The Metal Files

Mercyful Fate played Dallas on the opening night of their current tour a couple of weeks ago and unfortunately work got in the way. Things loosened up a bit and I decided to catch the final show of the tour in Atlanta and I’m glad I did.

I’d seen enough clips from the tour to see that King was on his game, especially for a 66 year old. On recent King Diamond tours he’d been using a female backup singer to help with the higher notes but apparently she wasn’t needed for this.

After an hour or so delay leaving Austin, we’re off to Atlanta on an east flight. A quick walk to the MARTA rail and I was off to my hotel which was a block off of the rail stop and a block from the venue. Perfect.

Doors were at 6 and around 5 I grabbed dinner at a little steakhouse between the venue and hotel. The burger was meh but the asparagus was good.

Once collecting my ticket at will call, I went straight into The Tabernacle. It’s an old church that’s been converted into a music venue. This place was great. I went downstairs to the basement to glance at the merch and grab a drink. The line was long so I went back upstairs to see Midnight.

The room sounded great and Midnight put on another great show. I’ve seen them a few times this year already with the last time being the night before the Fate tour started. No surprises.

Kreator was up next. I’m not a huge fan in general and only watched their last few songs. During their set I met up with some old friends and jumped in the merch line to hang out.

After Kreator finished, I moved up a little closer and waited for Fate to come on. They opened with The Oath and Corpse Without Soul and sounded fantastic. Their new single, The Jackal of Salzburg, was next. It was ok but I’d definitely need some more listens. The rest of the set never went past Don’t Break the Oath and they never deviated from the same list for the whole short tour. It would have been cool to hear some stuff from In the Shadows but oh well. The band was fantastic, too. Of course Hank Shermann and Mike Wead are beastly guitarists and fill-in bassist Becky was fantastic. My only issue was with the drummer. The dude is a total badass but was not doing some of the cool Kim Ruzz licks that I feel are signature things on those old Fate songs. No matter, I thoroughly enjoyed the set.

After the show I hung out with the Midnight guys. We went backstage for a “dummy check” to make sure they had all of their stuff and as we were leaving, I got scolded by Fate’s security for being back there without a pass. We were already on our way out, relax Ricky.

Rodney, Midnight’s road dog and merch guy, was staying in the same hotel so we went back and snoozed for a few hours before meeting up on the lobby at 5AM. Ugh. We both had 8AM flights. We jumped on the train and headed to the airport where I am writing this from. It was busy but we got through pretty quickly.

It was a short but great trip with no regrets. If/when Fate tours again, go. You won’t be disappointed.

As you may have seen and heard, WASP didn’t play. I’ll get to that later.

When this tour was announced, I had 2 viable options to see it…San Antonio and Dallas. My friend Lisa and I decided that we wanted to do the Dallas show so I grabbed tickets for us.
I’ve seen both Armored Saint and Schenker several times in recent years but haven’t seen WASP since 2000 at Jaxx in Springfield, VA. That was an awful show as Blackie was lip synching the whole time and all bass and rhythm guitars were canned. It really left a bad impression. Prior to that show I had only seen the Crimson Idol tour, which was incredible. I was super excited to catch them this time and the setlist looked good, although doing medleys is annoying to me.

On the day of the show a group of us headed up to Dallas for the easy ride and got checked into our hotel. We had a view of the venue and saw that a huge line had already been forming. We had VIP balcony tickets so I didn’t worry too much about trying to wait in that line.
Around 7 we walked over and got right in and went upstairs. While it wasn’t packed up there at all, we determined pretty quickly that if you didn’t have a spot right on the rail, you were going to be able to see anything…NOTHING. Ugh. Worst sight lines ever.

We squeezed Lisa into a spot so she could see and I just hung back and listened to the Armored Saint deliver another quality show. They are so fucking good.

Schenker was up next and as expected, he was great. He’s in his 67 and still shreds. The singer and the band were perfect. During Schenker’s set, I saw a Fire Marshall walk through the balcony with a counter in his hand. The downstairs area in front of the stage and the side patio areas were packed in like sardines. No question in my mind that they had oversold and seeing the Fire Marshall there confirmed that. In my head I thought that we’d not see WAS, but I wanted to stay positive.

While waiting for WASP to come on, Armored Saint’s Jeff Duncan strolled the balcony and seemed to try to be a bit incognito. As he passed by me, I said, “Got a minute to say hello to an old friend?” He smiled and hung out with me and another of his friends from the 80s for a bit. As we were standing there, he got a text from someone in Armored Saint that said, “WASP isn’t playing. Over capacity.” He quickly said his goodbyes and headed back to the backstage area as he didn’t want to get caught up in the mess that was about to happen.

It was getting to be 11PM at this point and being an outside venue, I figured there was a 12PM curfew on shows. No way were they going to get on and play a shortened set. Then all of the lights came on and an announcement came on through the PA. People were understandably livid and disappointed. They said we’d receive full refunds but I have my doubts.
The venue had also been selling $10 tickets leading up to the show and just recently started charging for parking. Sounds like they were trying to make up the deficit of booking an expensive show in contrast to the ticket prices and capacity. The promoter, the venue and WASP all have a responsibility in this. Based on the other much larger venues they had been booked in, this place was far too small to handle such a show. Not that it really matters, but I can’t see myself ever attending another show there. I heard a ton of horror stories about that place that night and it all made sense.

We were all pretty disappointed but life goes on. Lisa and I are considering flying out to another show on the tour as we both really want to see WASP. We just went back to the hotel, had a couple of drinks, some pizza and played some dice games for the rest of the night. Overall it was a great trip with great friends, but it could’ve been just a bit better. Fuck that venue in general.