as some of the older songs from the band's discography. It was a little surprising that no songs off the new Burn the Priest album were played. For those who don't know, Burn the Priest was the original name for Lamb of God. Regardless, the band stuck to their guns, opting to play the heavier, thrashier songs they have. “Now You've Got Something To Die For” easily had the biggest crowd interaction of the night, hearing thousands of people chant along to the chorus is incredible and chilling. Throwing “512” and “Engaging the Fear Machine” in the middle of the set was probably the best thing that could have been done, the last album was met with some mixed fan reaction. What’s a better place to support the newest album than slap in the centre of the set. A little surprising was the act that Lamb of God gave a good amount of love to Sacrament. “Walk With Me In Hell” and “Blacken the Cursed Sun” are beyond killer live songs, the power transfers well from the album to the live format. “Redneck” also closed out the bands set, a perfect, heavy song to close out on and leave us waiting for Slayer. Down comes a curtain, blanketing the front of the stage. Obviously with 4 bands playing prior, the stage takes a bit of set up as fans clamor waiting patiently for the metal gods to take the stage. Shortly after 9pm the lights go down and crosses are splashed on the curtain with the intro track “Delusions of Saviour” blaring. Slowly the crosses turn until completely inverted only to be switched out for pentagrams flying across the cover and fire starting in the back. Close to the end of the 2 minute into the pentagrams line up, displaying the Slayer logo before the curtain dropped and the band broke into “Repentless”. Right off the bat the energy was at a max. One of the biggest metal bands that's still active is calling it quits and as far as anyone is aware, this is the last time they'll be in Canada. Slayer’s set was a blast through time from beginning to end. Aside from “Repentless”, “Blood Red” and “Disciple” helped to open the set, knocking out some of the newer songs in Slayer’s vast discography rather early on. Going on from this point, the set was rather varied including songs from all eras of Slayer. Some of the more surprising songs in the set were “Black Magic” off the band’s first album Show No Mercy and “Payback” from God Hates Us All. It was great hearing “Postmortem” live finally, although I’m surprised the band skipped the opportunity to have it lead directly into “Raining Blood” which they instead opted to save for closer to the end of the set, which makes sense. This is the end of Slayer, save the songs we all know for the end.
Throughout the set it became fairly obvious why they were calling it quits. The band didn’t move from their area too often, keeping pretty stagnant even though they had a massive amount of room to move. Tom Araya’s voice sounded great, only starting to waiver around “Dead Skin Mask” or “Hell Awaits”, which are only about 5 songs from the end of their set. The fact that even after all these years of yelling, Araya can still make it almost entire 100 minute set without showing any real issues in his voice is impressive. The backdrop Slayer had changed a few times throughout the night, from the album cover for Repentless to a glow-in-the-dark version of the tour art. There were a couple more, but the last one was the most significant, as they broke into “Raining Blood” the backdrop changed to a mock Heineken logo, displaying the bands tribute to late guitarist Jeff Hanneman, who unfortunately passed away back in 2013. The pyro throughout the whole show was rather intense, Slayer know how to use pyro right. Outside of the regular stream of fire and timed blasts of flames that happened, they also created inverted crosses of pure fire throughout the show in behind drummer, Paul Bostaph. The other really nice aspect of their stage setup was the Slayer eagles on the back of the stage. The symbol Slayer have been known for, for years. They also caught flame at some points throughout the set, they flames came up between the actual logo and the eagle, highlighting the bands logo.London’s Budweiser Gardens is a decent venue, although the venue had a fair amount of echo in the beginning, the sound was pretty good. The crowd was rowdy, but didn't make the show unenjoyable by any means and security was doing a great job keeping up with the endless stream of crowd surfers. This was Slayer’s final show in Canada and they went out with a bang. If you have the chance, do not miss this tour. You will regret it.
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