\m/
Last night's Testament show was awesome!
I hadn't been out to The Pearl Room before, but it's a pretty great venue. While the floor in front of the stage was packed cheek-by-jowl with people in black T-shirts, there's also a catwalk that was much less crowded and provided a better view, although I didn't discover that it was open to everybody until there were only three songs left in the set. Parking was also not a problem, because the place is in a massive strip mall that's right next to an industrial park, with streetside parking stretching back for half a mile or more.
Since I'd researched the opening acts on YouTube and MySpace earlier in the day and discovered they weren't really worth the extra time on my feet I'd have to spend to see them, I left about 9:30 and arrived in the middle of Testament's sound check. The drive out is also almost ludicrously simple from my house: 355 south to I-80 east accounts for 95% of the trip, and the venue is basically right off the interstate.
The one sour note of the evening was this: ten minutes before the first note of music was even played, a pretty full 16 oz. cup of beer came soaring over the crowd and crashed right into my chest. Even that wasn't so bad, because I reflected that a) at least it didn't hit me in the face, and b) I wasn't the one who had just wasted seven bucks.
Testament played a great set, and resisted the temptation so many bands have to play 3/4 of their new album and only pull out the classics when the crowd starts to get restless. (I'm looking at you, Clutch!) I'd say a good 80% of the setlist was pre-1995 stuff, and the crowd loved it. Chuck Billy still has great pipes, even after adding twenty years, thirty pounds, and being (successfully) treated for cancer. And Alex Skolnick, rejoining his first-ever band after an absence of 16 years, fucking shredded.
All of which is to say that the Metal Masters tour in August is going to be incredible!
--- Ajax.
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
ajax) wrote,
pleased
