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!
“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”.
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.
(c) Wikipedia
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!
Discovery Park in Sacramento was once again the site for Danny Wimmer Presents annual Aftershock Festival, a four-day rock and metal music festival featuring four stages of many of today’s bona fide headliners as well as plenty of promising new blood. It is also a bit of an endurance test. There are the crazy fans who run in as soon as the gates open and stand at the barricade for basically 11 hours, with no food or even the means to leave to find a restroom (because they’ll never get their spot back). Security did hand out plenty of water up there though so that nobody passed out in the mid-90° heat! There are others who try to take in as much as possible by going from stage to stage to stage all day long to see as many bands as they can. Many just get drunk and sit around on their picnic blanket or at the VIP section tables, while others take it all in stride and hit up the myriad of food trucks, beer tents, alcohol and cannabis vendors… all while everyone is dealing with a heat wave that much of Northern California happened to fall victim to over this very weekend.
Toyota Pavilion at Concord was the third-to-last stop on this summer’s Freaks on Parade tour. 12,000 devotees traveled far and wide to be in attendance for this rally featuring Cooper, alongside running mates Rob Zombie, Al Jourgensen (Ministry), and Richard Patrick (Filter).
Make no mistake though… while Zombie might play second fiddle on a presidential ticket to the elder Cooper, the spectacle of his production and show easily makes him the final headliner of this co-headline gathering!
The extended weekend of October 5, 6, 7 and 8 of the year 2 0 2 3 has been leaving fans of heavy metal music in decision limbo since the beginning of April. In mid-March, the annual heavy metal pilgrimage to Sacramento, called Aftershock Festival, announced another stellar (as always) 4-day lineup for an unforgettable weekend of Rock N Metal. What nobody knew then is that a mere two weeks later, Power Trip (not the band) would announce a killer classic metal lineup for their festival, to take place simultaneously on the same weekend, albeit in the southern California desert. Goldenvoice had just put Danny Wimmer Presents (DWP) on notice, and fans then had to decide which to go to! Now, with t-minus two weeks and counting, Spinning Platters is here to explain why Aftershock Festival is thee festival to attend and how they will not be relinquishing their West Coast Fall Festival crown…
Before the 3rd song at this, their latest Bay Area appearance, vocalist Dave King mentioned that it has been TEN years since they last performed at The Warfield, so we simply hadto fact-check him and determined that it has actually been SEVENTEEN years since they last stood on this stage! (September 28, 2006; March 14, 2005; September 14, 2004 were the only times) Continue reading “Show Review: Flogging Molly, The Bronx at The Warfield”
It is fairly common knowledge that thrash metal originated from here in San Francisco starting in the early-mid 1980’s with most of the heavy hitters like Metallica, Death Angel, Testament, Forbidden, Exodus, and Vio-lence, among others. The east coast, however, also had some major thrash metal bands brewing, with Anthrax, Nuclear Assault, and Overkill leading the pack. Cut to today, and most of these bands are still around and still continue to rage, almost as good or better than they did all those years ago!
One of those bands actually travelled 3,000 miles from their east coast home to begin their tour here in San Francisco. Hailing from Old Bridge Township, New Jersey, the seminal 1980’s band Overkill came to town to show-up their Bay Area thrash metal brethren, and in the process, laid waste to the Great American Music Hall, proving that after 43 years and 20 albums, they still thrash as well or better than most of their Bay Area metal counterparts… and everyone else!
