In the realm of horror prog-rock there is one king that rules them all: Claudio Simonetti. Famous for his dynamic and far-out there songs, which includes scoring legendary films from the late-70s such as George Romero‘s Dawn Of The Dead and Dario Argento‘s Suspiria, his band Goblin had a fantastic run through the 70s and called it a day in the early 80s. Over the last couple of decades, the band has reformed under several different incarnations, releasing new music and touring quite consistently.
ACT I – DEMONI (DEMONS)
In 1985, accomplished Italian film-maker, Lamberto Bava, released the horror movie Demoni (Demons, in English). In Italy, the movie actually grossed more than Stephen King‘s Cat’s Eye, Silver Bullet and A Nightmare On Elm Street. The film has since gone on to become a cult-classic among horror aficionados and cemented itself as one of Claudio Simonnetti‘s greatest achievements in his film score repertoire.
Tonight, in Detroit, Claudio and his crew paid homage to Demons by performing the live score to a screening of the film to a packed house. Having never witnessed the performance of a live score to a film, I was not sure what to expect. To my surprise, the entire screening was not dissimilar to seeing a movie at a normal theater. The only difference tonight was that there was a live band on the stage performing every bit of music from the movie, and it worked incredibly well.
Through most of the screening, the band members, apart from Claudio who was stationed at his keyboards, sat while they performed the score. Their involvement included every bit of music – from the original score to the licensed songs that are part of the soundtrack (which included songs by Mötley Crüe, Accept, Billy Idol, Saxon, and Scorpions). Never once did the band interrupt the film’s dialogue, which helped keep the audience immersed in both the music and the viewing of the movie. At critical/intense moments of the film, the band would amp things up ten-fold which made the intensity of those scenes so much more impactful. A truly enjoyable experience that has me now wishing every movie had a live band performing.
ACT II – ORIGINAL AND COVER MATERIAL
After the movie, the band jumped into a lengthy second set that included original material (of both Goblin and Claudio) as well as the band performing various horror movie theme songs such as Dawn Of The Dead (L’alba dei Morti Viventi), Halloween, and the theme to Suspiria (Mater Suspiriorum). If this weren’t enough, the band surprised the already-pumped audience with an incredible cover of Mike Oldfield‘s ‘Tubular Bells’.
All in all, it was a fantastic performance at the picture-perfect Redford Theater (a century old theater in the Old Redford neighborhood of Detroit). The ambience of theater served as the ideal backdrop for the evening’s festivities. We highly recommend catching Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin if they make it to your area. You won’t be disappointed.
Remaining tour dates are as follows:
10/23 – Vancouver, BC @ Rio Theatre 10/24 – Portland, OR @ Hollywood Theatre 10/25 – Portland, OR @ Hollywood Theatre 10/26 – Sacramento, CA @ Colonial Theatre 10/27 – San Francisco, CA @ Castro Theatre 10/28 – Glendale, CA @ Alex Theatre 10/29 – San Diego, CA @ Music Box 11/01 – Houston, TX @ Heights Theatre 11/02 – Dallas, TX @ Texas Theatre 11/03 – San Antonio, TX @ Aztec Theatre 11/04 – New Orleans, LA @ Broadside Theatre 11/05 – Little Rock, AR @ The Hall 11/06 – St Louis, MO @ Red Flag
Visit Claudio Simonetti‘s website here for more information.
BEAST IN BLACK, DANCE WITH THE DEAD
September 17th, 2023
Toronto, ON @ The Axis Club
Photos By: Miles Leblanc
Words By: Alia Synesthesia
I arrived at The Axis Club right in time for the doors, surprised to see the longest line of excited concert attendees I’ve personally experienced at the venue of that size. This night, like many other nights of this tour, was sold out. Miles, my photographer partner in crime, and his partner were already inside; Beast In Black is one of her favorite bands. I can definitely relate along with numerous women in the audience to that. Having seen Beast In Black in Dublin in February 2023, I can attest that their shows have a diverse audience appeal. It definitely feels good seeing other lady metalheads having a good time and getting excited for the show.
Branded by reviewers as a blend between classic metal and electronica, Beast In Black hail from Finland, where metal is loved dearly, and the genre fusion is enthusiastically celebrated. In North America, their tour was supported by Dance With The Dead, an extremely unique and original group. Both bands are known for intense and energetic performances and don’t shy away from engaging with the crowd.
The Axis Club, typically an amazing room for an event like this, had unfortunately turned into a sauna this evening; the venue’s ventilation system had shut down. Both bands were incredible to tough out such high energy sets. Beast in Black stopped their performance twice to assist fans in distress.
