The Metal/Punk/Rock Thread

[Merzbow]

Which bands were actually better when trying to be nu-metal to get those greb-bucks?

I'd argue Machine Head were at their most memorable when Rob was rapping in his cornrows.

[Ironic Indie Lad]

This is probably going to be my longest post ever but I just wanted to share my thoughts after attending Back to the Beginning.

I really wanted a ticket to this as soon as I found out it was happening. The incredible demand when it on sale saw me left out. I tried to tell myself "its fine" / "it wont be that good anyway!" etc. for months but deep down I knew this was unmissable. I only managed to finally buy a ticket on the 28th of June, one week before the event.

I was up and out at 5am to make my 6:30am train from Glasgow to Birmingham. Very quick stop off at (an extremely sketchy) Hotel on Hagley Road and then taxi to Aston. 

I got inside and took my seat and it was instantly apparent that people genuinely had come from all over the world to be there. To my right were a couple of Brazilian guys, to my left a couple from Japan. I also spotted Lee Dorrian of early Napalm Death and Cathedral fame nearby and Sam Dunn who did the Headbangers Journey, Flight 666, Beyond The Lighted Stage and Metal Evolution documentaries.

MASTODON and ANTHRAX absolutely breezed by. A good sign. It was clear short, sharp sets with really short turnarounds was going to be the order of the day. I thought this worked REALLY well and made it pretty much impossible to get even slightly bored. If you didnt like a band or were not familiar with their material, no big deal, another one would be on in like 25 mins anyway. I loved Mastodons cover of Supernaut. One of the best Sabbath songs and Brann Dailor did a great job with the high vocals. 

I wasnt familiar with RIVAL SONS. This is not the kind of thing I go for at all. Reminds me of Wolfmother and I mean that as a truly massive insult. Mercifully brief.

HALESTORM I am aware of but have never knowingly heard their music. Seems like the sort of thing that's way bigger in America than in Europe? Cant say I enjoyed their own material but the Perry Mason cover was great and Lzzy Hale realistically had one of the best voices of the entire day.

LAMB OF GOD were a band I used to be a huge, huge fan of when I was younger. Ashes of the Wake and Sacrament were big records for me in the 00s and I saw them live loads of times back then. It's been a long time since I enjoyed one of their records but clearly they remain a great live band. It came off that this occasion meant a lot to Randy Blythe and he managed to speak quite a lot about it despite the brief set. Children of the Grave absolutely brought the house down and with surprisingly clean vocals too!

ALICE IN CHAINS for me are a top 10 of all time. Huge band for me for years and years. I cannot really explain why but they came on, the sun was out, everyone was absolutely belting out Man in The Box and the occasion just got to me at that point. It sounds stupid but I honestly could not believe I was there, what I was watching, what was still to come. I had tears in my eyes for the first of many times. Would? remains an all timer. Fairies Wear Boots was a great choice for them. Jerry Cantrell, if you are reading this, just know you are one of my guys. 

SUPERGROUP A could (and perhaps should) have been an absolute shambles. It definitely had the potential for a car crash. It definitely felt that way when Jake E Lee took forever to come out leaving everyone looking slightly confused. Great job by all involved on Ultimate Sin and just really nice to see Jake E Lee playing that one.

David Draiman fuck off and fuck off forvever obviously. A shite guy from a truly terrible band. 

Yungblud. I was not prepared for this at all. Incredible voice singing a song I really, really love. First half of the song just had Nuno Bettencourt with his back to the crowd with the Diogo Jota 20 Liverpool Shirt on. Crying like a baby.

As a side bar on Nuno, obviously Tom Morello was the "director" of this. There is no way Nuno didnt have a huge role in holding the entire thing every time he was on stage. The riffs, the solos, he was always giving other guys little cues etc. One of the real MVPs of the event really. 

GOJIRA. Fuck me. An incredible live band at this point. Under the Sun was maybe the best cover choice of the day to this point. What a job they did.

From here, it got mental.

I went out to to try and get some food and water beneath the lower tier seating. As anyone there knows the queues for toilets, drinks and food were truly insane the entire day. I walked around for a bit and eventually found a steward who gave me some botted water. I went back into the arena but at the section by the stage and thought I would just walk back along to my section. It was then I noticed people were just freely walking in and out of the front standing. I cant speak for the entire day but, at that time, whatever steward was there just had given up on caring about checking wristbands. In I went. Lovely stuff. 

