A couple of weeks ago with my impending birthday, my brother proposed a road trip to Cleveland to catch the opening night of the Slayer/Anthrax/Death Angel show.  As my present, he’d buy the tickets and provide the car; all I had to do was drive.  The offer was much too tempting and one I couldn’t pass up, especially considering I’d never seen Slayer and neither of us had seen Death Angel (we’d both seen Anthrax multiple times).

Now I must admit, the first time I heard a Slayer album it literally scared the crap out of me.  I’d already heard (and dug) the song “Black Magic” but when we finally purchase Hell Awaits I was scarred forever.  Dropped the needle on the self titled intro cut and was “treated” to evil incarnate- and that was before the music started!  I’m kidding…  kinda… 🙂  That said, I will admit that I’m not a HUGE Slayer fan but I do like a good chunk of their songs and figured I can’t pass up a free ticket and the opportunity to hang with my brother for the evening.

So the day of the show we had one minor problem…  my brother couldn’t meet until 3 PM and the show started at 7:10 PM, and our drive was right around four hours.  Being that we are big Death Angel fans, we high tailed it to Cleveland but got there midway through DA’s set.  What we did see was pretty damn good-  long standing members Mark Osegueda on vocals and Rob Cavestany on lead guitar were dead on hot, as were the rest of the band.  We only got to see two and a half songs but they were mind numbingly good-  nice and punchy thrash.  Unfortunately, their time on stage was just five songs but they did a fine job warming up the crowd.  Can’t wait to catch them live some other time.

As for Anthrax…  well, we’ve seen them a number of times and they always put on an entertaining show.  Unfortunately, these days I’m not quite as big a fan as I used to be-  the last two albums have their moments but I pine for another all out thrash assault like Among The Living.  All that said, they did a decent job mixing up newer cuts with their older classics during their one hour set (although I could have done without “Antisocial”; replace that with “Madhouse” and I would have majorly approved) plus Joey Belladonna was more energetic than I’d ever seen him-  lots of running around the stage and encouraging crowd participation.  Oh yeah, Scott and Charlie and Frankie?  All great players who have a lot of fun up there, especially during crowd pleasers “Caught In A Mosh” and “Indians”, my two faves from the night.  Just watching Cholly play drums is amazing and Scott is a mini-maniac.  WAAAARRRDAAAAANCE!!!!  Not my favorite show from them but it was good nonetheless.

I had zero expectations for Slayer.  I was actually thinking, “how many Slayer songs do I actually know?  Four?”.  Well ladies and gentlemen, I know MANY MORE Slayer songs than I’d realized and HOLY CRAP were they good.  Well, I’ll be a little honest…  there were some songs that they played that I didn’t really know at all which were kind of “ehhh”, but once they broke into the greats I was all in.  Sure, some of you may say “it ain’t Slayer without Hanneman and Lombardo” but Gary Holt and Paul Bostaph do a fantastic job filling in for those two guys.  I’ve always had a bit of man love for Holt anyway due to his day job with Exodus so he gets a pass from me, but I will admit that I would liked to have seen Lombardo behind the kit.  That said, Bostaph totally kills it back there and by the end of the show I was thinking “Dave Who?”.  As for those Slayer mainstays Tom Araya and Kerry King?  Aces.  Tom’s voice was in really good shape considering that this was the first show of the tour, plus he was hitting a lot of those highs and screams in many of the songs.  And King IS Slayer, so you know what you’re getting with him (although I miss that armband thingie with the nails that he wore in the old days).

Highlights of the Slayer set were definitely the classics-  “War Ensemble”, “Postmortem”, “Dead Skin Mask”, and the final four cuts of the night; those that made me realize that this was a GREAT show:  “South Of Heaven”, “Raining Blood”, “Black Magic”, and the insanely awesome “Angel Of Death”.  Not too familiar with the new album other than lead track “Repentless” but I must say the other cuts from the album were just OK-  throwing one in after three classics in a row brought the energy level down for a brief period.  Would like to have heard “World Painted Blood” instead of “Hate Worldwide” from their previous album but that’s just me.  Oh yeah, they played “Hell Awaits” too but it didn’t scare me this time (ahhhh ha ha ha ha ha!!!).

All in all, a great show and one that killed my hearing for a couple of days.  We drove straight home after the show and I hit the bed around 4 AM with ears ringing.  I woke up the next day dialing up some Slayer classics on the iPod before I went into work-  nothing like using “War Ensemble” as a wake up call first thing in the morning!