DANCE WITH THE DEAD
Previously, Dance With The Dead performed as a duo (Tony Kim & Justin Pointer). This was my first time witnessing the band with the addition of drummer John Terry and Justin Pointer switching between synths and guitar. It was refreshing to see Tony Kim shine in the role of the lead guitarist. His stage presence and crowd interaction warmed up the audience. The fans roared with excitement. New member John Terry is a heavy-hitter. His drumming performance was intense. Near the end of their set, Tony gestured to open the mosh pit, and the excited fans eagerly obliged, electrified by the high energy octane riffs and blazing solos.
BEAST IN BLACK
For Beast In Black‘s set, the audience was quite literally hot: energized by the Dance With The Dead performance, and dripping wet due to the malfunctioning AC. Their set design featured torsos of android ladies and blue and purple lights, with the stage having been transformed into a mysterious sci-fi lab setting. From the first notes of ‘Blade Runner’ off their recent (2021) album Dark Connection, the audience roared with excitement.
Beast In Black met the crowd with an unparalleled high energy performance. Each member has their own unique polarizing energy that shines through in every song. Atte Palokangas is a versatile, enthusiastic drummer with a well-practiced stick throwing game. Kasperi Heikkinen (guitar) and Máté Molnár (bass) are both incredibly animated players who bounce off each other. They don’t shy away from showcasing classic rockstar maneuvers. Anton Kabanen, guitarist and the main songwriter, switches between solo spotlights and seamlessly synchronizes with Kasperi and Máté. Vocalist Yannis Papadopoulos has an unreal range as well as quick stage wit. Watching him interact with the crowd always gave me flashbacks to Rob Halford performances from the 80s.
I discovered Beast In Black opening for Nightwish in 2022, and was amazed at how the bands’ stage performance complemented the music, helping to fully engage and transport the listener into the show. In the age of endless distractions and watching concerts through the cell phones, Beast In Black is the type of band that pulls you back into the live experience. Even though the synchronized guitar playing tricks aren’t new, seeing Anton, Kasperi, and Máté strum their guitars in sync was mesmerizing.
Numerous times throughout the set, Yannis offered the crowd to sing along. It was impressive to see how many people in the audience knew the lyrics – an absolute complement to both Anton’s songwriting and Yannis’s memorable vocal performance.
Right before the start of ‘Crazy, Mad, Insane’ I was tapped on my shoulder. An excited woman preemptively apologized if she bumps into me during the song. We both then laughed and hi-fived each other. During the bridge, the audience was graced with an unlikely and exciting appearance – a mysterious, masked purple-haired Valkyrie with a keytar (later identified as Sam, the band’s tour manager). In the true spirit of Beast In Black, Kasperi, Sam, and Anton played the last chorus of the song in sync. For me, this was one of the show’s many special moments.
During ‘Oceandeep’ (from 2019’s Hell with Love), Yannis encouraged the audience to pull up their cellphones and turn on flashlights. The crowd was transformed into the sea of wondering lights, swaying left to right. ‘Oceandeep’ is an atypical song on the Beast In Black setlist – it reminds me of early Tarja-era Nightwish, and Yannis’s breath control and vocal delivery is incredible. Another highlight was Anton’s soulful guitar solo.
For the encore, Beast In Black played another banger – ‘Cry Out For A Hero’. Something that always stands out to me about this song being played live is how dynamic and energizing the drum performance is. After working for a drumming media company for the past two years and trying to learn drums myself – it’s magical to see how drummers like Atte can make playing look both effortless and engaging. In many live performances, drums are a commonly overlooked instrument: drummers may seem isolated in their own world behind the kit. But in Beast In Black, drums shine front and center on par with other instruments.
“We bring you metal and a little bit of disco” – spoke Yannis from the stage right before the band played ‘One Night In Tokyo’ – one of the band’s most popular tracks. Fusing nostalgia for the early 90s electronic sound together with ringing metal riffs, ‘One Night In Tokyo’ is a crowd’s favorite judging by the excited response of the audience.
Like every great metal show, Beast In Black at the Axis Club left me both completely spent and wanting to hear more at the same time. Despite the show being atypically eventful, the professionalism of the band shone through even in the most unusual circumstances. Beast In Black delivered a performance beyond what I could have expected.
1990 Year In Metal
1989: THE SEQUEL
HELLO, NEWMAN.
The 1990s will forever be remembered as the decade of peace, prosperity, and, of course, the internet. On the world event front, the reunification of Germany, after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, started the decade off on a positive note for humanity.
