REVIEW: W.A.S.P. brings the ’80s back at the Regency Ballroom
Blackie Lawless of W.A.S.P. performs in Barcelona, Spain on Nov. 4, 2017. Photo by Xavi Torrent/Redferns.
SAN FRANCISCO — If the 2020s have been getting you down so far, you should have been at the Regency Ballroom on Friday night, because heavy metal mainstays W.A.S.P. and Armored Saint brought the 1980s back to a very receptive crowd for one glorious night.
The age of both the people and the concert T-shirts suggested that a large percentage of the crowd consisted of fans in the bands’ heyday, and most of them broke out the old eyeliner and hairspray for the occasion. Included in that group was W.A.S.P. frontman (and sole remaining original member) Blackie Lawless who, aside from age, had the same aesthetic as the decades-old music videos playing behind him.
Lawless and the band opened with a medley of “On Your Knees,” “The Flame,” “The Torture Never Stops” and “Inside the Electric Circus,” the last of which went especially well with the circus-themed set decoration. While opening a show with a medley isn’t the most common choice, in this case the rapid-fire snippets of hits set the tone for the pace of the show.
Then W.A.S.P. played “L.O.V.E. Machine,” one of its signature hits, and the crowd went wild. Nearly everyone sang along. People high-fived strangers seemingly involuntarily. The atmosphere got closer and closer to a W.A.S.P. show in 1986, but with fewer recreational drugs and more arthritis drugs. Following it with “Wild Child,” the band took it another step, farther causing widespread head-banging, though many were out of practice and at least one pair of heads collided.
“This is the 40th anniversary of the band, and it’s also the 30th anniversary of The Crimson Idol,” Lawless told the crowd, and announced they’d be playing a couple songs from that album. While Idol has its fans, and while it’s probably the most critically acclaimed of W.A.S.P.’s discography, the prog-inspired rock opera changed the mood a bit.
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The three songs W.A.S.P. played from the album—”The Idol,” “The Great Misconceptions of Me” and “Chainsaw Charlie (Murders in the New Morgue)”—combined for more than 25 minutes of the roughly 90-minute show. Eventually, the band started to lose a crowd and things got a bit weird. One man, for example, who wouldn’t look out of place shouting at a youth soccer referee, relieved himself in the back and was removed by security without… returning his member where it belonged.
That said, it didn’t take much of “Blind in Texas” to get fans right back, fist-pumping and singing the chorus.
And if “Blind in Texas” wasn’t enough, the encore made any concept album detours worthwhile. After an intro explaining the Parents Music Resource Center, started by the so-called Washington Wives led by future Second Lady Tipper Gore, and its campaign to censor music.
This was all to set up the song that most drew the PMRC’s ire, the notorious and legendary “Animal (Fuck Like a Beast).” Whether you’re a fan of W.A.S.P. or heavy metal as a genre, a performance of that song is an experience everyone should have. Even performed by a man in his mid 60s, it’s a song best experienced live.
The rest of the encore—a cover of The Who’s “The Real Me” and the hit “I Wanna Be Somebody”—brought the house down and was clearly audible for nearly two blocks in every direction. Exactly as a heavy metal show should be.
Opening the show were fellow 40-year-old heavy metal pioneers Armored Saint, lesser known by the general public but revered by metalheads. The band kicked off the night with the driving “Reign of Fire.”
“Let’s make it feel a little bit like 1982,” lead singer John Bush said before “Nervous Man” (which is from 1985, but close enough).
The Sandoval brothers—guitarist Phil and drummer Gonzo—haven’t lost a step over the years, and Bush’s voice is at the same high as it’s always been. While Armored Saint played songs from its later albums, as recent as 2015 and 2020, even older stuff like “Chemical Euphoria” and “March of the Saint” sounded at least as good as it did in its younger days.
It just goes to show that while the bands and the fans may have gotten older, metal never dies—it just gets more practice.
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Follow publisher Daniel J. Willis at Twitter.com/BayAreaData.