Archive for the ‘san antonio’ Category
Striker & Spellcaster Concert Review, San Antonio, TX, May 20, 2015
Striker, Spellcaster and Weresquatch rolled through San Antonio Friday night. I had just seen Spellcaster in Chicago at Ragnarokkr and couldn’t really get into the 2 songs I saw after getting blown away by Old Wolf.
We arrived with about 2 songs left from Weresquatch but I didn’t hear anything from them that made me care.
Spellcaster’s main man, Cory, found me before the show. Great dude. Spellcaster went on shortly after and were just great. Super solid, good stage presence and good players. Unfortunately the sound in the Korova basement leaves a lot to be desired as does the lighting. Overall it didn’t matter. Spellcaster rocked the crowd of 40 or so and I look forward to seeing them again at Frost and Fire II in October. The 3 songs from their new album, Night Hides the World, sounded great, especially the title track.
Striker headlined and I had only listened to some of their stuff a few days prior to the show. Good solid stuff that translated well live. My favorite part of seeing them was their great 3-part vocal harmonies. Much of the crowd had left during their set and admittedly I spent a lot of time talking with my drummer outside. I’d definitely like to catch them again.
Catch the tour if you can.
Night Demon & Visigoth Concert Review,San Antonio, TX, April 11, 2016
This is a busy week for shows and I’m a little further behind in my reviews, so trying to catch them all up today.
Night Demon and Visigoth have teamed up for a North American tour and booked some Texas dates. Per usual when Night Demon is in town, I put them up at my place and Visigoth got shared space as well. I didn’t originally plan on hitting the San Antonio show but last minute decided to drive down to Korova for the show. On the way there I was notified that it would be an early show since the venue neglected to find an opening band. Typically in San Antonio, these shows would have a handful of openers.
Rodney, Leanne and I enjoyed a great dinner at The Palm before heading over to Korova. When we walked in, the place was practically dead. The show was in the basement and I don’t think more than 25 total people were there. Didn’t help that it was a Monday night, but still, that’s pretty week. At least if there were some local openers, it would have likely provided some additional promotion.
The singer and bassist for Visigoth have been pretty sick with some sort of flu-ish type bug but once hitting the stage, Jake put on a powerful vocal performance to the tiny crowd. This was only the second date with the touring lineup as the main drummer and lead players for Visigoth were unable to make the tour. While not perfect, they put on a great show all things considered and the few of us that were there were into it. The sound in the basement was pretty awful, too, but they made do. Of their short set, Iron Brotherhood is my favorite.
Night Demon came on and played like there was a packed crowd. They’re already touring veterans and didn’t let up just because no one was there. They opened with Ritual and their version of Riot’s Road Racin’. Want to make friends in San Antonio? Play a Riot song. The band was tight and played all of their 2015 release Curse of the Damned and 4 tracks from their debut EP. Solid set.
After the show I needed to get back home and try to get some sleep as I was going to do this all over again at the Austin show.
UFO Concert Review, San Antonio, TX, March 12, 2016
I’m not going to lie, I haven’t been a lifelong UFO fan. In fact, and it’s been mentioned here before, I didn’t become a fan until 1997. I know of them, knew a few songs here and there mainly from metal bands covering songs of theirs (Fifth Angel anyone?), but it wasn’t until a colleague through work gave me his pristine record collection that I truly became aware of UFO, MSG and Uli era Scorpions. That’s not very long overall, especially seeing how popular that stuff is here in Texas thanks to former San Antonio DJ Joe Anthony. None of that was ever on the radio in Virginia although I do have to say that Steve from Skinnies Records in Norfolk always recommended that stuff since I had first met him in 87. I just didn’t listen. haha.
That being said, I dig UFO now and am glad to have had the opportunity to see them last night. This isn’t your father’s UFO as many members have come and gone over the years. Several friends said they weren’t going because neither Schenker nor Pete Way were in the band. Fair enough, everyone needs their reasons I guess. More so than the guitar playing, it was Mogg’s vocals that drew me to them and with him still in the band, I was in.
