St. Petter, or perhaps SAMHEIM, gave that great little help and the storm everybody was expecting didn´t happen in São Paulo, known also as “the soft rain land”.
This Exodus and Kreator tour had been going on for months, and as advertised by both bands, the tour closure would be in São Paulo.
The concert hall was crowded and became almost literally the St. Francisco Bay Area, CA in Brazil.
EXODUS
The SF Bay Area renegade and deprecated band Exodus showed that they are still kicking the asses of many Grammy winners who are still trying to make metal around (if you know what I mean). An Exodus concert would never be the same if they didn´t start it with the absolute timeless classic “Bonded by Blood”. Have you ever imagined a Rolling Stones concert starting with ... “Angie”? No! You want “Satisfaction”, “Jumping Jack Flash” or something related, at least. And this is exactly what they did!
Vocalist Rob Dukes - whom nobody would say has been in the band for only 5 years but for at least two decades - can´t stop being charismatic, encouraging moshes and moshpits doing round movements with the forefinger up.
And who said the audience wanted to be quiet? I had the intention of filming and taking pictures, so, to me it was just like hell, impossible! Well, I have to say that for several moments I wished to be there with that thrasher mass, but...you know...the older, the wiser XD...oh , my 17´s...
Gary Holt doesn´t have to be introduced, but well, I have to say something...HE IS A FATHER, father of a style, and has been on the road for at least a quarter of century. Great guitar tone, amazing to see, specially for a warm-up band, even though it´s Exodus. He was paired with the great Lee Altus (“just” the founder of another wronged band, Heathen), I even dare to say that I dind´t miss Rick Hunolt (at least I saw him in 2004).
Bass player Jack Gibson had been in the band for a long time and is also a very good musician, he holds the concert fine, has a good stage presence, encourages the audience to bang their heads, and Tom Hunting... for the love of any cosmic entity, what is Tom Hunting? The guy knows how incredible his drumming work with the band is, he knows it so much that he had left the band at least 3 times but always comes back. Exodus without Tom Hunting is not Exodus AT ALL.
After the already mentioned “Bonded by Blood”, “Iconoclasm”, a new “classic”. Actually, the new trilogy: “Tempo of the Damned” , “Shovel Headed Kill Machine”, “The Atrocity Exhibition... Exhibit A”, is commonly considered as the new “big three” with “Bonded by Blood, Pleasures of the Flesh and Fabulous Disaster” from the 80´s. Besides those new sonic torpedoes, there were great classic songs such as “Lesson in Violence”, “Piranha” (if they don´t play this one we will get on stage and do it!).
After an hour of concert, Exodus guys started to give autographs to all those who were in front of the stage, they signed tickets, vinyl record covers, CD covers, took pictures, were nice and kind making everybody forget the apocalypse before Halloween they were doing minutes before. Exodus went far form the majors corporatism, egocentrism, arrogance, etc. It´s a band from the people and to the people.
ALWAYS COME BACK, PLEASE!
Paul Ballof, R.I.P. always missed, never forgotten , bro.
KREATOR
After the ACME big box which had fallen over our heads during Exodus concert, half an hour was enough to make us ready for another “kicking in the face” section: the masters of the German Thrash: Kreator, led by the not less charismatic Miland “Mille” Petrozza (half Italian, half German).
Besides the band´s FÜHRER (since he is the boss), the team is complete with Sami Yli-Sirniö (also on the guitar), Christian Giesler on the bass and...well, I was expecting to see the “Kreator´s Tom Hunting” - since He comes and goes the same way Mr. Hunting does in Exodus - the no less famous: Jürgen”Ventor” Reil, the band´s co-founder... but then who I saw was a guy with an “almost no metal” face, playing on a sumptuous DW drum (“a little bargain” for those who understand the subject), with all ton positions inverted, the low-high coming from the the right to the left, the floor ton on the left, besides two more on the right. To be continued...
The concert started with the tittle track from the new album, “Hordes of Chaos”, and I confess, in the condition of not a big Kreator´s fan, until half of the concert, when more classics were played such as “Extreme Aggression” and the title tracks of two other great albums: “Enemy of God” and “Violent Revolution”, everything was a little cold. But when they played those songs the place started to really be on fire!
Petrozza was very smart not giving much attention to the 4 albums from the 90´s, which are not very much into the German thrash atmosphere that has devoted the band, but kind of flirt with the goth and industrial metal. I have nothing particular against these styles but it´s a fact that they are not very welcome by the majority of the band´s fans.
From the last third of the concert to the end everything was perfect with non stop moshpits and “Mille, the German”, equally encouraging it with the forefinger going round and round. To finish the concert, since there is always a comeback, the drummer came back! Skinny, short hair, nerd face, and MY GOD...
He deserves an entire paragraph ´cause in 6 minutes he was able to do what I will never be ´till the rest of my life behind a drumkit. I was questioning WHO THE HELL WAS THAT GUY, highly influenced by other German drummers who are extremely technical, such as Marco Minnemann e Thomas Lang (both live in USA nowadays), but I must say that this guy had just swallowed ALL video clinics those guys might have done in their lives...
Yes, I kept it on my mind ´till the moment I had the click! I was watching right in front of me: the man!!! THAT GUY WAS MR. MARCO MINNEMANN! He was there! Giving a hand to the German brother subbing for Vetor (I don´t know why he didn´t come).
It was possible to notice that he wasn´t very relaxed doing that since he probably had only a few days to learn the songs, bridges , maps, pauses, whatever!
Who plays the drums knows that playing well is not a synonym to play solos in all songs, fill everything up with lots of notes, cymbals and etc., cause overplaying can destroy the song´s context. In Jack Johnson´s band we don´t need a prog metal drummer, and probably his drummer won´t do at least 1/10000 Mike Portnoy does, for example, but even so it´s art in two different ways of expression. In this subject “my friend Marco” got a little “scrambled”. And when I say a little I REALLY mean it cause such a drummer would never mess things up. Those 6 minutes of solo got me to the conclusion that I should stop doing everything I do in my life and study A LOT if I intend to get close to, at least, this man´s finger nail. OK, enough! I have apple polished him too much...
In the real comeback they played as a medley two great songs: “Flag of Hate” and “Tormentor”. I got astonished, specially because I paid to see two concerts but in fact I saw 3: Exodus, Kreator and Marco Minnemann ( OK, more ass kissing here...)
In my humble opinion all Halloweens should be like this one.