SUPERGROUP B. This was fever dream stuff. Members of Rage Against the Machine and Tool playing Judas Priest WITH KK Downing and its Billy Corgan on vocals. What is even happening? Oh Ronnie Wood has appeared. Oh and now Steven Tyler is singing Led Zeppelin. Utter surreal carnage. I haven't the faintest idea of this was actually good but live it was an experience I wont forget. In amongst all that, Tobias Forge did a *great* job with Bark at the Moon. 

PANTERA were great. Only slightly ruined by a guy beside me. Phil said something to the effect of "Black Sabbath...one of the best of all time. Who's better?" This Bozo shouted "THE WHITE STRIPES". Ok bro. They definitely seemed to go down the best of any band so far from where I was. On a day like this, with this crowd, when you can whip out a song like Walk its going to go down a storm. 

TOOL. One of my favourite bands. Of any band on this entire bill, they were the ones I thought might get pretty weird with it so I didnt really know what to expect here. It was pretty weird to see Tool just walk out and start playing with none of the visuals that come with their own production. Also notable in that they were on the stream and shown in close ups, both things they tend to avoid. Forty Six and and 2 as an opener, Hand of Doom cover and then Aenima. This was incredible. Maynard sang so well and Danny Carey is probably the greatest living rock drummer.

SLAYER. I count myself lucky to have seen Slayer when it was Lombardo and Hanneman still in the band. They were one of the bands where I have to be a bit wanky about as, for me, its really not the same without them. Lombardo especially is easily one of the best drummers for metal ever. I heard someone say recently that South of Heaven is the best air drumming album of all time. It just might be! Having said all that, I am a big fan of Gary Holt and he does a superb job in this line up. Tom sounds better than he probably has any right to and Kerry King still basically looks and plays the exact same. A brief Slayer set is all you need. DARKNESS OF CHRIST INTRO (!!!!) into Disciple was sooooo good. War Ensemble, South of Heaven, Raining Blood and Angel of Death. There honestly are not many bands who could whip out songs of that quality one after the other.

GNR was *baffling*. Axl looks like Jim Davidson after a huge crisis and he sounds like a Family Guy paedo. Opening with 3 straight Sabbath Covers was a bold move, especially since one was a very deep cup that nobody knew (Juniors Eyes). It was quite cool to see Sabbath Bloody Sabbath all the same. At the end of the day, its still Axl, Slash and Duff so people did go crazy for Welcome to the Jungle and Paradise City. 

METALLICA. What can you say? One of the best live bands ever. One of the best bands at covers ever. Just one of the best bands ever full stop really. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind that they would rule the day and they did. When they were coming on I was standing there thinking "I have been into Metallica since the 90s, I have been going to see them for 20 years...". A long, long time loving this band. This old man was feeling emotional again ffs! Johnny Blade was a WILD choice but they made it their own like they always do. Its funny because me and a friend had a chat just last week about the absolute nailed on top 3 Metallica songs of all time. We came to an agreement that it just might be Creeping Death, Battery and For Whom the Bell Tolls. Can only assume Lars has access to my phone / mind as the bastards played all 3. Having seen Metallica 10 times now, I was fucking delighted to not hear Enter Sandman, Nothing Else Matters or Sad But True.

Honestly felt really weird at this point in the day. I had no clue what to expect from OZZY OSBOURNE. Feared it might be sad or embarrassing. I dont think I have ever been to any concert before where there was a sort of shared mood of "what the fuck are we about to see?" in the air. 

As soon as Mike Inez and Zakk Wylde walked out, I knew we were going to be fine. What a band. There was just absolutely not a single chance those lads were going to let this die on its arse and neither were the crowd. HUGE Credit to Zakk in particular. I was standing on his side of the stage near the front at this point. He was constantly just giving Ozzy these little looks to check he was ok, he was right there at the mic to chime in with some additional vocals every time he was needed and (obviously) he played the Ozzy material so fucking perfectly.

Ozzy did way more than I thought. I really thought maybe just Mama I'm Coming Home and Crazy Train. I Dont Know, Mr Crowley and Suicide Solution. What a treat. ALL THINGS CONSIDERED and with god knows what trickery and effects, the man still sounded like Ozzy Osbourne. You can really see what this meant to the man. Legs shaking from Parkinsons the entire time, clearly desperate to stand up, tears in his eyes. I have never seen anything like this and might never again.

