My Last Slayer Show
I was looking through my ticket archive and realized today was the seventh anniversary of the last Slayer show I saw. What follows is the (occasionally ridiculous) story of how that night played out with some of the most passionate music fans in the world.
My friend Todd sees that this show is happening and decides it’s the perfect destination for his bachelor party. Out of everyone invited, I’m the only legit Slayer fan of the bunch and certainly the only one that’d seen them prior. I’m naturally incredibly excited that he’s chosen to see Slayer and not to do something cliche like go to New Orleans or a strip club or especially to a strip club in New Orleans. He’s a pretty quirky, but low key guy though so he says, “I just want eat some good BBQ and see a fun show and hang with my friends.”
So I talk to a few of the other guys going and tell them I want to chip in on the groom’s ticket and one guy says he’ll buy it and that we can just pay him back closer to the show date and to just handle our own tickets since it was general admission. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of metal knows that Slayer has some of the most die hard fans of any band in existence and so we’re going to have to be on top of things with buying tickets since Iron City, with its 1,300 person capacity, is a pretty small venue for them. The on sale date arrives and I scoop up a ticket with ease and circle the date on my calendar: April 24, 2015.
A few months pass by and it’s the week of the show I’ve heard nothing from the guys regarding our Friday night plans so I send an email to the group and get a reply from the groom, “We cancelled that idea when we saw the ticket prices. I emailed everybody.” I never got an email and told him as much. He checked his email, “Hey what do you know, I left you off the email accidentally, but we swapped the bachelor party to and are going to see The Dead Milkmen at Saturn instead in a few weeks.” I already had plans that weekend that were non-refundable so I was missing the bachelor party…and now going to see a Slayer show alone.
Friday night rolls around and I stroll into the venue knowing I’m going to have fun, but a little bummed I’m by myself. I decide to head to the bar and grab a drink before the show starts and the most stereotypical Slayer fan you can imagine (clad in all black and covered in tattoos) approaches me and puts his arm around me at the bar and simply yells, “Slaaaaaaaaayer!” and then tells me he’s buying shots and what do I want. I told him if he was buying then I’d have what he was having. He orders up a round of straight Jack Daniels. He then asks me what I want to drink to and once again, I defer to my gracious host and say he should do the toast. The man, whose voice sounded like he’d been gargling gravel in the parking lot before the show, is now yelling for the entire bar to hear, “May the taste of the blood of your enemies be forever on your lips! May your cock stay forever hard! And HAIL FUCKING SLAYER!” We throw the shots back and he’s so into it he orders another round. This time he insists I do the toast. Meekly, I say, “I can’t top your toast sir, so let me just repeat, ‘HAIL FUCKING SLAYER!’” to which he replied, “HAIL FUCKING SLAYER!” and then everyone around is yelling “HAIL SLAYER!” and he walked away not having even introduced himself. Thanks for the shots my man, I should be good after ordering one beer.
I’ve been in the venue less than 10 minutes and it’s already been worth the price of admission and the band is probably half an hour away from playing their first note.
I go stake out a spot on the floor and run into my friend Jeremy Burgess who was reviewing the show for AL.com (you can read his review here.) He seemed pretty psyched to see me since he doesn’t go to a lot of metal shows and I can show him the ropes as well as help him ID song titles for his article.
As Jeremy mentioned, a pit naturally erupted quickly once the music started and my moshing days are largely behind me so I was just trying to rock out to the music and remain vigilant against any errant elbows, feet, etc. that might be headed my way. You can read the setlist and decided for yourself how the show was (it was awesome.) I wasn’t here to review a seven year old show, but just to share a laugh about taking shots with strangers and a bachelor party gone wrong. Cheers and HAIL FUCKING SLAYER!
