Great metal shows - The Pit Edition

I thought it'd be fun to hear about some of the great live shows you've been to over the years including a bit of detail around what they meant to you. I'll kick things off with my one of my earliest international extreme metal shows from 7th February 1991.

I was only 15 years old when I asked my father to drive me & a school mate to the Enmore Theatre in Sydney to see Megadeth on the tour in support of their classic 1990 album "Rust In Peace". I'd been to plenty of live gigs by that stage but I'm not too sure I'd been to one that was so strongly directed at an extreme metal audience so it was all a little bit scary for a young fella. Regardless though, this show ended up changing my life in many ways.

I'd been heavily into Megadeth for a few years by that point & was already a fanatical guitarist but after seeing this show I knew that I needed to start my own band as urgently as possible. What can be better than witnessing the classic lineup of a classic band performing a set littered with all-time thrash metal classics. "Holy Wars... The Punishment Due", "Wake Up Dead", "The Conjuring" & "Good Mourning / Black Friday" were (& still are) some of my most highly regarded thrash anthems & I was a huge Marty Friedman fan boy even before he joined Megadeth so the lead guitar skills of both axemen left my jaw well & truly lying on the ground. The only negative was the inclusion of the two cover versions (neither of which I'm particularly fond of) over much more preferable options like "Five Magics" (my favourite track from "Rust In Peace") or "Rattlehead" (my favourite track from the debut). The fact that "These Boots" was the only track included from "Killing Is My Business... & Business Is Good!" was disappointing when you consider that this was Megadeth's first Australian tour.

As an added bonus, Sydney's Mortal Sin opened the show playing a setlist comprised entirely of tracks taken from their seminal 1987 debut album "Mayhemic Destruction" & they comfortably proved to me that you don't have to be from California or Germany to play high quality thrash metal. Their closing rendition of the title track from that record was a huge highlight for me given that it'd become somewhat of an anthem for me by that stage.

Three decades may have passed since this night & I've become further acquainted with some of the members of Mortal Sin in that time through my involvement in the Sydney metal scene however this gig will always sit amongst the most memorable experiences of my metal life.

Mortal Sin setlist

The Curse

Women in Leather

Lebanon

Mortal Slaughter

Into the Fire

Mayhemic Destruction

Megadeth setlist

Intro

Wake Up Dead

Hook in Mouth

Hangar 18

Tornado of Souls

Lucretia

The Conjuring

In My Darkest Hour

These Boots

Devil's Island

Holy Wars... The Punishment Due

Good Mourning/Black Friday

Peace Sells

Encore:

Anarchy in the U.K.

That's very cool, Daniel! As some of you already know, I never really go to any metal concerts. I wish I could attend metal shows but *sniff* I'm broke... I mean my family has money, but our budget is a little tight. However, in the rare not-yet-happened chance I win a free ticket to a metal concert, I would definitely take that opportunity. When my father and I were doing a bit of Christmas shopping in 2019, we went to this stall that was selling metal T-shirts and bought a shirt there that I would save for Christmas day (And yes, that's my Trivium shirt). The shirt came with this little flier advertising... (drumroll please....)

An Anthrax concert in my home-country! That's really sweet and a bit unexpected, considering how my country banned Megadeth from performing here because the government thought that band's mascot Vic Rattlehead was too edgy. However, what I've received was just a flier. I would still have to buy my own ticket. RM338 for a concert ticket?!? That's about as much as a speeding ticket! No thanks!! I also wasn't feeling too much of the thrash zone, though I started leaning near that direction with Vektor. So I never went to that Anthrax concert, and it was postponed anyway because of the virus that started hitting my country a few weeks before when that concert would've been on. A couple of those rules though: "Admission for 13 to 18 years old MUST be accompanied by an adult at all times. NO AUDIO OR VIDEO RECORDING ALLOWED." Clearly, times have changed... Anyway, I may not have that chance of seeing Anthrax live, but I'm plan to write a review for one of their albums, so stay tuned....