Thrash metal royalty made their Victoria debuts Sunday.
Megadeth launched their farewell tour with a sold out show at Save-On-Foods Memorial Centre. Frontman Dave Mustaine is planning to retire after more than four decades with Megadeth. It took forty plus years for the legendary band to come to Vancouver Island and local metal heads were beyond ready for it.
Lines were long before gates opened and were just as long to buy the band’s $70 t-shirts. It’s not often the local metal community gets a show of this caliber in our backyard and they made a solid statement that this city should get more.
Megadeth’s performance was scheduled to begin at 9:20pm, but ended up starting just after 9:30.
The band opened their show with ‘Tipping Point’, the lead single of their new self-titled album after a massive white sheet blocking the entire front of the stage during the intermission dropped to the floor. The 17-song set would include only one other song off that farewell record.
At a few points in the set Mustaine and his fellow guitarists left the stage for short breaks to swap guitars. It made for a couple awkward lulls with the capacity crowd being oddly quiet.
Mustaine was also quite soft spoken when talking to the audience between songs which was quite a contrast to the how hard the band performed. He mostly used the time to thank the audience for coming and briefly describing what the next song was about.
The main part of the set ended with ‘Peace Sells’ and had a guest appearance by Megadeth’s suit wearing mascot Vic Rattlehead.
After the encore break Mustaine calmly quipped, “Thank you so much. Listen, we have a curfew here tonight in the building. It’s not my idea of a good time, but we’ve only got six minutes left and and this song is a little over seven so we’re going to play it fast.” Megadeth then closed the show with ‘Holy Wars… The Punishment Due’
At the very end, Mustaine walked along the stage and stood looking at the adoring audience and taking in the final cheers of the show.
Also making their Victoria debut Sunday night was a another member of thrash metal’s “Big 4″… Anthrax.
Anthrax were very happy to be in Canada. “I can’t tell you literally what a breath of fresh air it is for us to be in Canada. Thank you!” exclaimed guitarist Scott Ian to the capacity crowd. “We get to drink your whisky and we like our whisky neat with no tariffs.”
Ian later told all of the audience members sitting in seats to get on their feet for their final song of their nine-song set ‘Indians’.
Lead singer initiated a singing of ‘O Canada’ at the end of their set before Scott Ian got in one last word to announce that Anthrax will have new music coming out this year.
Opening the night was Exodus. They were the one band that has been in the capital city before having opened for Rob Zombie and Slayer in 2011.
Their performance felt the most aggressive of the three bands Sunday night. The circle pit in the general admission area looked to be the most rowdy for them.
With that in mind, I actually found their set to be the most entertaining of the night and their set was only six songs. One reason was lead singer Rob Dukes’ interaction with his bandmates on stage that included a moment where he walked over guitarist Gary Holt to hand him a beer and while Holt drank the beer with one hand he continued to move his fingers on his other hand on the frets while Dukes picked and strummed the notes.
The tour will stop at 11 more city’s across Canada starting with Abbotsford Tuesday night.
