Priest Feast Report

3 legendary heavy weights of metal each with their own style descended upon us last night to bring a night of pure heavy metal to the masses. The Wembley Arena holds 12,000 apparently and it's hard to say how full it was but I would say 3/4 so not a bad attendance. Apparently some of the earlier shows have been less well attended.

Testament were good but not great. I think they do better in club shows and hence I am going to see them again on the 25th of March on their own headline show where they will play the first 2 albums back to back. the sound for them was not too good. Best songs were New Order and Practice what you Preach. The Formation of Damnation songs they played didn't sound too good at all.

I lost my reasnably close position for Testament through having to take a call of nature break and on my return I could not get as close as I wanted and was previously for Testament. Megadeth absolutely killed hard. Though I would say that wouldn't I being a huge 'deth head. This was their set list. This was I think either my 6th or 7th time seeing the mighty 'deth. Their sound was miraculsously improved compared to Testament. Well actually it still sucked a bit on the first song but sonn got much better and crystal clear. The only problem is why do they turn the bass up so loud on gigs so that you can hear it pounding in your chest? Is this somehow supposed to make it better and more lively?

Anyway Megadeth were awesome. They are just a well oiled machine although I heard some people were moaning that they don't like their stage manner. Can't pleae every body. me and the people round me were pretty delirious singing along to all our fave deth tunes so we could care less what anyone else thinks!

01. Sleepwalker
02. Take No Prisoners
03. Wake Up Dead
04. Skin O' My Teeth
05. Washington Is Next
06. In My Darkest Hour
07. Hangar 18
08. Tornado of Souls
09. Symphony of Destruction
10. Peace Sells
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11. Holy Wars

This is my first time seeing Priest but not my first seeing Halford. Saw him with his solo band in '99 just after Resurrection came out. By the way Halford was awesome that night and 10 years later old Rob has changed much and not for the better. However having said that I am not a massive Priesthead anyway. I like Painkiller the album, who doesn't but it's the only priest CD I own and that ain't gonna change any time soon. Still this was a rather large event and worth to see some good old British Heavy Metal at it's best. Well Rob has a demeanour of an old man around the stage with his lumbering movements but he's not quite as bad as some of the reviews would have you believe. Sure he's a bit clunky and robotic but he actually looks quite cool.

By the way for the Priest set I found myself only 5 rows from the front which was pretty cool. The rest of the guys played well although they all looked pretty old as well and age has caught up with those guys as well as Rob. Still they don't have to sing and remember words do they!

To be honest I was pretty well impressed with Priest. They put on a good show. Not sure how much more they have left them though as the tank is running dry. The live Maiden experience is totally different than the Priest one for example. The Priest one feels OLD in every respect whilst the Maiden one still has this youthful energy although age is catching up with them as well, they hide it much better than Priest do. The sound for Priest was good but some times far far too much bass and drums again. In the song Painkiller Rob was doing his bending over thing and absolutely screaming his lungs out and all I could was drums and bass bashing into my chest. There were some great songs like Leather rebel with Rob in full leather gear atop a Motorbike at the start.

Of course some new songs were played and they sound much better than the damp squib of a production on the actual CD which has one of the weakest guitar sounds I've ever heard a big band get. They did not play Nostradamus title track which amazes me to be honest. I think that track would go down a storm live and be given real power with it's big hooky chorus. Between the Hammer and the Anvil was good but it took me until the chorus to actually recognise it! Dissident Aggressor was pretty great I though but the best song was Hell bent for Leather. The ballad Angel was sung briliently by Rob even though I don't like the song I admit when the man sings it perfectly. They missed a lot of classics. No Victim of changes, Beyond the realms of death, living after midnight, diamonds in the rust etc. Overall an enjoyable night for metalheads in London.

01. Intro: Dawn of Creation 02. Prophecy 03. Metal Gods 04. Eat Me Alive 05. Between the Hammer and the Anvil 06. Devil's Child 07. Breaking the Law 08. Hell Patrol 09. Death 10. Dissident Aggressor 11. Angel 12. The Hellion Electric Eye 13. Rock Hard, Ride Free 14. Sinner 15. Painkiller 16. Hell Bent for Leather 17. The Green Manalishi 18. You've got another thing coming