Lets be real here, there wasn't a dry eye in the house for Mama I'm Coming Home. Unforgettable to see that live on this occasion. Really this was magical. Then to close on Crazy Train just brought the place down completely. I dont think it came off on the live stream as obviously the crowd was low in the mix but my god it was loud in there.

And then to finish it all off. After all of that. Somehow it wasn't over and we still had BLACK SABBATH to go. THE Black Sabbath. Black Sabbath. Ozzy, Tony, Geezer and Bill. The same 4 guys dating back to 1968 for one final time. Quite how this is even possible is kind of mind blowing. 

Tony Iommi is still just the most effortlessly cool guy of all time. Geezer is the man and played like a maniac. Bill Ward had his fucking top off! War Pigs, NIB (didn't expect that), Iron Man and Paranoid. Beautiful. Cried the entire time. Caught some confetti which I will frame or something. 

One of the best days of my entire life and I am beyond lucky to have been there. 

New standard has been set for how to bow out in style and I expect we will see similar events in the future.

Edited July 7, 2025 by Ironic Indie Lad
somehow forgot that Slayer played

[cobra_gordo]

24 minutes ago, Ironic Indie Lad said:

I cant speak for the entire day but, at that time, whatever steward was there just had given up on caring about checking wristbands. In I went. Lovely stuff. 

This explains why it was probably the most cramped I've ever been at a gig. The two times I went for a slash was nightmarish, fuck knows how I managed to get back to my spot both times.

[Ironic Indie Lad]

On 7/6/2025 at 11:07 AM, d-d-d-dAz said:

I think it's going to be something remembered for a long time in metal circles, but I think it'll have an impact beyond that. Watching the stream intermittently, you could see a model of how acts may say goodbye in the future.

With so many artists reaching the end of the road you could easily see how you take this concept and attach it to McCartney at Anfield, the Stones in London, Springsteen in New Jersey and on and on.

 

AC/DC should really do this while they still can.

Some are retired, some are dead. Angus and Brian are still there but hanging on by a thread. (I didnt realise that I wrote poetry, I didnt realise I wrote such bloody awful poetry etc.)

They are big enough and beloved enough that just about any band / musician is answering the call to show up for that.

Full day of rock and metal bands doing their own hits, AC/DC covers and then the lads on for a 30 minute set. Come on now. I'd go to that. 

[BomberPat]

I watched the Sabbath show on a live-stream at a barbecue and had a lovely time, and wasn't even bitter about missing out on tickets, because I think I'd have struggled being there on the day, it was a bit of a slog. I caught it from Halestorm doing Perry Mason, and enjoyed almost everything after that, accounting for the fact that I don't particularly care about Slayer, and that Axl Rose was Axl Rose.

Ozzy was fantastic, and seeing him perform with Zakk Wylde again was magic. Metal is like wrestling and no one ever really retires, but you really got the sense that Ozzy put everything he had into this, and that he wouldn't be able to do it again tomorrow, let alone in a few months' time. I have a real soft spot for a lot of Ozzy solo material, so was glad of the solo set, and even though I knew that "Mama I'm Coming Home" was on his setlist, it still really hit me and had me fighting back tears - that song, that performance, that venue, just an incredible, unforgettable scene that you couldn't recreate.

 

That said, I do have some nitpicking, of course I do. It would have been nice not to have seen fewer Nazis and turbo-nonces on the show, but metal's gonna metal. Similarly, it would have been nice to see more than two women on the entire show, and more people of colour than you could count on one hand, but, again, metal's gonna metal. 

Something that became apparent very quickly was that, while all of the promotion had been about this show as a celebration of Black Sabbath, on the day it was all about Ozzy. I don't begrudge him that, he's more than earned it. But in among the Ozzy love-in, it would have been nice to have seen an acknowledgement that there were other frontmen. Even just a single static graphic paying tribute to Dio would have been nice.


Definitely agree that this felt like a blueprint for how other acts are going to do their farewell shows. I spent a lot of the show thinking that, and wondering who will be the next band to try and do the same thing, and who will be the first to fuck it by coming out of retirement within six months. Ball's in your court, KISS.