This was followed with the formal beginning of the Human Genome Project – the identifying, mapping and sequencing of all the genes of the human genome. This was a controversial undertaking at the time, with concerns that it could become a tool of political and national power (a concern that is perhaps never more relevant than today).
1990 was also the year that saw the very first episode of Seinfeld. No one could have predicted that this little show about everything and nothing would become one of the most influential sitcoms of all time. To this very day, it remains one of the most enduring and endearing shows, becoming culturally relevant the world-over.
As it relates to our chosen music, 1990 was also the inaugural year of the heavy metal festival, Wacken Open Air. Starting from humble beginnings in the village of Wacken in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, it would go on on to become the largest heavy metal festival in the world, seeing attendance sky-rocketing to just under 100,000 paying visitors each year between 2011-2018.
A LUCRATIVE VIEW FROM THE ABYSS
It could be argued that 1990 was thrash’s most commercially successful year, followed by a steady decline in popularity by the mid-90s. The following year (’91), Metallica would release their eponymous self-titled album (aka Black Album), signaling a polar shift in thrash metal, with some bands either disbanding or moving away from their thrash metal roots towards the more mainstream friendly sounds of groove and alternative metal.
It can’t be understated how important 1990 was for thrash, with three of the ‘Big Four’ – Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax – releasing what are considered today to be their best albums. On the other side of the pond, the ‘Big Four’ of German thrash – Kreator, Destruction, Sodom, and Tankard – all unleashed killer albums in 1990 (Coma Of Souls, Cracked Brain, Better Off Dead, The Meaning Of Life, respectively).
1990 is truly a difficult year to curate a best-of-thrash list, as there were so many great albums. Here are but a few of the many releases…
Megadeth – Rust In Peace
Anthrax – Persistence Of Time
Slayer – Seasons In The Abyss
Death Angel – Act III
Annihilator – Never, Neverland
Testament – Souls Of Black
Vio-lence – Oppressing The Masses
Forbidden – Twisted Into Form
Destruction – Cracked Brain
Suicidal Tendencies – Lights… Camera… Revolution!
It would be a shame to close-out this list of thrash from 1990 without name-dropping a few more releases that are absolutely worthy of mention, including Meliah Rage‘s Solitary Solitude, Anacrusis‘ Reason, Overthrow‘s Within Suffering, Sacrifice‘s Soldiers Of Misfortune, Razor‘s Shotgun Justice, Xentrix‘s For Whose Advantage, and Morbid Saint‘s Spectrum Of Death.
LOOK WHAT THE CAT DRAGGED OUT
By the end of the eighties, hair metal had become as big as it would ever get. This would soon change, however. The ’90s started with one last hurrah for the spandex-clad clans, which saw some truly huge mainstream releases, including Poison‘s Flesh And Blood, Warrant‘s Cherry Pie, and Cinderella’s Heartbreak Station.
Heck, even the boys in Pantera foresaw the end, trading in their blow dryers, hairspray, makeup, and spandex for cargo shorts, Converse, and actual meaty riffs. Not one to go down without some kicking, clawing, screaming and scratching, glam still had a few tricks up its frilly sleeves before dying a quick and painful death…
Slaughter– Stick It To Ya
Extreme II: Pornografitti
Heaven’s Edge– Self-Titled
Ratt – Detenator
Winger – In The Heart Of The Young
Trixter – Self-Titled
Warrior Soul – Last Decade Dead Century
Love/Hate – Blackout In The Red Room
Damn Yankees – Self-Titled
Stryper – Against The Law
HIKING THE LEFT HAND PATH
If there is one sub-genre of metal that we can absolutely say conquered the world in the ’90s, it would have to be death metal. As the logical follow-up to thrash, death metal took things to the next level, musically, lyrically, and, of course, visually. Nothing was left to the imagination when it came to death metal. It was uncompromising in every facet.
1990 was also the year that death metal really honed its anti-religious, gory, and (sometimes) socially-conscious chops. Many of the bands we now consider the granddaddies of the sub-genre released either their debut or sophomore albums in ’90. It was also the year we saw quite a few demos from some of death metal’s most successful bands…
Mortician – Brutally Mutilated
Vader – Morbid Reich
Suffocation – Reincremation
Malevolent Creation – Demo 1990
Sinister – Perpetual Damnation
Nirvana 2002 – Disembodied Spirits
Abhorrence – Vulgar Necrolatry
It’s interesting to note that death metal sprung out of the depths of hell on two continents at nearly the exact moment in time. Florida gave birth to many of the American death metal bands (Death, Obituary, Deicide, Massacre, Morbid Angel, Malevolent Creation), while Europe (Sweden, Holland, United Kingdom) spewed forth their very own brand of death metal (Entombed, Dismember, Grave, Pestilence, Carnage, Benediction, Cancer, etc.).
