Performing: Skid Row, Dead City Ruins, The Morning
Location: Udine / Pala Cus / Italy
Concert date: Sunday, 1 December 2013
The last show of the current Skid Row tour brought the legendary American glam metallers to Udine, Italy. The package also came with Australian bad-boy rockers Dead City Ruins, and for this night only, local Friulian band The Morning were announced as the first opener. The final day of the tour, then! Sadly, we had to skip the first band this time around. There was just no other way!
A little before nine in the evening, we were already staring impatiently at the stage of Udine’s Palacus sports hall, waiting for Australians Dead City Ruins from Melbourne. The feisty five-piece instantly exploded all over the stage, and they clearly loved all that space. There was running and tearing around galore in the good half hour of a set from a band that presented itself as a tough successor to an interesting stew of traditionally trained rock ‘n’ roll riffs inherited from Rose Tattoo and AC/DC, with pronounced blues and southern rock turns, and even bits of the NWOBHM school thrown in. Dead Citiy Ruins are definitely a band that knows how to get noticed in the future. A polished, confident stage show with no brakes and no inhibitions, backed by the quintet’s excellent tightness and full-blooded looseness, made for a more than entertaining warm-up!
Last April, instead of a new album, Skid Row put out a new EP titled »United World Rebellion: Chapeter One«. Judging by the title, there will be more of these EPs to come. And it’s been old news for more than ten years now that Sebastian Bach is no longer the band’s singer. Today’s Skid Row have three original faces who appear on their cult studio albums from the turn of the eighties into the nineties: guitarists Scotti Hill and Dave »Snake« Sabo, and bassist Rachel Bolan. Jerry Sollinger remains a confident vocal presence that the rest of the crew trust 100%, and since 2011 Skid Row also have a new drummer, named Rob Hammersmith.
The band walked onto the stage at exactly ten in the evening. A huge stage, both in depth and width. The five-piece made no secret of how good they felt. And why would they, right? The relaxed vibe was more than obvious. It was the last day of the tour. A big European tour, on which Ugly Kid Joe had accompanied Skid Row as co-headliners for a good part of the run. On top of it being the final show, the band knew something the rest of us didn’t: that they’d be playing an extremely short set, just one hour long. Another factor encouraging total ease and a lack of pressure!
Skid Row play great these days. That matters most for the Sabo/Hill guitar duo, who come across brilliantly on stage even in the mature years of their musical careers. Both guitarists’ fingers fly as if greased, so the execution of their parts is truly top-notch. The rhythm section stays strong and impenetrable too. The charismatic Rachel Bolan remains one of the central stage presences of a Skid Row show! And on top of all that, it’s very welcome that singer Jerry Sollinger has stepped in as a seriously worthy replacement for Sebastian Bach. Even looks-wise, we can say Sollinger seems to be in much better shape than his predecessor. Vocally, Sollinger chases Bach very well! The timbre meets the demands of a “Bach replacement,” and the venomous evergreens Psycho Love, Monkey Bissiness, Slave to the Grind, then Makin’ a Mess, Riot Act , Big Guns, Piece of Me, 18 And Life, In A Darkened Room and the closing devastation of Youth Gone Wild all came off great in Solingerjev’s vocal delivery, and I believe that without some serious “helpers” (backing tracks and added mp3 samples) from the mixing desk, Bach can no longer pull off the classic Skid Row repertoire with confidence today. After what we witnessed, we can only say one thing again: farewell, Sebastian Bach. Forever. 18 and Life gave Sollinger a bit of a hard time, but the guy nailed the rest extremely well. And of course the all-obligatory hit I Remember You was not skipped! From the new songs off the EP »United World Rebellion: Chapter One«, we got the opener Let’s Gop and, in the second half of the set, Kings Of Demolition! The band also briefly touched on the 2003 album »Thickness« and played the song Thick Is the Skin.
Some 500 wild fans went nuts “chained” to the barrier separating the stage from the floor, fanatically joining in on the verses of the band’s classics. Skid Row had the crowd eating out of their hands in no time, as if they were in a trance of hypnosis. The minutes flew by extremely fast, and after Slave to the Grind the guys quickly slipped backstage. Pure routine. Since this was the last show, Skid Row threw a kind of party that the other shows on the tour didn’t get. For the encore they invited Dead City Ruins on stage and played the AC/DC classic Highway to Hell together, followed by the expected Youth Gone Wild, with the Dead City Ruins guys dressed up in animal onesies. A comedy for the grand finale, then!
We can say the following. A short but sweet hangout with Skid Row! A setlist loaded exclusively with material from the first two albums. It’s thanks to the cult status of those two albums that Skid Row can even afford tours like this these days. They know it well, so they play mostly material from exactly those two records. The inclusion of the Ramones cover Psycho Terror was a surprise, but otherwise the show was just as expected. The sound was also very solid considering the booming character of the vast sports hall. Skid Row don’t need to try so hard that they’d have to “fire ammo from every possible position” at the crowd. The cult status of their first two albums does that part entirely on its own for them. The guys remain the embodiment of swaggering, naughty “motherf**kers” even in their mature years. They keep that proper hoodlum stage look, and their shows remain a real energy bomb, brimming with boldness and the arrogantly mocking glitter of rock ‘n’ roll hedonism! Exactly what you come to their show for. Even in 2013!
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