Now for the gossip part - Sharon Osbourne said that one band wasn't included on the bill because they wanted to make a profit, and that wasn't what the show was about. She said that she's going to tell people who it was, and that people will be surprised by it. In terms of big names who weren't there, you can rule out Iron Maiden, Alice Cooper, Judas Priest, and The Scorpions, who all had gigs elsewhere. One possibility is Soundgarden, who at one point Sharon said would be performing, but didn't end up on the bill. 

I'm going to go out on a limb and wonder if it was the Foo Fighters. Several times during the show, someone I was with remarked on how it was amazing that Dave Grohl hadn't managed to find his way on to this show. It feels like the sort of thing he'd normally be all over.

Edited July 7, 2025 by BomberPat

[Ironic Indie Lad]

11 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

Now for the gossip part - Sharon Osbourne said that one band wasn't included on the bill because they wanted to make a profit, and that wasn't what the show was about. She said that she's going to tell people who it was, and that people will be surprised by it. In terms of big names who weren't there, you can rule out Iron Maiden, Alice Cooper, Judas Priest, and The Scorpions, who all had gigs elsewhere. One possibility is Soundgarden, who at one point Sharon said would be performing, but didn't end up on the bill. 

I doubt they would be invited anyway after the Ozzfest 2005 nonsense.

[wordsfromlee]

There were quite a few people who were on the original announcement who weren’t at the show (that I’m aware of at least):

Fred Durst

Jonathan Davis

Wolfgang Van Halen

Mike Bordin

Sammy Hagar

[TibBo]

Sammy Hagar was there

[Ironic Indie Lad]

1 minute ago, wordsfromlee said:

There were quite a few people who were on the original announcement who weren’t at the show (that I’m aware of at least):

Fred Durst

Jonathan Davis

Wolfgang Van Halen

Mike Bordin

Sammy Hagar

Bordin played drums for Ultimate Sin

Hagar did a Montrose song and Flying High Again.

WVH pulled out to do a tour with Creed apparently.

No idea what happened with the nu metal lads. 

[BomberPat]

Fred Durst did a pre-recorded version of Changes, and Jonathan Davis sent in a video testimonial, so they were still part of the show too, just not on the live bill.

[cobra_gordo]

It got to be a running joke where we were stood that Fred Durst MUST be coming out soon, surely? Even as Ozzy is getting presented with the cake- "Fred's out last then yeah?".
Jonathan Davies was off the line-up on the official merch but Fred's name was still on it so fuck knows what happened to him.

[Ironic Indie Lad]

When Walk This Way started I was consumed with dread thinking they might do the Aerosmith/RUN DMC version with Fred Durst doing the RUN DMC parts. 

[CTXRussomark]

51 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

I'm going to go out on a limb and wonder if it was the Foo Fighters. Several times during the show, someone I was with remarked on how it was amazing that Dave Grohl hadn't managed to find his way on to this show. It feels like the sort of thing he'd normally be all over.

I'm equally surprised that Dave didn’t appear as part of the supergroup but Foo Fighters would have been a really odd choice to play a set on a show celebrating the history of metal.  And given their history with the Taylor Hawkins tribute gigs I'd be very surprised if he/they would be holding out for money for such an event. 

I thought a real notable absence (other than Sid being there, but he's part of the family) was zero representation from Slipknot.  Corey has always spoken very highly of Ozzy and they are essentially the metal band of the last generation, so to not have even a recorded video from them (unless I missed it) felt really odd. 

[Ironic Indie Lad]

12 minutes ago, CTXRussomark said:

I thought a real notable absence (other than Sid being there, but he's part of the family) was zero representation from Slipknot.  Corey has always spoken very highly of Ozzy and they are essentially the metal band of the last generation, so to not have even a recorded video from them (unless I missed it) felt really odd. 

Slipknots current drummer was there. Granted he has only been in the band for a year though.

He provided additional drums for Mastodon doing Supernaut along with Danney Carey.

[CTXRussomark]

15 minutes ago, Ironic Indie Lad said:

Slipknots current drummer was there. Granted he has only been in the band for a year though.

He provided additional drums for Mastodon doing Supernaut along with Danney Carey.

Oh yeah good shout, I forgot about Eloy.  There's a great picture floating around of him (in tears) with Bill Ward after the gig.  I'm not sure it really counts as Slipknot representation but if both he and Sid were there it probably points less towards there being any sort of issues.