Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @ARPhotoSF
The floor and stage of Great American Music Hall is not really large enough to turn into a wrestling ring and arena, so lucky for those in attendance this Mother’s Day, former WWF and current AEW professional wrestler Chris Jericho was fronting his metal band Fozzy here tonight and not jumping off the top rope!
Fozzy started in 1999 (!) as a cover band, with a backstory that they had spent the last 20 years in Japan being megastars and once they returned to America, realized that many famous artists have ripped off their songs. Their first 2 albums are mostly cover songs, with a few originals, and every album since has all original songs (and they dropped the humorous backstory).
30 years as a professional wrestler has certainly given Jericho the ability to lead and work over a crowd. From the start of their set until the very end, Jericho had the small but loyal crowd following his every move. His band, which includes Rich Ward of early 90’s rap-metal band Stuck Mojo and P.J. Farley of 80’s glam band Trixter, along with Billy Grey and Grant Brooks, delivered an energetic 90-minute performance… and it didn’t matter to Jericho if he’s in front of 100 people at Great American Music Hall or 30,000 people at WrestleMania, he delivered as if the World Championship Title Belt was on the line!
Setlist:
1. Sane
2. Drinkin With Jesus
3. Painless
4. Nowhere to Run
5. Do You Wanna Start a War
6. Lights Go Out
7. Relax (Frankie Goes to Hollywood cover)
8. Sin and Bones
9. I Still Burn
10. Burn Me Out
11. Purifier
12. Enemy
13. Sandpaper
14. Judas
15. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap (AC/DC cover)
Opening for Fozzy was GFM, KrashKarma, and The Nocturnal Affair. KrashKarma is a two-piece band, guitar/bass/vocals and drum/vocals. The guitar player has a specially made guitar that has a bass tone on the lowest guitar strings. They surprised everyone by opening their set from their merch table with a megaphone and marching band drum, spending a couple of minutes walking through the sparse crowd performing an intro to their first song (or it could have actually been their first song?). For a two-piece, they made so much noise that it caused one crazed attendee in the front to lose his shit, immediately take off his shirt (thankfully he was the only one), and lose his shit some more, jumping and headbanging on the barricade for their entire set.
GFM, which stands for Gold, Frankincense, & Myrrh (??), is a three-piece band of sisters, 22, 20, and 17 years old. They started six years ago when they were teenagers (or younger). All in the family like Hanson, right? They dress like goth cheerleaders and play something they call Beautycore, which is a mix of female fronted rock and metalcore, like Butcher Babies, Flyleaf, Halestorm and Kittie.
Click on any photo below for a slideshow of full-size images of GFM and KrashKarma.
See more photos of all of your favorite Metal musicians at Alan Ralph‘s photo portfolio.
