"An ill Ozzy jilts his own festival, but the music thunders on"
What the sold-out crowd at the Tweeter Center needed more than anything around 9:30 Thursday night was a voice of reason.
Thank the metal gods for Judas Priest front man Rob Halford.
Black Sabbath drummer Bill Ward had just delivered the buzz-kill news to the 25,000 members of Ozzfest Nation, some of whom had been at the annual metal-thon all day - enduring such atrocities as Lacuna Coil's bad Evanescence impersonation and the comically ghoulish goth-thrash of Dimmu Borgir:
Ozzy Osbourne had bronchitis and would not be fronting Sabbath this evening.
Ward extended Ozzy's regrets, explained how Halford, the band's "old mate" from Birmingham, England, would be filling in, and profanely proclaimed several times how Sabbath would play as hard as possible. The swelling chorus of boos, obscene gestures, and flying plastic cups indicated the crowd wasn't having it. Probably because the phrase "refunds can be obtained at point of purchase" was absent from Ward's spiel.
But minutes later, the voice of reason arrived via Halford: piercing, steely, and aiming to save the day. The first words: "Generals gathered in their masses..." Halford - whose reunited Priest preceded Sabbath with a galvanizing set, which we'll get to soon - was leading the Sabs on their 1971 warmonger indictment, "War Pigs." It was frighteningly pertinent and potent, thanks to Halford's sadistic delivery.
As Sabbath droned and trudged behind him through the fiendish acid-rock of "Fairies Wear Boots," the ecologically conscious proto-grunge of "Into the Void," and the straight-from-the-bowels-of-Hades dirge "Black Sabbath," Halford (who, in Ozzy fashion, stayed close to the TelePrompTer) proved a more than suitable understudy.
Unlike with Ozzy, however, his voice rarely wavered in pitch. Most songs were played in a lower tuning to accommodate Osbourne's diminished vocal range, but Halford could have easily handled them in the original key.
If you closed your eyes, it was Sabbath on its best night in the mid-'70s.
It might have been nice for Ozzy to show at his own summer fete, if only to throw a bucket of water or 10 on the crowd. But his sick day was something of a blessing in disguise. And by the time Sabbath closed with "Paranoid," the crowd seemed hip to that fact.
It's a wonder Halford had anything left in the tank after leading Judas Priest (together with its original singer on this tour for the first time since 1991) through a 13-song classic-metal clinic with all the trimmings: studded outfits, dual guitar crunch, multitiered stage, and Halford's roaring Harley-Davidson on the encore "Hell Bent for Leather." Touring behind the retrospective boxed set Metalogy, Priest played a set celebrating its pioneering exploits, with Halford the animated party host clad in a leather-and-tassels getup that a Mummer might wear to a bondage club.
The Priest guys rolled out '70s warhorses ("The Green Manalishi"), '80s radio hits ("You've Got Another Thing Comin' "), and speedy rampages ("Painkiller"). Their wide grins and devil-horn hand gestures said, "Yeah, it's kind of Spinal Tap, but isn't it great?" It was indeed.
Slayer, still the heaviest band on the planet, set the bar high for Priest and Sabbath with its early-evening performance.
Behind a mountain of drums and cymbals, Dave Lombardo established whiplash tempos and propelled the quartet with jaw-dropping double-kick patterns. And through their wall of 24 Marshall cabinets, guitarists Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman supplied all manner of synapse-frying crunch, drone and thrash (bearing the obvious influence of Priest and Sabbath), over which singer-bassist Tom Araya depicted utterly grim circumstances on "Dead Skin Mask" and "Mandatory Suicide."
Once Slayer, perhaps the show's biggest draw, finished its assault, earlier heavies including Slipknot (victim of a second-stage sound mix that rendered the guitars and the death-rattle belch of singer Corey Taylor incidental) and Superjoint Ritual (the hardcore-leaning band fronted by Pantera and Down singer Phil Anselmo) suddenly seemed musically inferior and a lot less frightening.
