Megadeth/Slayer bring metal to Moncton
Published Tuesday July 27th, 2010
Legendary rockers share Moncton Coliseum stage tonight
It's been an interesting few months for the metal music community since "the big four" of the thrash metal movement in the 1980s finally buried hatchets and hit the road through Europe together.
Megadeth, Slayer, Metallica and Anthrax toured overseas in June, making the dreams of metalheads everywhere come true.
Two of those groups are now - finally - heading to Moncton.
The Canadian Carnage tour, featuring Megadeth, Slayer and Testament, will take place tonight at the Moncton Coliseum at 6:40 p.m.
The show was originally scheduled to take place last fall. It was rescheduled for earlier this year after Slayer's Tom Araya injured his back, requiring emergency surgery, but was postponed again due to his back issues. In December, prior to the tour's second postponement, Dave Mustaine, Megadeth's ringleader, spoke to the Times & Transcript. At the time, Megadeth and Slayer touring together was a brand new idea, one many fans thought likely would never have happened. Mustaine himself admitted at the time he wasn't sure how it would work.
"When we first got together, we were kind of looking at one another like, OK, are we going to be able to do this and be cool with each other?' And people were expecting me to say something stupid and ruin it. But I'm a different man now," he said, reflecting on a career marked with musical landmarks, but also personal problems with other bands that were profiled by media worldwide.
Early last year, Megadeth and Slayer put their differences aside and shared a stage for the first time in 18 years, touring western Canada.
The tour went well and over time built up into something bigger and better, eventually turning into some dates with Anthrax and Metallica overseas.
"The Canadian audience was the ones who confirmed that this Megadeth/Slayer idea would work," Mustaine said of the band's shows last year. According to one Canadian news outlet: "Tales about war, death, destruction, Satan, aliens and serial killers have never been so much fun..."
Megadeth has undergone many lineup changes over the years since forming in 1983 after Mustaine left the earliest incarnation of Metallica.
Megadeth's current lineup features Mustaine (lead vocals, guitar), Dave Ellefson (bass), Shawn Drover (drums) and Chris Broderick (guitar).
The band rose to prominence with landmark metal albums like Rust In Peace, Peace Sells... But Who's Buying? and Countdown To Extinction. It's expected that tonight, Megadeth and Slayer will each perform their classic 1990 albums in their entirety - Slayer's world-wide, million-selling Seasons In The Abyss and Megadeth's platinum Rust In Peace.
For Slayer - today made up by guitarists Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman, bassist/vocalist Tom Araya, and drummer Dave Lombardo - Seasons was a breakthrough, as it was the group's first album to hit the U.S. Top 40.
For Megadeth, Rust In Peace landed in the top 25 on Billboard charts. It's been hailed as one of the most influential metal albums ever.
Mustaine was excited about his band's Moncton date. Megadeth has never toured out our way before.
"It's going to be really exciting," Mustaine said. "I wouldn't miss it."
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* WHAT: Megadeath/Slayer
* WHEN: Tonight, 6:40 p.m.
* WHERE: Moncton Coliseum
* TICKETS: $64.50 plus service charges. Available from the Moncton Coliseum box office, by phone at 857-4100 or online at www.geg.ca or www.tickets.moncton.ca Tickets already purchased for the postponed Canadian Carnage shows will be honoured for the rescheduled date.
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