SLAYER AND MEGADETH LIVE IN SYDNEY

Hordern Pavilion, Sydney
October 8, 2009

With two of the greatest thrash bands of all time playing together here for the first time, it was pretty unsurprising that not only was this show sold out weeks ago but the line to get in stretched right around to the back of the venue and halfway down Driver Ave. So it was impossible to catch opening act Double Dragon, who got a twenty-minute warm up set, and in fact Megadeth had already begun by the time I made it inside.

The sound wasn't the greatest it could have been, but Megadeth didn't let this impede them as they ripped through a bunch of their best-known songs, having kicked off with "Set the World Afire" that somewhat appropriately set the place ablaze. Each new incarnation of Megadeth seems to reignite the band, and after pulling the strings with Jag Panzer for a decade, new guitarist Chris Broderick was setting about showing how he fit into the machine. The closing trade-offs of "Hangar 18" were a perfect way to do so and the crowd were treated to a tight set of favourites with only "Head Crusher" making the cut from new album Endgame. Indeed, that was the only concession to post-2000 material made for the whole set, as Dave Mustaine led his men through a choice set of cuts from the classics (oh, and Cryptic Writings), keeping both the energy levels and the shred factor high. Mustaine's voice wasn't always up to the task, but he's never been much of a singer and the rest of the band made up for it with a dynamic and engaging performance. "Tornado of Souls" and "Head Crusher" were killer and for the encore they worked "The Mechanix" into a medley with "Holy Wars" for a rousing climax to the set.

Slayer took the stage after a minimal changeover and were as omnious-looking as always. For some reason they opened with the title track to the new album, a song that's only been out for about a week and one that almost no one yet knew. Even had they known it, the mix was so uneven and awful that it didn't matter. A band of this stature playing in a room like this should not sound so diabolical: the guitars were unevenly matched, with Kerry King blowing Jeff Hanneman offstage, Tom Araya's vocals were buried and Dave Lombardo was louder than everyone. Once the glue that held Slayer together, tonight the drummer was part of what made them come unstuck. He was all over the place like the mix itself. And really, Slayer seemed to be just going through the motions. It was obviously more than enough for their fans, possibly the most fanatical in metal, but their uninspiring and uninspired newer songs only got in the way of the classic catalogue, and even they seemed half-arsed. By "Dead Skin Mask" they were starting to warm up like the jets of fire shooting from the lighting gantry but the set was two-thirds done by then. Something wasn't sitting well with the Slayer lads tonight, but leaving off the scream in "Angel of Death" could well have been a precursor to Araya's laryngitis vocal blow-out in Melbourne the next day when he could barely sing at all.

The Slayer nuts won't agree, of course, but Megadeth won the night.

Megadeth setlist:

1. Set the World Afire
2. Wake Up Dead
3. Hangar 18
4. Skin o' My Teeth
5. She-wolf
6. In My Darkest Hour
7. Devil's Island
8. Tornado of Souls
9. Head Crusher
10. Rattlehead
11. Symphony of Destruction
12. Peace Sells
13. Holy Wars/The Mechanix (encore)

Slayer setlist:

1. World Painted Blood
2. War Ensemble
3. Jihad
4. Born of Fire
5. Psycopathy Red
6. Mandatory Suicide
7. Chemical Warfare
8. Ghosts of War
9. Hate Worldwide
10. Disciple
11. Dead Skin Mask
12. Hell Awaits
13. Angel of Death
14. South of Heaven
15. Raining Blood

MEGADETH: Endgame

Produced by Dave Mustaine and Andy Sneap

Released: 2009

Tonight Sydney plays host to one of the best double bills of metal ever seen in this city as Megadeth and Slayer unleash their hell one after the other, so what better time than now to take a look at the latest album from the first of those bands? Megadeth was always the most technically gifted and perhaps the most honest of the Big Four --Dave Mustaine has made no secret of the fact that when his band went corporate in the mid-90s it really was at the behest of his label. All that seems like so long ago now (which is true), since over the last decade of new label, a split, a reformation, another new label and several shifts in the second guitar department, Mustaine has drawn closer and closer with each new release to the ultimate vision of technical thrash metal excellence that he achieved with Rust in Peace. Endgame probably isn't quite the masterpiece that album was, but it is the closest they've come so far.

Megadeth leaves you with no illusions about what to expect. The first track is a three minute shred battle between Mustaine and latest recruit Chris Broderick, formerly of Jag Panzer, one of the most shred-obsessed metal bands of all. From here they lock straight into "Time Day We Fight!", another blazing riff and shred fest that pretty well points the way for the entire album. While Mustaine has never completely disappointed in the guitar hero stakes (even his worst records are saved by some blistering fretwork), Endgame is positively ablaze with glorious soloing, probably outdoing even the Friedman-era albums in that respect, and that's saying a lot. For those who love Megadeth purely on those grounds, Endgame will certainly not disappoint.

On other levels too, Endgame succeeds. In general, the songwriting is up there with Mustaine's best. "Headcrusher" is one of the best thrash tracks to have surfaced this year without question, "Bodies" embraces old-school thrash with the chugga-chugga riffs of Countdown to Extinction and "Bite the Hand" and "The Right to Go Insane" are backed by a wicked groove. Lyrically, there's a few clunkers (I'm not particularly fussed on "44 Minutes", for example), but it's clear in tracks like "Endgame" and "How the Story Ends" that the Mustaine worldview is no less pessimistic than it's always been. By the same token, he can still find a place for a song about top-fuel dragsters; the balladesque "Hardest Part of Letting Go... Sealed With a Kiss" really jars the listener out of the experience however. It really seems out of place on an album otherwise crammed with scorching thrash.

This is Megadeth's best album since Rust in Peace. It remains to be seen if they can top it next time, but we can hope they will match it at least.

1. Dialectic Chaos
2. This Day We Fight!
3. 44 Minutes
4. 1,320º
5. Bite the Hand
6. Bodies
7. Endgame
8. The Hardest Part of Letting Go... Sealed With a Kiss
9. Head Crusher
10. How the Story Ends
11. The Right to Go Insane

Rating: 90%