Author: Rok Klemše
Photos: Nina Grad
Venue: Kino Šiška, Ljubljana
Concert date: June 3, 2012
Attendance: 800
Ticket price: 29€/35€
Ah, the end of the weekend. Sunday morning coffee goes down harder when the next one means a grim Monday at work. But this Sunday was different: the coffee went down easy, with heavy guitars and Mustaine’s growl on the stereo to warm up for the evening’s gig. Who would’ve thought it, Mustaine kept his promise and came back to the scene of the crime, Kino Šiška, with his thrash institution Megadeth after two years. There were doubts about whether this show could be anywhere near as successful, especially considering the sold-out hall last time and the full run-through of the cult Rust in Piece. But the buzz outside Šiška made it clear that we were in for something at least similar…
The warm-up this time was handled by Slovenia’s own thrash metal champions Negligence. They not only lived up to their status as the biggest thrash band in the country, they also proved to be a much better fit as an opener than Prospect were just under two years ago. Not that Prospect didn’t do their thing with confidence, it’s just that Negligence’s genre and whole image suit Megadeth better. What we witnessed was probably the tightest, most perfectly played gig I’ve seen from this band (at least out of the ones I’ve caught), and they used the stage the way only the biggest acts know how. Thrash crushers from the albums Options of a Trapped Mind and Coordinates of Confusion came one after another at supersonic speed, and Negligence shook Šiška with the anthems War Machine, Mind Decay, The Q-Box (with a fantastic Nevermore flavor), Insane Asylum and Disharmony. Just loud enough, clear and aggressive, Negligence won the crowd over in no time and were rewarded with a spontaneous, loud response from the several-hundred-strong audience. The superb instrumental performance and masterful execution were topped off by vocalist Alex, who once again showed clear vocal progress and thrashed aggressively all over the stage. The only thing keeping the band from a perfect score is better communication from the frontman, who still mumbles quite a bit. Still, you couldn’t wish for a better opening act, and I hope more gigs like this are waiting for Negligence in the future, abroad too.
Then the tension started to build, and the impatient wait for the headliners was fueled by the crowd chanting the band’s name. Megadeth! I had my doubts that they could repeat the excellent show from two years ago. A full performance of Rust in Piece is something that’s pretty much impossible to top, yet Megadeth did manage to improve on their first Ljubljana gig. The curtains dropped from the back of the stage, revealing two huge walls of Marshall amps (we know that at least three quarters of them weren’t in use, but the effect was achieved), the lights went out, and the giants of thrash greeted Ljubljana with Never Dead from their thirteenth studio album Th1rt3en, and the biggest flaw of the previous show came right back. The sound was totally muddy at the start, smeared, and, to put it mildly, way too sloppy for a band of Megadeth’s caliber. Luckily the sound gradually got better, in direct proportion to the quality of the band’s performance and the volume of the crowd. Dave Mustaine, David Ellefson, Chris Broderick and Shawn Drover put most of the focus on the current record, delivered excellent versions of the iron classics without which a Megadeth show is unthinkable, and it was much nicer to hear a few wonderful surprises too. In the first part of the gig, Mustaine growled out Head Crusher from Endgame, took us back in time with the shattering In My Darkest Hour, and flew us to Roswell with Hangar 18, explaining the conspiracy theory about the alien landing in New Mexico in 1947. Sadly, Dave delivered all of it not with the strength of a rabid bulldog but with the frailty of a man who smokes three packs of cigarettes a day, 57 years running. Mustaine’s voice was precisely the biggest flaw of Sunday’s show, because it was more than obviously weak, worn out and buried the whole time under the much louder guitars. Ginger quickly swapped his first strapped-on guitar for a double-neck and proved, at least in that department, that his fingers, unlike his voice, still work flawlessly, just like on the debut Killing Is My Business… An Business Is Good! After a fantastically played half-ballad Trust came the first surprise, the rarely played Foreclosure of a Dream, and a few minutes later the ear-ripping classic Ashes in Your Mouth. The increasingly hot crowd got the band to loosen up, forget the routine (which plagued their first Ljubljana show), put more energy into playing, and build a genuine bridge between themselves and the packed hall. The top-notch instrumental performance was backed by masterful riff-juggling between Mustaine and Broderick, who in a few years has become a full-fledged member of the band and one of the better guitarists Mustaine has had in his ranks. This time Mustaine even showed satisfaction with the crowd, addressed them several times, and, together with the band, knocked our socks off with a few more total surprises – Angry Again (originally released only as a single, recorded for the cult Hollywood action »flick« Last Action Hero with Schwarzenegger), She-Wolf and Hook In Mouth, with the newcomers Whose Life (Is It Anyways?) and Public Enemy No. 1 sitting nicely among them. The peak came without a doubt (for us and for the band alike) when Mustaine announced the anthemic A Tout Le Monde, during whose chorus he was drowned out by the fired-up crowd for the first time, and it got even better during Symphony of Destruction, with the crowd singing, or rather chanting, »Megadeth, Megadeth!« in time with the rhythm. Dave wasn’t left unmoved by it either and praised the crowd by saying that our brothers in Argentina would be proud of us too, aiming of course at the crowd from the DVD That One Night: Live in Buenos Aires. During the farewell Peace Sells, Vic Rattlehead greeted us from the stage, and we called the band back one last time for Holy Wars… The Punishment Due.
If I draw the line, the only criticism you can pin on the show is the bad sound, which Megadeth shouldn’t have let slide two times in a row, and Mustaine’s mumbling barking leaves an increasingly bad taste too. But Dave can thank the charismatic presence, the great setlists, his comrade Junior, the still phenomenal guitar playing, and last but not least the feverish crowd that lifted the show another level higher, for the fact that we can still easily let him off the hook. See you at the next war. Deth ’till Death!
Setlist
MEGADETH:
1. Never Dead
2. Head Crusher
3. In My Darkest Hour
4. Hangar 18
5. Trust
6. Foreclosure of a Dream
7. Dawn Patrol
8. Poison Was the Cure
9. Guns, Drugs and Money
10. Ashes In Your Mouth
11. Angry Again
12. Sweating Bullets
13. She-Wolf
14. Hook In Mouth
15. Whose Life (Is It Anyway?)
16. Public Enemy No. 1
17. A Tout Le Monde
18. Symphony of Destruction
19. Peace Sells
—encore—
20. Holy Wars… The Punishment Due
Photo Gallery
