As for the opening acts, I’m not sure why Accept got a thrash/death metal band called NARCOTIC WASTELAND that I later learned is led by Dallas Toller-Wade, the former guitarist and singer for the death metal band NILE. They were okay but they sure as hell didn’t match the traditional, fist-in-the-air, and air-guitar-heavy metal vibe of a band like Accept whatsoever, and I’m surprised Accept or their management didn’t scout out a newer but more traditional sounding heavy metal band to open for them. Like, geez, couldn’t they get WOLF or ENFORCER to jump onto their tour? As for Michael Schenker’s opening act, he had ERIC MARTIN of 80s pop-metal one hit wonders MR. BIG. While, I suppose Martin was more appropriate to the Schenker’s melodic hard rock, heavy metal, and good time rock ‘n’ roll vibe, he was too light for my taste. I mean, Eric Martin was playing an acoustic guitar the whole time, and it wasn’t even an acoustic set.
Anyway, Accept, who performed at the Token Lounge in a blue collar Detroit burb called Westland, plugged through song after song in their 90 minute set with barely a pause for singer Mark Tornillo to tell the crowd, “We’re gonna do some classics.” And, with Accept now having six members, the stage set-up was incredibly and awesomely symmetrical. Bassist Martin Motnik, drummer Christopher Williams, and rhythm guitarist Uwe Lulis played the role of the human metronome in the back, occasionally walking to the front in various, pre-choreographed formations before returning to their respective spots, while sexy, bald-headed, ten-foot-tall lead guitarist Wolf Hoffman, second lead guitarist and sixth member Philip Shouse, and singer Mark Tornillo got to be *interesting* up at the front.
Though, in all honesty, as much as Mark Tornillo, who looks like the mechanic at the local Harley shop, can belt it out in a raspy voice that vaguely resembles Udo Dirkschneider, nobody will ever truly replace the mighty Udo Dirkschneider. Hence, this is probably why Tornillo barely said anything, and the show could just keep going and going with no time wasted on pointless and annoying stage banter. No, the real show-stealers were Wolf Hoffman and his foil Philip Shouse, who played harmonized guitar leads in a way that I don’t believe Accept had ever done before and did the synchronized, swinging, side-to-side guitar thing that might come off as cheesy to people who don’t like heavy metal.
And it’s obvious that Wolf Hoffman and crew are not living in the past, as the show was loaded with songs from the Mark Tornillo albums; specifically “Teutonic Terror”, “The Abyss”, and “Pandemic” from Blood of the Nations, “Hung, Drawn, and Quartered” from Stalingrad, and “Zombie Apocalypse”, “Symphony of Pain”, “Overnight Sensation”, and “The Undertaker” from latest album Too Mean to Die. I was kinda hoping they’d do “Dying Breed” from Blind Rage and “Analog Man” from The Rise of Chaos, but then they wouldn’t be able to fit in the classic stuff which made them such an important force in metal in the first place.
And, because they only had a limited amount of time, they played a medley of truncated versions of deep cuts from the Udo era; specifically “Demon’s Night”, “Starlight”, “Losers and Winners”, and “Flash Rockin’ Man.” But, they also knocked out full versions of “Restless and Wild”, “Princess of the Dawn”, “Metal Heart”, and “Objection Overruled”, while, of course, playing concert standards, like proto-thrash rager and first Accept song I’d ever heard, “Fast as a Shark”, for which a mosh-pit failed to break out, and “Balls to the Wall”, for a which a mosh pit nearly did break out when some jackass rushed the dance floor to the front of the stage. One song they did NOT play, which surprised basically everyone, is the hilarious cuss-word anger-spew “Son of a B*tch.”
I told a buddy that I thought this was because the Mark Tornillo albums are entirely cuss-word free – unless you consider “bastard” a cuss word, then they have cuss words in “Beat the Bastards” – and that’s why they didn’t play “Son of a B*tch.” But, clearly I’m full of crap, since there’s ample footage of Accept playing the song which has the brilliant chorus, “son of a b*tch/kiss my ass/son of a b*tch/you assh*le” and the line “c*cksucker, motherf*cker, I was right.” They also neglected to play a single song from Russian Roulette, which sucks because I would have loved to hear “TV War” or “Monsterman.”
