What the Hell Is Going On Out There?
If I had a nickel for every time a metal show had to be stopped due to an issue with the infrastructure or a band member getting injured, I’d have four nickels since Friday. That’s not a lot, but it’s weird that it’s happened four times.
I genuinely went back and forth on whether to post any single one of these this week. On its own, none of them quite felt worth putting on the site. All four stacked up in the same few days? That’s a story.
Start with the biggest. Monday night in Paris, Iron Maiden were mid-“2 Minutes to Midnight” at La Défense Arena when the lights went out. Not a stage effect. A city-wide power outage dropped Europe’s largest indoor venue into the dark. Backup generators came up, but only enough to run the house lights, and fans sat there for the better part of an hour. When the band finally got going again, the venue’s strict 11:30 curfew ate the encore: 17 songs became 14, no “Aces High,” no “Fear of the Dark.” The kicker is they were filming the night for the upcoming Run For Your Lives tour movie.
Two nights earlier in Essen, Germany, Death To All, the tribute act carrying Chuck Schuldiner’s catalog on the road, were tearing through their set at Turock when the ceiling literally started falling apart overhead. Someone climbed a ladder mid-show to deal with it. Nobody got hurt, the crew handled it, and the band shrugged the whole thing off online: “things got so heavy that even the building needed a break.” Good line. The less funny version: part of a venue ceiling came apart over a packed room mid-set.
Friday in Dublin, Kirk Hammett stepped on a stage cover that buckled under him and went straight off the front of the stage into the crowd during “Seek & Destroy.” He climbed back up, missed maybe a couple of notes, and posted the clip himself a few hours later captioned “Slip & Destroy.” Sixty-three years old and turning a faceplant into a meme the same night. That is the good version of one of these stories.
Charlie Benante is the one that actually stings. The Anthrax and Pantera drummer injured his right hand and is out from June 20 through July 4 on doctor’s orders, which means he misses Hellfest, Copenhell, and Resurrection Fest while Darby Todd fills in behind the kit. He is expected back July 7 in Lisbon. A hand injury for a drummer is not a walk-it-off situation, and watching a guy hand off the biggest festivals of his summer to protect his career is the least funny entry on this list.
Most of this is survivable. The power comes back, the ceiling gets patched, Hammett already made it merch. But four of these in a handful of days is a reminder that the live show, the thing this entire genre is built on, runs on a lot more duct tape than any of us like to admit.
Sources: Iron Maiden (Ultimate Classic Rock), Death To All (Instagram), Kirk Hammett (Instagram), Charlie Benante (Instagram)