Text & Photos By Jeremy James
The night air was cool, the parking lot was filling up and the merch booth was overrun. On this night, November 15th, 2013, the Legends of Thrash tour brought the co-headlining titans Overkill & Kreator to Anaheim, California.
Southern California’s own local band, Warbringer, who have been around for almost ten years now, were the first to hit the stage and give us a taste of what was in store for the evening. They started the night strong, with a short but spirited seven song set, the majority of which were new songs off their just-released fourth album Empires Collapse – and if the energy of their live show is any indication, these guys won’t be slowing down any time soon.
It would have been amazing to get a full set of pictures of this band, but since I was officially there on project to photograph only Overkill & Kreator, I was actually not allowed to enter the photo-pit for their set (odd, but business is business). Thankfully, John Laux, who brings an incredible amount of energy to the stage, was well within my field of view while I was out in the audience. Hopefully I will get another opportunity to photograph these gents as their live show was immensely fun to watch.
When working on Warbringer’s photos, it was easy trying to decide what kind of character I wanted the photos to evoke. The simple fact was I needed to catch and share the sheer exuberance of the members as they performed. Hopefully I made it obvious that this was something they both loved to do and lived for:
It wasn’t long until Jersey’s very best, Overkill, came onstage, and they hit all the right buttons. A good chunk of their setlist this night was older material, which I and many other people were extremely happy about. ‘Elimination’, ‘Hello from the Gutter,’ ‘Rotten to the Core,’ ‘Hammerhead,’ ‘Deny the Cross’ and of course ‘Fuck You’ were all played with such intensity that it seemed like nothing could top them. Along with the ancient classics were a handful of relatively newer songs such as ‘Bring Me The Night,’ ‘Ironbound’ and ‘Electric Rattlesnake,’ which were absolutely vicious in their execution and set the entire house ablaze in a whirlwind of moshing and headbanging. Bobby Blitz was a maniac onstage, running to and fro, his voice belting out across the room with an unshakable energy. Backing up Blitz’s magnificent stage presence was D.D. Verni and Dave Linsk, who thrashed, sung and flipped off as many people as they could.
When working on Overkill’s photos, I wanted to make pictures that looked both mature and timeless. Overkill had some superb lighting during their set, but I decided to go the pure black and white route as I felt that this not only captured what I wanted, but it also gave a great visual distinction between the three separate sets of photos here:
Then it happened: the lights dimmed, and ‘Mars Mantra’ began playing. Kreator hit the stage, strobes fired into the audience, and they began the night with a few tracks from their latest releases Phantom Antichrist and Hordes of Chaos. The crowd erupted in an even bigger circle of violence when Mille and crew ripped straight into both ‘Endless Pain’ and ‘Pleasure to Kill’. The night was hot, heavy and violent; to help tip the scales and cool things down a bit, guitarist Sami delivered a beautiful flamenco guitar piece while the rest of Kreator looked on in silence. The reprieve was short lived, however, when they launched into ‘Riot of Violence’.
Kreator themselves were extremely thankful to the fans, and Mille is one of the most down to earth and gracious front-men I’ve ever seen live. He thanked everyone from the bottom of his heart for being there and supporting the band through their thirty years of thrashing. Later on near the end of the night, Mille grabbed and raised the literal Flag of Hate and began swinging it around, asking for the audience to lend their voices to the set. When his lust for aural violence was satisfied, both ‘Flag of Hate’ and ‘Tormentor’ were played to finish off the night.
Kreator is a very different sounding band from when they originally formed, yet they are still solidly a thrash metal act. To reflect their varied set and maturation I wanted to keep the photos looking new and full of life, but I also wanted showcase that aggressive edge, I wanted to visually capture the “bite behind the bark”:
The Legends of Thrash 2013 tour is unfortunately over for now. Great times were had by all, and for new fans of the genre this tour was a great introduction to the different styles found within thrash metal. Warbringer gave a solid performance and showed people how the west coast handles its business, Overkill came up and showed exactly what kind of mania the east coast deals with on a daily basis and Kreator gave us a swig of what the Teutonic kings offer. Here’s to hoping the lineup for the 2014 tour is just an amazing as 2013’s.
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