Photos and Review by Jim LaValley
Galleries: Slayer, Lamb of God
Slayer’s fifth leg of their “Final World Tour” with Lamb of God, Amon Amarth, and Cannibal Corpse played their final show in the US at the Xfinity Center in Mansfield, MA. The current tour will total around 121 shows around the world as Slayer has been saying goodbye to their fans for the past year.
Cannibal Corpse’s head thrashing set opened the night followed by Amon Amarth to get the crowd going.
Lamb of God opened with “Omerta” followed by “Ruin” featuring Randy Blythe’s vocals and athleticism along with Mark Morton’s hard rhythms and killer leads. Randy owned the stage even though he slipped a day earlier in Camden, NJ. His foot came out from under him during a high kick causing him to wipe out hard. That couldn’t stop him because he was active the very next night and put on a magnificent performance for the fans. Randy is fun to photograph because of his constant head/hair swinging and telegraphed jumping making for some cool photos.
Side note: Mark Morton has recently released his debut solo album “Anesthetic” featuring numerous special guests including the late Linkin Park front man Chester Bennington on the melodic heavy tune “Cross off” that you should check out.
At this point of the night the fans were primed and ready for Slayer!! The lights went out, crosses started rotating on the curtain. There was fire, more fire, and then the curtain drops and Slayer comes out for the last show of the tour in the US. Tom Araya on vocals/bass, Kerry King and Gary Holt on guitars, and Paul Bostaph kicking it on the drums started the show with “Repentless” and then went into “Evil Has No Boundaries”.
Slayer is well-known for being part of the big four – Metallica, Megadeath, Anthrax, and Slayer. Almost four decades ago Slayer emerged at the birth of the thrash metal genre and has inspired numerous bands ever since while creating long lasting killer music their fans love. Slayer’s dedicated fans of all ages showed up to say a final good bye and hear them one last time live. Slayer’s has won two Grammys and multiple awards over the years with their consistent thrash metal style.
Slayer had a long set list of twenty songs that sounded great with lots of pyrotechnics. If you looked at the drummer at times, he looked like he was fully engulfed in fire. It’s amazing he didn’t burn up. Slayer ended the night with “Angel of Death” and after the final song the band came out to the edge of the stage to take it all in and say thank you and goodbye, a great moment.
Slayer will continue touring in Europe through the summer on the final sixth leg of the “Final World Tour”.
Thank you Slayer for decades of killer music!!
Setlist:
- Repentless
- Evil Has No Boundaries
- World Painted Blood
- Postmortem
- Hate Worldwide
- War Ensemble
- Gemini
- Disciple
- Mandatory Suicide
- Chemical Warfare
- Payback
- Temptation
- Born of Fire
- Seasons in the Abyss
- Hell Awaits
- South of Heaven
- Raining Blood
- Black Magic
- Dead Skin MaskAngel of Death