Live review: Exodus / Death Angel live in Grand Rapids

Elevation at the Intersection – 02 Oct 2022

Exodus and Death Angel wreck necks like it’s 1989.

The Bay Strikes Back Tour is an old school thrash fan’s dream featuring Testament, Exodus, and Death Angel. It started off in Europe all the way back in February of 2020. The original touring party barely made it back to the states before airports started shutting down at the beginning of the pandemic. Several members of the bands and crew ended up with Covid, some severely. After two years of stops, starts, and delays, the tour commenced in the US in the spring of this year. Now it’s on the second and final leg of 2022. 

For whatever reason, the entire package wasn’t booked for Grand Rapids on Sunday, October 2nd. Instead we got Exodus and Death Angel with a local opener. I have mixed feelings about this. I’m a big Testament fan, but I’ve seen them more than 10 times stretching back about 30 years. I’ve only seen Exodus and Death Angel a handful of times each, so I decided to accentuate the positive and relish the fact that the other bands would get longer sets in a slightly more intimate setting. Seeing two of the “Next Biggest Four” (Death Angel, Exodus, Overkill, Testament) is still a treat.

Nagazi, from Mount Pleasant, home of your Central Michigan Chippewas, opened the show. I must admit, I was entirely unfamiliar with them and only caught about half of their set. Their style was thrashy, with some groove metal and maybe even a little punk. Musically, Pantera might be a good reference point. The singer’s voice is kind of similar to Randy Blythe from Lamb of God. Nagazi were not particularly young, I would guess they averaged around 40, and they knew how to put on a solid show. The crowd seemed to enjoy their set, even when they closed with the perplexing choice of Motley Crue’s 1989 hit “Kickstart My Heart”.

Death Angel singer Mark Osegueda said that this was the last show of the “Lesson in Ultra-Violence” tour. Those were the shows where Testament had the night off, and the other two bands played elsewhere. The name, of course, is a combination of the title of Death Angel’s debut album The Ultra-Violence, and early Exodus favorite “A Lesson in Violence’. Death Angel’s set was split pretty evenly between their early material, and their post-reformation stuff. That was fine with me. Led by Osegueda and founding guitarist Rob Cavestany, Death Angel have been as consistently good as any of the classic thrash bands over the last two decades. 

They opened their set with a trio of tracks from their iconic first record. “The Ultra-Violence”, “Mistress of Pain”, and “Voracious Soul” got things off to a rip roaring start. It also gave Osegueda ample opportunity to encourage the crowd to go wild. He spoke quite a bit between songs, praising the power of thrash! “The Dream Calls For Blood”, “The Moth”, “Humanicide” and “Thrown to the Wolves” were highlights among the newer material. Death Angel sounded great, and are clearly a band firing on all cylinders. If I have a complaint, it would be their equally perplexing ending. Every other time I’ve seen them, they closed with the early “hit”/fan favorite “Kill As One”. This time they skipped it entirely! 

Exodus also did a good job of mixing their ‘80s material with their post 2000 stuff. They opened their set with “The Beatings Will Continue (Until Morale Improves)” and closed it with “Prescribing Horror”, both from their excellent 2021 album Persona Non Grata. In between we got classics like “A Lesson in Violence”, “Blood In, Blood Out”, “Blacklist” and “Piranha”. Singer Steve “Zetro” Souza spoke glowingly of the many virtues of thrash. He exhorted people to go mad in the pit, but also to watch out for one another. Drummer Tom Hunting, the only remaining original member, looked and sounded amazing after having battled stomach cancer. Long-time bassist Jack Gibson, and guitarists Lee Altus (also from Heathen) and band leader Gary Holt were great too. 

Exodus saved the best for last, and unlike the other bands, delivered exactly what we were hoping for. Their encore included the 1985 thrash anthem “Bonded By Blood”, the 1989 Headbanger’s Ball favorite “Toxic Waltz” and just for good measure, “Strike of the Beast”. Exodus were among the very earliest of the Bay Area thrash bands, and like Death Angel, they’re still playing at a very high level. With Holt free from his duties as Slayer’s second guitarist, he can once again focus on Exodus, who still seem to have plenty left in the tank.

Metallica has been in the news a lot lately. A lot by Metallica standards even. (In case you’ve been living under a rock, the exceptionally popular Netflix series Stranger Things made “Master of Puppets” a top 40 hit 36 years after its original release.) I haven’t seen Metallica in 13 or 14 years, although I did see them a bunch of times in their prime. I have managed to catch three Metallica adjacent bands in 2022. First was Megadeth, the band fronted by still bitter former Metallica lead guitarist Dave Mustaine. Next was Exodus, the band founded by guitarist Kirk Hammett, who jumped ship to replace Mustaine in Metallica just before the recording of their 1983 landmark debut, KIll ‘Em All. 

Shortly after Exodus, I saw Raven. They’re the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal band who took a young Metallica on their first ever national tour in 1983. Raven played their geriatric asses off for maybe a hundred midwesterners on a random Wednesday night! (They’ll play for a ton of people opening a huge Metallica show in November.) “What’s the point of all this rambling Grandpa Simpson?” I guess it’s just that there are other ways to experience a little of that Metallica magic without the hassle and expense of actually seeing Metallica, while also supporting some hard working headbangers.

Confessions of a merch whore: Exodus and Death Angel both had a wide array of wares for sale, including T-shirts, patches, records, CDs, blu-rays, skate decks and even action figures. Even the local opener had a bunch of different T-shirt designs. Alas, nothing caught my eye, (I did buy a killer Raven patch), so I spent too much money on PBR.