Fans entering the Aztec Theatre on Saturday night may have expected a heavy metal concert. What they got was so much more: a conglomeration of historical celebration, hell unfolding into not one but two walls of death, and one of the genre’s most inspiring examples of living life to the fullest all wrapped up in a clash for the ages.
The Klash of the Titans tour featuring Testament, Kreator and Possessed delivered on more fronts than simply reinvigorating memories of the 1990-91 Clash of the Titans trek that tore through North America behind Slayer, Anthrax, Megadeth and a then-novice Alice In Chains.
Testament’s 1-hour, 7-minute closing co-headlining set brought its first two albums, 1987’s The Legacy and 1988’s The New Order, back to life — something the Bay Area thrashers originally did during the inaugural 70000 Tons of Metal cruise in 2011, which Alamo True Metal also witnessed up close.
This time, Testament may have become the first band in history to tour in support of the remastering of classic albums. And this time, the mainstays of those two records in vocalist Chuck Billy and guitarists Alex Skolnick and Eric Peterson chose not to play them in sequence or in entirety but to mix the best songs from each into a melting pot of mosh pit inducing fury.
Along with bassist Steve DiGiorgio, who began the set with a five-string instrument and ended it with a unique three-string version and new drummer Chris Dovas, Testament allowed itself to recreate deep cuts such as “A Day of Reckoning” and “Do or Die” and mix them with all-time favorites “Over the Wall,” “The New Order” and “Trial By Fire.”
Much like the cancer-surviving Billy dedicated “Do or Die,” the first song he ever worked on upon joining the group as it was transitioning between calling itself Legacy and Testament, to a friend of his restricken with a disease, ATM would like to produce this article especially for those in and around the author’s former stomping grounds of St. Petersburg, Florida, and all along the Florida Gulf Coast still persevering through the aftermath of Hurricane Milton. That includes personal friends unable to watch this tour three days before the San Antonio stop at Jannus Landing in St. Pete due to that visit’s cancellation. Hopefully through this piece of work and its art, they will feel as if they were at the Aztec as well, and they can get a taste of Testament’s set through ATM’s Facebook Live footage of “The Preacher” and “The Haunting” (no professional video was allowed).
Testament ended its performance eight minutes earlier than the venue’s official set times, which would’ve been ample time to include the first album’s “Curse of the Legions of Death” and second album’s Aerosmith cover “Nobody’s Fault.”
Nevertheless, watching the Aztec’s patrons overcome a dearth of available room to mosh their hearts out thanks to the venue’s multi-layered levels of general admission space in close proximity to one another by body surfing on “A Day of Reckoning” and letting it all hang out on closer “Into the Pit” was a sight to behold.
And here’s something to put the albums’ longevity into perspective for ya: The Legacy and The New Order are 11 and 12 years older, respectively, than the drummer who performed them on this night.
The confined space, however, did nothing to stop Kreator frontman Mille Petrozza from performing with the same intensity as if he was in front of 80,000 maniacs at his home nation’s annual Wacken Open Air festival.
Making their second appearance at the Aztec in 17 months after supporting Death Angel here May 23, 2023, Kreator made it clear that hell was about to morph into the laps of those who dared to allow the band to take them on the journey.
Six stage-prop corpses hung from the rafters while three inflatable demons towered over Petrozza, guitarist Sami Yli-Sirnio, former Dragonforce bassist Frederic Leclercq and drummer Jurgen Reil. Petrozza bellowed all of his lyrics with bombastic fury as Kreator (and Testament and Possessed, for that matter) played roughly 80 percent of their respective sets in a flurry of bright blood red lighting.
Petrozza demanded two walls of death (see 65-photo gallery), but even more menacing and horns-inducing was his desire to know “Is there something following you” during the riff mastery of “Phobia.”
The hellacious tone continued throughout the co-headlining performances of “666,” “Phantom Antichrist” and “Enemy of God.” Watch ATM Facebook Live footage of “Hail to the Hordes,” 1989 classic “Betrayer” and “Satan is Real” and view the setlist in the photo gallery, as Kreator was arguably one of the clearest-sounding bands in Aztec history. Everything about the band’s set was crisp, hard-hitting and memorable.
Petrozza and Possessed vocalist Jeff Becerra first met when the Berlin Wall in the former’s country still existed. Now in 2024, they’re touring together, and the latter has served simultaneously as arguably one of the founding fathers of death metal while exhibiting his own brand of perseverance through personal tragedy.
As most vocalists tend to do in concert, Becerra asked the Aztec’s visitors who was seeing his band live for the first time. While many raised their horns and voices in approval — with many of them likely not familiar with Becerra’s story — the singer carried on musically as can be viewed via ATM’s footage of “The Exorcist” and “Demon.”
But to say he’s carried on in life would be the ultimate understatement.
Becerra was shot during a 1989 robbery while buying cigarettes and is paralyzed from the chest down. For 3 1/2 years, he was on a waiting list just to try out a pair of robotic legs before finally receiving the chance three decades later to walk for the first time in 2019.
Chew on that for a few minutes.
That year, Possessed released its third and most recent album Revelations of Oblivion, the follow-up to 1985’s Seven Churches and 1986’s Beyond the Gates. Becerra continues to make music, sing for the masses, headbang and will likely forever be known as the one who invented death metal.
Oh, by the way, Becerra also has had nine eye surgeries for cataracts.
Saturday night wasn’t simply a klash of the titans. It was an occasion to unleash pent-up emotions in remembrance of someone those in attendance may have lost recently. It served as a reminder those on stage have had their lives disrupted in horrible ways too but have worked immensely hard every day to come out on top and continue to do what they were put on this earth to do. And it was simply another chance to enjoy classic thrash and death metal at its finest.
Whatever your reason for attending, there’s no denying that Testament, Kreator and Possessed could not have provided a more ideal soundtrack and antidote to each and every fan’s own personal hell.
May the metal titans continue to heal us all as only they know how.
