THE “PLAY A FULL ALBUM LIVE” TREND CONTINUES
UPDATE: The Testament camp has just told me that the band will not be playing The Legacy live in its entirety on the American Carnage tour – they will do a “100% new brutal set spanning their 24 year career.” Hopefully that makes you happy and not sad…
It seems to me that the current trend in metal of bands playing classic albums live in their entirety all started when Dave Lombardo returned to Slayer and the band started playing Reign in Blood from start to finish (complete with raining “blood”); then Metallica did Master of Puppets, and then pretty much everyone jumped on the bandwagon.
So I don’t think you can accuse Slayer of trend-hopping now that they’ve announced that they’ll be celebrating the twentieth anniversary of Seasons in the Abyss by playing it in its entirety on the upcoming American Carnage tour with Megadeth and Testament. They started it, so why shouldn’t they continue to reap the benefits? And who would complain anyway? Seasons is the band’s second-best album after Reign!
Meanwhile, not to be outdone, Megadeth is going to once again be doing Rust in Peace in its entirety, following their recent Rust in Peace anniversary tour. I’m not sure how Megadorks will feel about this – will they be happy to get to hear the band play Rust twice in just a few months, or will they feel like they got that out of their system already? – but since I skipped that show in favor of just waiting for the American Carnage trek, I’m pretty stoked.
The press release making the announcement doesn’t say if Testament will continue to perform all of The Legacy live; the band had originally intended to do so as part of American Carnage, but when the tour was initially postponed for Tom Aray’s back surgery, they ended up doing it on the Rust tour. Again, I have a hard time imagining too many fans would complain if they pulled the same schtick again… [They won’t be doing The Legacy. See above. -Ed.]
-AR