A few of the more memorable death metal albums released in 1990…
Deicide – Self-Titled
Entombed – Left Hand Path
Cancer – To The Gory End
Napalm Death – Harmony Corruption
Cannibal Corpse – Eaten Back To Life
Death – Spiritual Healing
Carnage – Dark Recollections
Obituary – Cause Of Death
Benediction – Subconcious Terror
Sadus – Swallowed In Black
Counter to what was happening in thrash, where we would see fewer bands with fewer releases, 1990 saw a boom in the amount of death metal bands and albums that would infect and indoctrinate unsuspecting ears, including..
Tiamat – Sumerian Cry
Paradise Lost – Lost Paradise
Impetigo – Ultimo Mondo Cannibale
Winter – Into Darkness
Master – Self-Titled
Pungent Stench – For God Your Soul… For Me Your Flesh
Morgoth – The Eternal Fall
Opprobrium – Beyond The Unknown
Merciless – The Awakening
Thanatos – Emerging From The Netherworlds
POWER AND RESPECT
With both thrash and death metal garnering all the headlines in 1990, behind-the-scenes there were many power/traditional metal bands releasing very cool albums that didn’t quite get the respect or attention they otherwise deserved. On the periphery, power metal bands such as Psychotic Waltz, Riot, Apocrypha, and Morgana Lefay all dropped stellar albums in 1990.
Of course, 1990 was also the year we saw many of the already legendary bands and personalities releasing some of their best work. Who can forget Iron Maiden’s hyper-energetic frontman, Bruce Dickinson, who released his first solo album, Tattooed Millionaire, to rave reviews. This was also the year that Judas Priest, already twenty-one years into their stellar career, released their heaviest album yet, the bordering-on-thrash stylings of Painkiller.
A few of the more notable power/traditional metal releases from 1990 include…
Sanctuary – Into The Mirror Black
Blind Guardian – Tales From The Twilight World
Scorpions – Crazy World
Iron Maiden – No Prayer For The Dying
Gamma Ray – Heading For Tomorrow
King Diamond – The Eye
U.D.O. – The Faceless World
Dio – Lock Up The Wolves
Queensrÿche – Empire
Iced Earth – Self-Titled
GET YOUR GROOVE ON
If thrash, glam and death metal weren’t quite cutting it for you, 1990 also saw an explosion of bands experimenting with groove and alt-rock. As mentioned earlier in this article, ’90 was the year that the four formerly spandex-clad warriors of Pantera rode into town with guitars and guns blazing.
Their fifth album, Cowboys From Hell, shed every aspect of their previous glam metal stylings in favor of a heavier sound inspired by that of Black Sabbath and Judas Priest, as well as bands from the then-current scene of thrash and alt-rock such as Metallica, Slayer, Faith No More, Soundgarden and Overkill.
With their sudden shift in sound, Pantera would go on to rule heavy metal throughout the 90s and into the early 2000s. In fact, it was the groovy sounds of Pantera, Prong, and Exhorder that would go on to inform bands such as Lamb Of God, White Zombie, Machine Head, Gojira, among many others.
Here are a few outliers from 1990 that made huge waves…
GWAR – Scumdogs Of The Universe
Danzig – Danzig II: Lucifuge
Alice In Chains – Facelift
Prong – Beg To Differ
Quicksand – Self-Titled
Primus – Frizzle Fry
Exhorder – Slaughter In The Vatican
Neurosis – The Word As Law
Helmet – Strap It On
Janes Addiction – Ritual de lo Habitual
THE NEW BREED
1990 also saw an explosion of newly formed bands, with many of those bands going on to have very successful careers. It’s interesting to note that almost none of these bands were glam/hair metal, as that ship had already set out to sea. Many of these new bands were of the extreme kind (death metal, melo-death, death-doom, black metal, grindcore), and of the alt-rock/groove/sludge variety.
The following is a list of some of the more notable bands to have sprung to life in ’90…
Amorphis (Sweden)
My Dying Bride (UK)
Brutal Truth (New York)
Temple Of The Dog (Seattle)
Body Count (Los Angeles)
Tool (Los Angeles)
At The Gates (Sweden)
In Flames (Sweden)
Crowbar (New Orleans)
Marduk (Sweden)
BRUTAL TRUTH’S DEBUT ALBUM, EXTREME CONDITIONS DEMAND EXTREME RESPONSES (RELEASED IN 1992)
