Performers: Megadeth, Gamma Ray
Location: Bologna / Estragon / Italy
Concert date: Friday, 03.06.2016
The day after the notorious Gods of Metal festival, Bologna, Italy, got a mini reprise of it. Megadeth and Gamma Ray, who had shared the bill the day before at the famous Italian rock and metal festival, teamed up again for a show in Bologna.
This night was interesting for another reason too. Exactly ten years earlier, on 03.06.2006, Gods of Metal was held at Idroscalo near Milan, and four people who played that edition of the festival were on stage again exactly a decade later, at Estragon in Bologna. Three of them are members of Gamma Ray, namely Kai Hansen (vocals, guitar), Dirk Schlächter (bass) and Henjo Richter (guitar), plus the brand-new Megadeth guitarist Kiko Loureiro, who played Gods Of Metal 2006 with the Brazilian prog metallers Angra.
It’s eight in the evening. Estragon is already packed to the rafters and still filling up. Plenty of people will end up stuck outside and miss Gamma Ray, who in this lineup logically took the support slot. As expected, Gamma Ray made their 40 minutes count with total routine. They clearly loved the jam-packed hall and the fact that they could play a shortened set and save their energy, which meant they could be completely relaxed and carefree. The band actually trimmed the set even further compared to November, when we caught them on that tour in Graz. So Gamma Ray played a “mini best-of”, opening with the expected Heaven Can Wait. In the first part of the song only Hansen, Schlächter, Richter and drummer Ehre were on stage, and then the band’s new member, singer Frank Beck, joined them. Big stage, a mass of people. The guys were practically grinning from ear to ear, and there was no shortage of positive energy and feverish playing in this show. With their enormous mileage, Gamma Ray are an incredibly experienced crew, and it shows on stage. They’re remarkably tight and know each other inside out. Only Man on the Mission, the one song Gamma Ray hadn’t played in November, on the first tour with Frank Beck in the lineup, showed some weakness. Frank simply hadn’t nailed the song well enough. There was quite a bit of fishing around on stage as he searched for the right vocal range in the verse and chorus melodies. Given that the man was shuffling left and right throughout, it’s possible he couldn’t hear himself well enough on stage. During Man on a Mission, Frank generally only found his range once Hansen, Schlächter and Richter joined in with vocal harmonies. Otherwise, though, Frank hits every note Hansen wants to hear. He proved that convincingly. Those are the vocal parts, that is, that Kai himself no longer wants to sing. So, mission accomplished. In front of the stage the band had a hefty crowd of fired-up supporters, who either knew the verses by heart or just howled “Gamma Ray, Gamma Ray,…” the whole time. They came, had an absolute blast over a measly 40 minutes, partied, and left the stage in express fashion. But they also delivered a great show. Just as you’d always expect from Gamma Ray, and as it should be.
Dave Mustaine and company were presenting the new album “Dystopia” (2016), their fifteenth overall. While the album was being made, Dave once again thoroughly shook up the lineup, which no longer surprises anyone. Stepping in for Chris Broderick was Mustaine’s probably biggest find in recent times, the exceptional Brazilian guitarist Kiko Loureiro, whom some of you may remember from his guitar clinics, when he played Ljubljana’s Orto bar twice, first on his own and then alongside Guthrie Govan (Steven Wilson, The Aristocrats). Last year Chris Adler of Lamb of God stepped in for Shawn Drover. “Dystopia” is the album that fans of the old-school Megadeth have been waiting for far too long, having all but given up on Mustaine. But “Dystopia” put everything back in its place. It has excellent material that, in any combination, always gels phenomenally with the band’s iron-clad classics.
That said, Megadeth didn’t spring any surprises in Bologna. The setlist was practically identical to the one from Metaldays, except that the guys slipped a few songs from the new album into the mix. As expected, Loureiro brought real freshness to the stage. The band also sounds more dynamic again with him in the lineup, and his classical training is a huge asset for Mustaine’s songwriting too. Mustaine, Ellefson and Loureiro kept swapping positions throughout the show, moving between center, left and right. Mustaine remains venomous in every sense of the word. The brooding frontman threw only a few glances at the crowd during the show, with the tangled hair of his trademark thick, curly mane covering his face the whole time. He first addressed the crowd only after the fourth song, saying that Megadeth had never played Bologna before.
Estragon was packed to the last corner. Megadeth hit the stage at 9:25 p.m. People were still trickling into the hall. Packed like sardines, unbearable heat, and consequently stale, breathed-out air. Hell in every sense. A small ceremonial space for moshing barely opened up at the front, and otherwise people couldn’t even move normally. Even though it was a headline show, Megadeth played a, believe it or not, modest hour and twenty minutes (encore included). But it was a set with all the obligatory standards. A tornado! No more, no less. Nothing else was to be expected. The hellishly overheated and riled-up crowd just wouldn’t let up in its madness and frenzy. Mustaine held up solidly vocally, though his voice began slowly burning out toward the end, which is the standard observation we’ve been witnessing at Megadeth shows in recent years. But we’ve also heard plenty worse performances from Dave. A special note: Chris Adler isn’t drumming on this tour, having pulled out because of his commitments to Lamb of God, so Dirk Verbeuren of Soilwork stepped in to help. The band spiced up the closing stretch of the show with the excellent new song Dystopia, then headed into the finale with Symphony of Destruction, as expected, which the full hall of some 4,000 white-hot heads joined once more with “Mega-deth, Mega-deth,…”
Before the obligatory encore, Mustaine asked everyone present for a minute of silence in the hall in memory of former Megadeth drummer Nick Menza, who had passed away. After a few attempts, when Mustaine saw he wasn’t going to manage to quiet the crowd, he walked up to the mic and said: “Can’t you show even a shred of respect for the deceased?!? A minute of silence, please!!” This time too, it didn’t work. Anyway, Holy Wars… rang out, written from the impressions of Mustaine’s late-eighties tour of Ireland, which he will remember for the rest of his life, and that was that.
Closing thoughts? Routine. They came and played. Just as business demands. The inexhaustible Mustaine still buys the crowd’s affection very convincingly with his venomous presence, his charisma, his bad-boy attitude, a look that gives off the feeling of an eternal rebel. Let’s hope this tour is followed by a club tour this fall. As said. The new album and the arrival of Kiko Loureiro are the key to the rebirth of one of the most striking eminences in metal of all time, who with his visionary approach made a gigantic contribution to the development of metal. In that respect, Mustaine remains one of the most important figures in metal.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
GAMMA RAY setlist:
1. Welcome
2. Heaven Can Wait
3. Fight
4. I Want Out
5. Induction
6. Dethrone Tyranny
7. Master of Confusion
8. Rebellion in Dreamland
10. Send Me a Sign
MEGADETH setlist:
1. Hangar 18
2. The Threat Is Real
3. Wake Up Dead
4. In My Darkest Hour
5. Post American World
6. Dawn Patrol
7. Poison Was the Cure
8. Poisonous Shadows
9. She-Wolf
10. Sweating Bullets
11. A Tout Le Monde
12. Trust
13. Dystopia
14. Symphony of Destruction
15. Peace Sells
—encore—
16. Holy Wars… The Punishment Due