I got to the north side of San Antonio to Rodney’s place to immediately head downtown to grab dinner and show some friends from Mexico City the Alamo. Our other friends from Corpus were there as well. They all went to Dallas the night before to see UFO. We snapped a few fotos at the Alamo, grabbed a drink on the Riverwalk then headed over to the Alamo Music Hall. There was only one opener and UFO was scheduled to go on at 9PM.
I grabbed a tour shirt and we stayed out on the patio during the opener. UFO went on promptly at 9 to a crowd that seemed like 700 or better. Their taped intro was Alex Harvey’s Faith Healer, a song that I love thanks to Foetus covering it. I’m pretty sure most folks there didn’t recognize the song. They opened with We Belong to the Night from 1982’s Mechanix album. They followed up with a song from 2012’s Seven Deadly album called Fight Night. The band didn’t shy away from newer stuff playing 2 from their latest effort, A Conspiracy of Stars, another from Seven Deadly and one from 1995’s awesome album, Walk on Water.
Highlights for me were Lights Out, Love to Love, Too Hot to Handle (not played that often so far on this tour), Venus and Rock Bottom. The only lowlight would be the sound in the venue. I thought with it being pretty filled that it may sound better but that just wasn’t the case. I like the venue and the staff but the sound in there is just awful. Roc Box (formerly Kapone’s) has it dialed in pretty well.
I’ve heard people bitch and moan about Vinnie Moore being in the band. What? That guy is great and does a great job. Other non-classic era bassist, Rob De Luca f. of Spread Eagle is also in the band. He’s been in since 2008. Rounding out the lineup were Andy Parker, Paul Raymond and the incomparable Phil Mogg. He’s 67 and his voice sounded great. I was pleasantly surprised. The band was tight and played everything at a good moderate pace. Andy’s drumming was solid and he had no issues rocking the set.
Of course I brought The Book with me. The band wasn’t set to do a meet and greet so I had to hope for them to come out after. Unfortunately on Rob de Luca came out. The plus side to that was that my friend Christie was there and she’s friends with him. Through that connection, Rob graciously walked me to the band’s green room, offered me a Peroni and introduced me to Paul and Andy who both signed the book. I caught Vinnie Moore in the hallway and he was super cool. Phil wasn’t anywhere to be seen and then from another room he popped out with travel bags in both hands. He looked at me, the book, then back at me and said, “I’ll sign it after I drop this off on the bus.” I offered to help carry his stuff and he responded, “That’s nice of you but I’ve got it. And you know, I better sign this now because I likely won’t come back off of the bus.” I thanked him for his time and for his music. He made a funny crack about the picture of him and thanked me again for offering to carry his stuff. I think that may have been the only thing he signed after the show. SCORE! I owe Christie big time for that hookup.
After the show, we hit IHOP then back to Rodney’s and listened to records until the wee hours of the morning. After 2 hours of sleep I got up and drove home. What a great night!
Uli Roth, Jennifer Batten & Andy Timmons Concert Review, San Antonio, TX, March 5, 2016
Uli! Still one of the best alive. I had bought the meet and greet pass a few weeks ago mainly to get Jennifer Batten in The Book. I’ve met Uli in the past and had him sign it in 2004. Great guy. I got lucky that Batten was out on the patio for a few minutes prior to the show and graciously signed the book. “What’s this?” I explained it a bit and showed her the band that she was in. “Whoa. That was a short-lived time in that band.” After that I was able to put the book back in my car and not have to lug it around for the night. Sweet! I gave my pass to a buddy.
Prior to Andy Timmons’ set, David Klosinki from Uli’s band got up and played one song, likely from his solo album. It was a shredder. That guy is a pure bad ass.
Andy got on stage and played over backing tracks. It was my first time seeing him and he’s pretty good although not anyone I’d really like to see again.
