Great season of great legends!
The Cult – 30th Anniversary of Sonic Temple – May 9th – House of Blues – Dallas, TX
In celebration of the 30th anniversary of its “Sonic Temple” album The Cult kicked off a special tour this week by playing the album in it’s entiriety.
Some of these songs had not been performed since the album (their fourth) was originally released in 1989.
A pivotal, game-changing album that brought together the alternative and hard rock audiences — will be reissued in a 30th-anniversary edition by Beggars Banquet Records.
I always make a point to see The Cult every tour even though that attention is only deserved residually. I actually saw the original Sonic Temple tour when they opened for Metallica that year and in 1994 they played one of the best shows I’ve ever seen still to this day. That alone still gets me through the door every year but once I’m there I quickly remember the problem. Singer Ian Astbury has to be one of the most naturally irritating & just zero self-aware frontmen in history. I really don’t know when that started but it was probably around 1996 when he put out his solo record and I saw him drunkenly stumble through a disastorus set in the parking lot of Trees that ended with him falling off the stage,
Since then The Cult stock has continued to lower, with again Astbury at the center of the problem. Openly criticizing band members on stage and the audience & talking non-stop about God-Knows-What between songs has just killed this band.
Still the chance to hear American Horse live proved to be irristible & thankfully this time Astbury was on better behavior but not enough. Also he can’t really sing these songs anymore and you can’t recognize half of them until the chorus hits. However, I wasn’t alone as the was the most packed I’ve seen the building in a long time & certainly the biggest turn out in this city for this band since Sonic Temple was first released.
Setlist:
Sonic Temple set
Sun King
New York City
Automatic Blues
Sweet Soul Sister
American Horse
Soul Asylum (performed for first time since 1989)
Edie (Ciao Baby)
Fire Woman
Lucifer
American Gothic
Rise
Spiritwalker
The Phoenix
She Sells Sanctuary
Encore:
Saints Are Down
Rain
Love Removal Machine
Judas Priest – May 31st – The Bomb Factory – Dallas, TX
When your band is 50 years old, the easiest way to please a crowd is to just play a string of hits, decade by decade, inking the obvious checkboxes. The harder way is to roll out deeper cuts and knock it out of the park with your new songs — music that’s going to feel fresher to you than something you wrote in the early ’80s that you’ve sung thousands of times.
This was the higher path Judas Priest chose for this new leg of their Firepower tour supporting their kickass LP of the same name released last year.
Not that Priest strayed from the golden catalogue – Legendary frontman, the Metal God himself Rob Halford, in various evolutionary stages of biker gear along with bassist Ian Hill, guitarist Richie Faulkner, the lanky Scott Travis on drums and touring guitarist Andy Sneap, proving his voice can still shatter eardrums as one of the most recognizable sounds in the history of heavy metal.
Waving his mic around, draped in black, Halford stood in front of a Ptolemaic god rising from a field of flame during 2005’s thrashy Judas Rising, subbing in for Painkiller speed and energy-wise.
After more of a brief pause than an encore break the hit-hopers got their fix as Halford rode out on a fat Harley and sang 1978’s Hell Bent for Leather.
Total singalong time for 1980’s Breaking the Law, yeah they did, the finale being Living After Midnight, Halford appropriately singing, “I’m gone!”
Setlist
Necromancer
Heading Out to the Highway
The Sentinel
Spectre
(Take These) Chains
Judas Rising
Out in the Cold
Traitors Gate
Starbreaker
Steeler
Halls of Valhalla
Tyrant
No Surrender
Victim of Changes
All Guns Blazing
Encore:
Hell Bent for Leather
Breaking the Law
Living After Midnight
Photos –
Roy Turner
Jim Louvau