Otherwise it was incredible seeing this metal powerhouse on a two foot stage, forcing the musicians right into my face…
…unlike when I saw the Michael Schenker Group the following on night on the way too high Harpo’s stage, which is two feet above the tallest member of the audience! Seriously, this makes it impossible for a band to ever get up close and personal with the crowd, because if they do, they risk falling off the stage. And it forces audience members to stand several feet away from the stage and crane their necks upward to watch the band.
None of this is of course the fault of Michael Schenker or his group; nor is the fact that they played at Harpo’s, which is in the most ghetto of shitholes in downtown Detroit, and where I and several other metal heads had their car windows smashed out when we went to see Overkill. So, needless to say, I tend to avoid Harpo’s unless someone just drops me off there, which, thankfully, my brother did.
Anyway, unlike Accept, the Michael Schenker Group was totally asymmetrical. The legendary guitar wunderkind, who shred axe for the SCORPIONS, UFO, and various incarnations of his Michael Schenker Group for five straight decades, was all the way to the right of the stage (I guess, his stage left) wearing his signature Russian fur hat and skinny jeans, while lead singer Ronnie Romero was somewhere in the middle constantly wandering about the stage hyping the crowd, and rhythm guitarist and keyboardist Steve Mann and bassist Barend Courbois were shuffled to the left and back, where nobody the in the crowd really paid much attention to them. Oh, and the drummer is BODO S. from U.D.O.!!!
Ah, but like Accept, they rocked without pause. And, in spite of being the Michael Schenker group, they had no problem playing half a set worth of UFO classics; “Doctor, Doctor”, “Lights Out”, and the extended, Strangers in the Night version of “Rock Bottom” in the main set and “Let It Roll” “Shoot Shoot”, “Natural Thing”, “Too Hot to Handle”, and “Only You Can Rock Me” in the “N-core.” Granted, I’m not sure how much of an “N-core” it is if they only played for 90 minutes. But the bottom line is, I saw Schenker doing Schenker-era UFO tunes, and I saw UFO three years ago on their farewell tour doing Schenker-era UFO tunes, and, while the final incarnation of UFO did a fine job with the Schenker material, there’s nothing quite like hearing Schenker performing the songs himself; even if it’s with a different band.
But, as for Michael Schenker’s OWN material, unlike the Accept show, where the band played a lot more recent songs, the MSG only played one song each from his three latest albums; “Emergency” from their most current release Universal, “Sail the Darkness” from the previous studio album Immortal, and “We Are the Voice” from Revelation, which is technically by Michael Schenker Fest but we all know that, in the world of Michael Schenker, where his albums have seven different lead singers, such distinctions are negligible. And the rest of the set was dedicated to material from the first four Michael Schenker Group albums; unleashing cult hard rock and melodic heavy metal favorites like “Into the Arena”, “Armed and Ready”, “Cry for the Nations”, “Looking for Love”, “Red Sky”, and “Assault Attack” onto the rather miniscule Harpo’s crowd.
And, geez, I’m caught between a rock and a hard place, since I can’t exactly complain that MSG played eight UFO tunes; but, at the same time, I’m a big supporter of legacy bands playing new stuff and showing fans that they’re still capable of cranking out great new material. If you recall, Immortal was in my top ten favorite records of 2021, and the opening track, “Drilled to Kill”, was one of my favorite songs from that year. On top of that, the new MSG album Universal is also quite good. So, it would have been nice to hear more of the new songs; especially their cover of “In Search of the Peace of Mind” by the SCORPIONS from their debut album Lonesome Crow, on which Michael Schenker made his grand recording debut half a century ago. Now, THAT would have been a sight/sound for the ages! But they didn’t, and that would mean, in order to not remove any other songs from the current live set, they’d have to play for more than 90 minutes!!! Possibly as long as one hour and forty-five minutes or even TWO HOURS!!! And we wouldn’t want these aging rockers to strain themselves, now, would we
It’s like, I was going to say, the benefit of a shorter set is that I can get out of Harpo’s and out of the worst part of downtown Detroit quicker, but then I remembered, I didn’t drive there.
Edwin Oslan
Revenge or Riff Raff
24th October, 2022
Edwin Oslan
Revenge or Riff Raff
24th October, 2022
0 comments:
Post a Comment