Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @ARPhotoSF
Throughout our cumulative years working in many components of the local music industry, the staff of Spinning Platters has been lucky enough to become friendly with quite a few bands, their management, public relations, and even their road crews. In late May, over Memorial Day Weekend, we ventured outside of our Bay Area bubble to the middle of the country (Chicago). We were subsequently offered the opportunity to cover some shows there. Now, once again, Spinning Platters had the chance to travel to Dallas (Don’t Mess With Texas!) and was informed that we would be able to cover the final show of one tour and the first show of another! What started out as simply two photo passes for Lamb of God, Killswitch Engage, Animals as Leaders, Fit for an Autopsy AND Mercyful Fate, Kreator, Midnight turned into a whole lot more…
The Pavilion, in the suburbs of Dallas (actually Irving), is an interesting venue. Not only is it an indoor venue that accommodates 4,000 people, but the entire back wall can retract and open up to a grass lawn for another 4,000 to turn it into a small amphitheater (small in comparison to our Shoreline and Concord Pavilion). It is nice and new, maybe five years old, surrounded by a handful of modern overpriced restaurants and bars to make up the overall Toyota Music Factory.
This is the second time in as many years that we’ve covered Lamb of God. Last summer at Concord Pavilion, they absolutely killed it and crushed their headliner Megadeth on the first leg of The Metal Tour of the Year, and they equally laid waste to the stage in Dallas! Their set featured blinding lights, a little bit of pyro, a lot of fire, and singer D. Randall Blythe roaming from side to side, whipping his dreadlocks in every possible direction, jumping all over the place, on and off of his lighted riser as well as the drum riser, and causing utter chaos upon that stage.
Their new album Omens was released to the masses midway through this tour. Until that point, two new songs were on the setlist, and a third was added once the record dropped. It wouldn’t be a Lamb of God show without certain staples, and they hit ’em all in their fifteen-song set!
Towards the end, Fit for an Autopsy singer Joe Badolato was brought out to help sing Laid To Rest. For the uninitiated, in April 2022, on the second leg of The Metal Tour of the Year, Joe filled in for an entire set as Mr. Blythe went down with Covid-19 for a few days. This being the final show of this first leg of their Omens tour, it was a nice gesture to have him come back out.
Click on any photo below for a slideshow of full-size images of Lamb of God.
In fact, Fit for an Autopsy did a fine job kicking off the show with two songs from each of their last three albums. Deathcore never sounded so brutal, but unfortunately, they did not have a lot of space on the stage to roam, and a vast majority of the people missed the set as they had not filed into The Pavilion yet.
Except for a few moving lights behind them, Animals as Leaders turned off all the rest of the lights and was in near darkness for their entire six-song instrumental set. As great of musicians as they are, it just felt like a half-hour-long beer line, food line, merch line, or bathroom break. It was definitely a mosh-pit break, but it wouldn’t be long until everyone was moshing again…
Click on any photo below for a slideshow of full-size images of Animals as Leaders and Fit for an Autopsy.
Click on any photo below for a slideshow of full-size images of Killswitch Engage.
Having the “Working” aspect on the credentials allowed us to spend time almost anywhere (except dressing rooms), and it was incredible to hang out on the side of the stage and catch up with members of Lamb of God and Killswitch Engage and their crew.
Five days later would be the first show of the first official North American tour since 1999 for Mercyful Fate! (they did headline Psycho Festival in Las Vegas in August, but that was not part of an actual tour) One day after the amazing time spent at Lamb of God, and four days before this show, Fate’s management company sent the following text message that turned this trip into a whole next level of awesomeness…
The Factory in Deep Ellum (previously Bomb Factory) is in a hip entertainment district in Dallas called Deep Ellum. There are numerous bars, restaurants, taco shops, BBQ joints, and music venues inside of a roughly five-block by three-block area.
Anticipation for this show is now amped up to the highest degree… and just like that, we get whisked in the back door, given a few ground rules of where not to go (King Diamond’s dressing room, duh!), and sent off to do what we do best. This place looked small from the outside but once we went onto the venue floor for the first time, it was easy to see that this place could hold nearly as many people as The Pavilion!
King Diamond and guitar player Hank Shermann, the two principal members of Mercyful Fate, were firing on all cylinders. King’s voice sounded as great as it always has. Even if Mercyful Fate hasn’t performed in 20+ years, King has done numerous solo tours in that timeframe, and he’s kept those vocal cords in great shape to hit the high notes that he still can hit.
The rest of the band was great, too — guitar player Mike Wead, fill-in bass player Becky Baldwin, and drummer Bjarne T. Holm, all three of who weren’t even in the band when these songs were written and recorded — they all played their parts perfectly. Every song performed was written and released in or before 1984, with the exception of one new song called The Jackal of Salzburg, which is expected to be released in 2023.
There was absolutely nothing happening backstage other than a random assortment of guests milling about (Brian Slagel, the founder, and CEO of Metal Blade Records, was spotted!). Still, it was necessary to commandeer one of the production offices during the show to quickly select and edit a handful of photos for them to use right away. This was perhaps the only downside to being allowed to shoot the whole show, as it caused us to miss a couple of songs from the short eleven-song setlist. That was such a minor thing; it was an honor to be asked!
Click on any photo below for a slideshow of full-size images of Mercyful Fate.
Most of Kreator’s set focused on their mid-2010 albums, except one new song. It would have been nice to hear the late-80s Extreme Aggression, Betrayer, Coma of Souls, People of the Lie, but they had only a 40-minute set. The final two songs did bring it all back to the beginning, back to 1985 and 1986, and set the tone as a perfect precursor to the headliner, as it put everyone in the mindset of mid-80s metal, which, as mentioned, made up 90% of Mercyful Fate’s set.
Midnight, a Venom-influenced black/speed metal band from Cleveland, opened the show.
Click on any photo below for a slideshow of full-size images of Kreator and Midnight.
See more photos of all of your favorite Metal musicians at Alan Ralph‘s photo portfolio.
