Alan Ralph – Spinning Platters

Show Review: GWAR at The Regency Ballroom, 10/20/2024

Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @ARPhotoSF

As with every four-year election cycle, this 2024 United States presidential election season has been equally as boring as it is annoying, with the 24/7 news coverage and the debates and the spam texts and emails and the constant ads on the social feeds as well as in the physical mailbox.

Thankfully, the greatest live band in the universe, Antarctica’s very own GWAR, has once again stepped up to help out the American public… by executing all of the presidential candidates, present and past.

Spinning Platters is never one to avoid a good ole bloody mess, and with the expensive camera equipment properly covered, GWAR marched onto the stage and wasted no time in chopping off heads, hands, arms, and anything else available to spew their fluids onto all of those awaiting their bloody destiny.

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Show Review: The. Best. Aftershock. Ever.

Review and All Photos by: Alan Ralph @ARPhotoSF

For decades, Europe has led the way in the heavy metal and loud rock music festival space. Monsters of Rock (the originator, which started in 1980!), Wacken Open Air, Dynamo Open Air, Hellfest, Graspop, Copenhell, Rock am Ring, Rock im Park, Summer Breeze, Sweden Rock Fest and Download have always dominated the landscape with their amazing lineups year after year.

United States was never close in offering an equivalent heavy metal experience. Sure, there was Ozzfest and Mayhem Festival, but those have been gone since 2017 and 2015 and Americans have always leaned more towards indie rock music festivals like Lollapalooza, Coachella, Bonaroo, and Outside Lands anyway.

For the last twelve or so years, Danny Wimmer Presents (DWP) has been chipping away at the supremacy of the European heavy metal festivals, with Welcome To Rockville, Louder Than Life, Sonic Temple, Inkcarceration, Rock on the Range, Rocklahoma, Carolina Rebellion, and Northern California’s very own Aftershock Festival. With the best lineup it has ever had, West Coast’s Biggest Rock Festival definitely lived up to its name in 2024!

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Show Review: Weezer + The Flaming Lips @ Chase Center, 10/09/2024

Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @ARPhotoSF

In 1994, a simple blue cover adorned the release of the debut album of the then relatively unknown band Weezer. Three decades later, the Blue Album, as it has long been commonly known, was the central theme of their Voyage to the Blue Planet tour, which was to celebrate its 30th anniversary.

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Show Review: KK’s Priest + Accept, Regency Ballroom, October 7, 2024

Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @ARPhotoSF

In the last decade, there seems to be a trend of band members who can’t get along and someone ends up leaving and creating another version of the same band: Great White and Jack Russell’s Great White. L.A. Guns and Riley’s L.A. Guns. Ratt, Stephen Pearcy’s Ratt and Bobby Blotzer’s Ratt Experience (three versions!). Yes and Yes Featuring Jon Anderson, Trevor Rabin, Rick Wakeman. Queensrÿche and Geoff Tate’s Queensrÿche. So, does Judas Priest and KK’s Priest fit the criteria?

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Abroad in Toronto: Dropkick Murphys, Hanabie., Hatebreed, Carcass, and more!

Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @ARPhotoSF

Occasionally, the dedicated staff of Spinning Platters gets the opportunity to watch, photograph, and/or review shows from outside of our comfortable Bay Area confines. A few previous trips have included Chicago, Dallas, and Las Vegas, to cover Deftones, Gojira, New Found Glory, Suffocation, Lamb of God, Killswitch Engage, Mercyful Fate, Kreator, and August Burns Red. This time around, one of Spinning Platters’ two resident metalheads was somehow allowed into Canada eh and spent the week in the 416, where we saw Jinjer, Hanabie., Born of Osiris, Scream, Dropkick Murphys, Pennywise, Hatebreed, Carcass, Harm’s Way, and Crypta!

(Korn + Gojira, Benighted + Cognitive, Gatecreeper + Frozen Soul, Galactic Empire + Powerglove were also here during our week-long stay but was not able to attend any of these for various reasons, but mostly due to them being on the same night as another show!)

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Show Review: Foo Fighters + L7 at Toyota Pavilion in Concord

Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @AlanHasPicks

Having not been to Toyota Pavilion in Concord at all during this 2024 season, Spinning Platters made the long journey twice in four days (see also Megadeth + Mudvayne)! It really is a trek too… from our satellite penthouse office in San Francisco, there’s a thirty-minute MUNI bus followed by a fifty-minute BART ride followed by a twenty-minute Pavilion shuttle, and traveling back after any show typically takes even longer. All that said, it certainly is worth it to be able to bring these shows to life to the readers with our photos and words… it just takes longer to travel than some of these bands’ headlining sets are!

Except for Foo Fighters…

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Show Review: Megadeth + Mudvayne at Toyota Pavilion in Concord

Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @AlanHasPicks

San Francisco Bay Area did a good job on this particular weekend keeping everyone segregated to their respective tribes. Outside Lands Music Festival catered to the norms and the hipsters in the middle of The City in Golden Gate Park, Vice Prez Kamala Harris had a fundraiser for the wealthy 1% at Fairmont Hotel way up on top of Nob Hill, and Megadeth, Mudvayne, and All That Remains brought the metal and goth and punk kids (and adults) all the way out to Concord at Toyota Pavilion, for their Destroy All Enemies tour.

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Show Review: Decapitated + SepticFlesh at DNA Lounge, May 18, 2024

Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @AlanHasPicks
Decapitated photos by: Zoran Theodorovic of Capital Chaos TV

After just over a month on the road, co-headliners Decapitated and SepticFlesh, along with Kataklysm and Allegaeon, held their penultimate show of the Cancer Culture Over North America tour at DNA Lounge in San Francisco. The show was packed from the first band to the last, and all four felt like they could have been the headliner!

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Kerry King (of Slayer) ‘From Hell I Rise’

Review by: Alan Ralph @AlanHasPicks
Cover photo by: Jim Louvau @jimlouvau

“It’s gonna sound like Slayer without it being Slayer.” (Paul Bostaph, August 27, 2020, Metal Injection)

“[O]f course it’s gonna sound like Slayer; I wrote 90% of the last record [Repentless].” (Kerry King, May 13, 2024, Revolver)

After an eighteen-month ‘final’ tour, Slayer called it quits on November 30, 2019, and it surprised absolutely no one that Kerry King would be back. Even the guitar picks that he threw out from the stage every night on the final tour said: Kerry King will be “Reborn” in “2020”.

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Show Review: UADA at Neck of the Woods, March 24, 2024

Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @AlanHasPicks

You know what’s missing at Spinning Platters? Black Metal. There’s just a lack of content related to the most extreme subgenre of metal music.

There are even several bands considered influential to this genre, including Mayhem, Darkthrone, Burzum, Immortal, Emperor, Satyricon and Gorgoroth. The most famous of these bands is definitely Mayhem, where members killed other members, committed suicide, and burned churches… ah, the good ole’ 1990’s!

While the vast majority of the subject matter here is geared more towards fans of Outside Lands than fans of Mayhem, Spinning Platters still employs a few brave souls who will immerse themselves in the mosh pits and get their eardrums pulverized, all in the name of reporting back about the glorious screaming vocals, remarkably incredible fast guitar riffs and blast-beat drumming, as well as maybe a count on the number of non-black clothing (HA!) and inverted crosses seen, and all typically without even having to stock up on corpse paint…

Fortunately for Neck of the Woods, black metal bands these days typically don’t burn down anything or commit murder anymore!

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