Jennifer came on playing to backing tracks as well with choreographed video. In case you didn’t know, she toured with Michael Jackson for years and did a few years with Jeff Beck. Her set was enjoyable. She’s obviously a good player. She did one song called Cat Fight and prior to playing it pretty much stated that she was a crazy cat lady. haha.
Uli hits the stage with a bigger band than last time as he’s added a third guitarist. Unnecessary in my opinion, but whatever. They opened up with Scorpions’ All Night Long and Sails of Charon. The set consisted mostly of classic Scorpions and 2 from his solo work. We left as the encore was starting. It was all Hendrix stuff and apparently they did an instrumental version of Gary Moore’s Still Got the Blues. For a set that only consisted of 12 songs, it ran almost 2 hours.
His band was fantastic and John West’s vocals were outstanding. The third guitarist provided some great backing vocals and sang lead on Fly to the Rainbow.
The sound sucked for Uli, though. Korova doesn’t have great sound to start with but Uli’s personal sound guy didn’t help things. Everything was far too loud for that room. The only time it sounded good was when I went close to the front.
The only other issue was with ticketing. Why offer digital tickets if they’re not accepted at the door? Even when the door guy has the list of everyone who bought a ticket. I was directed to go across the street to the hotel and print it out. It caused a lot of problems. I’ll know better for that venue.
Anyway, I bought an Uli Earthquake shirt and the Scorpions Revisited CD and they gave me an Uli Roth record bag. Anyone want it? The actual Uli tour shirt looked horrible although it had tour dates on it.
Venom Inc, Necrophagia Concert Review, San Antonio, TX, January 27, 2016
I’m not shy about how I feel about Venom. In general, I can’t care about their classic era. My three favorite albums are Calm Before the Storm, Prime Evil and Temples of Ice. Even knowing that they were playing only one song from the Demolition Man era, I wanted to go. It’s a legendary metal band that I’ve never seen before. Plus I knew I’d get them in The Book.
Before the show, Rodney, his friends and I all had dinner with Venom’s tour manager, John Perez, who was in Rotting Corpse and more importantly for me, Solitude Aeturnus. John’s a good guy all around and I always love seeing him. He and Rodney were trading some pretty incredible stories about Texas metal history.
Opening the show was Hellknife which features fellow ex-Eternal Champion member, Van Darden. As with a few other times, I missed them again. DAMMIT!
San Antonio’s Hod was up next. I’ve seen them a dozen times over the years. Hod is Hod. You know what you’re getting and what you’re not getting. My buddy Jake is playing bass for their live shows these days, so it’s always great seeing that maniac on stage.
Necrophagia was up next. I never liked them but one of my closest friends was always big into them, so I grabbed a shirt for him since he missed the Virginia show. They were solid and Killjoy works the crowd pretty well. Still not a fan, though.
Up next was Venom and the crowd of about 200 packed up closer to the stage. My back has been jacked up for a while, so getting in a crowd that surely was going to be moving around a lot wasn’t appealing, so I hung back and sat at the bar. Killjoy was standing back there next to me and I had him sign The Book.
Venom (Inc), opened with Prime Evil and for the rest of the set they stuck with songs primarily from Black Metal and Welcome to Hell. I didn’t know any of them other than by knowing the titles. Tony Dolan, The Demolition Man, did a fine job fronting and Mantas and Abaddon were as I expected. It was an enjoyable show and when they got to the encore, I knew all of those songs…Black Metal, Welcome to Hell, Countess Bathory and Witching Hour.
After the show, Abaddon came out and signed stuff for everyone. Outside at their tour bus, Tony and Mantas came out and signed stuff. They’re all really nice guys.
Added bonus of getting Louie from Devastation’s signature in the book as well. I love getting the rogue signatures at concerts. Great to see a lot of Austin friends and the Corpus Christi crew hanging out!
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- Louie in The Book!
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- Abaddon in my fave Venom CD
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- Venom in The Book!
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- Killjoy from Necrophagia in The Book! Too bad he signed over the wrong Necrophagia
The Metal Files 
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