Friday Night Videos – Clash of the Titans Tour 30th Anniversary!

Hard to believe it’s been 30 years since the first time I got to see Slayer live in one of the greatest concerts of my life. For those of you unfamiliar, 1991 was probably heavy metal’s peak. In one direction you had the glam metal bands roaming the Top 40 – think Poison, Winger, Bon Jovi, Cinderella, etc. On the other side was metal’s darker side of thrash. Metallica was just getting over and pulling other bands on their coat tails. The next three behind them combined forces for the own tour, known as The Clash of the Titans. And damn, was it solid. Since they were pretty even in terms of popularity, they rotated the lineup between the three of them at each show. Luckily for us, we landed the perfect order, starting with:

Anthrax. We’ll start with one of my favorite songs by them that doesn’t really sound like the rest of their work:

Our seats were lower level, near the side of the stage. And with one band down, we were hoping for Slayer to headline. The moment we saw Megadeth’s stage set go up telling us they were the 2nd act that night, us & the guys in front of us started screaming for Slayer, knowing we had gotten the closing act we wanted. Here’s a great but forgotten track from the Rust in Peace tour that they were supporting:

And of course, rounding out the night were the masters. South of Heaven was one of my favorite Slayer songs to hear live. What’s great about this particular tune is the fact that it’s intro is just guitar & no drums you get the full roar of the crowd cheering the opening chords:

Bonus track – the opening act was some up & comers – did these guys ever amount to anything? I still remember like yesterday them kicking off the show with the opening riff from this tune:

Who ya got?