__________________________________________________
Fuck that would have been awesome.
What the sold-out crowd at the Tweeter Center needed more than anything around 9:30 Thursday night was a voice of reason.
Thank the metal gods for Judas Priest front man Rob Halford.
Black Sabbath drummer Bill Ward had just delivered the buzz-kill news to the 25,000 members of Ozzfest Nation, some of whom had been at the annual metal-thon all day - enduring such atrocities as Lacuna Coil's bad Evanescence impersonation and the comically ghoulish goth-thrash of Dimmu Borgir:
Ozzy Osbourne had bronchitis and would not be fronting Sabbath this evening.
Ward extended Ozzy's regrets, explained how Halford, the band's "old mate" from Birmingham, England, would be filling in, and profanely proclaimed several times how Sabbath would play as hard as possible. The swelling chorus of boos, obscene gestures, and flying plastic cups indicated the crowd wasn't having it. Probably because the phrase "refunds can be obtained at point of purchase" was absent from Ward's spiel.
But minutes later, the voice of reason arrived via Halford: piercing, steely, and aiming to save the day. The first words: "Generals gathered in their masses..." Halford - whose reunited Priest preceded Sabbath with a galvanizing set, which we'll get to soon - was leading the Sabs on their 1971 warmonger indictment, "War Pigs." It was frighteningly pertinent and potent, thanks to Halford's sadistic delivery.
As Sabbath droned and trudged behind him through the fiendish acid-rock of "Fairies Wear Boots," the ecologically conscious proto-grunge of "Into the Void," and the straight-from-the-bowels-of-Hades dirge "Black Sabbath," Halford (who, in Ozzy fashion, stayed close to the TelePrompTer) proved a more than suitable understudy.
Unlike with Ozzy, however, his voice rarely wavered in pitch. Most songs were played in a lower tuning to accommodate Osbourne's diminished vocal range, but Halford could have easily handled them in the original key.
If you closed your eyes, it was Sabbath on its best night in the mid-'70s.
It might have been nice for Ozzy to show at his own summer fete, if only to throw a bucket of water or 10 on the crowd. But his sick day was something of a blessing in disguise. And by the time Sabbath closed with "Paranoid," the crowd seemed hip to that fact.
It's a wonder Halford had anything left in the tank after leading Judas Priest (together with its original singer on this tour for the first time since 1991) through a 13-song classic-metal clinic with all the trimmings: studded outfits, dual guitar crunch, multitiered stage, and Halford's roaring Harley-Davidson on the encore "Hell Bent for Leather." Touring behind the retrospective boxed set Metalogy, Priest played a set celebrating its pioneering exploits, with Halford the animated party host clad in a leather-and-tassels getup that a Mummer might wear to a bondage club.
The Priest guys rolled out '70s warhorses ("The Green Manalishi"), '80s radio hits ("You've Got Another Thing Comin' "), and speedy rampages ("Painkiller"). Their wide grins and devil-horn hand gestures said, "Yeah, it's kind of Spinal Tap, but isn't it great?" It was indeed.
Slayer, still the heaviest band on the planet, set the bar high for Priest and Sabbath with its early-evening performance.
Behind a mountain of drums and cymbals, Dave Lombardo established whiplash tempos and propelled the quartet with jaw-dropping double-kick patterns. And through their wall of 24 Marshall cabinets, guitarists Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman supplied all manner of synapse-frying crunch, drone and thrash (bearing the obvious influence of Priest and Sabbath), over which singer-bassist Tom Araya depicted utterly grim circumstances on "Dead Skin Mask" and "Mandatory Suicide."
Once Slayer, perhaps the show's biggest draw, finished its assault, earlier heavies including Slipknot (victim of a second-stage sound mix that rendered the guitars and the death-rattle belch of singer Corey Taylor incidental) and Superjoint Ritual (the hardcore-leaning band fronted by Pantera and Down singer Phil Anselmo) suddenly seemed musically inferior and a lot less frightening.
__________________________________________________
Fuck that would have been awesome.
