Valzer delle candele, my fellow concert junkies.
The end of another great year in concerts is coming to light, so it’s now time I encapsulated my 2024 of attending gigs. Everyone this year in metal has memories of gigs and tours that will forever alter how they view a concert experience. Of the twenty-nine events that left me with the one thought of “that was fucking amazing” days after at work, twenty of which yours truly covered for Metal Insider, this year will be remembered for some iconic nights out. An overall package featuring two to four heavy-hitting groups is a constant that I am always all in for.
Point being, as I close out my second calendar year being a megastar writer for Metal Insider, you know that your support is always appreciated and I hope you have a hundred thousand more nights to remember next year – wrapping up 2024 with my favorite concerts. Are you ready for 2025?
ALRIGHT! The results are in for my top ten favorite concerts of the year! Let’s venture on with the re-cap!
10) Exodus at Warsaw on 11/22/24
My last thrash bash of the year brought a billing so refined that as I traveled to Warsaw in Greenpoint on 11/22, I thought, okay, this is a mixture of bands for hardcore and thrash fans. One of the all-time iconic Bay Area thrash bands formed in 1980, known as Exodus, brutalized the stage on a frosty and bitterly cold November evening alongside Havok, Candy, and Dead Heat for New York’s finest moshketeers to fuck some shit up, wrecking some necks, and breaking some bones in the process. All four bands were great. After one more night of toxic-waltzing delights, I went back to reality feeling prideful that I got to write some of the best damn live gig reviews you will ever read to wrap up another adrenalized year of covering concerts for Metal Insider. Heavy metal foreverrr!
09) Abbath at the Gramercy Theatre on 5/25/24
One of the three founding members of the Doom Occulta named Abbath, is a never-melt icy obelisk in extreme metal’s history and a massive influence, considering the three equally sharp bands in Black Anvil, Imperial Triumphant, and Final Gasp that supported Abbath. I strongly recommend you see either group if they’re performing in your area. If you have not seen Abbath live, do yourselves a favor and see him before visa costability halts some of our favorite Norwegian metal acts from touring the States. Abbath made up for a five-year absence and gave six hundred and sixty-five percent and sent the frostbitten denizens of Blashyrkh back to reality with Withstand the Fall of Time. All four bands brought a formidable time with a different vibe of befouled aggression. I enjoyed seeing one of the visceral entertainers of such spooky forest-dwelling music and had a marvelous time seeing three other equally great bands bring the hailfire to the Big Apple.
08) Clutch at the Brooklyn Paramount on 9/05/24
Photo Credit: Melinda Oswandel
Clutch, a pillar of desert rock, with the swaggering Rival Sons and the acid fuzz of Fu Manchu made their way to New York for the opening night of their late summer tour. About 2,700 electrified the Brooklyn Paramount to honor twenty years of the Blast Tyrant album. The Brooklyn Paramount is a great venue – and a convenient location for live events. It’s akin to Brooklyn Steel but a lot more spacious.
Overall, I thought the show was outstanding. I would compare it second to Municipal Waste in February for one of the best concerts I’ve seen in 2024. The love of music shared between these three bands is simple: they’re the three-headed King Ghidorah of like-minded heavy groovers, showing off the best the ’70s, ’90s, and ’00s had to offer for a triple threat package of great songs, stage presence, big riffs, and much more. See any of those three bands live, because either will be one of the finest you’ve ever seen.
07) Nails at the Brooklyn Monarch on 9/20/24
Photo Credit: Hristo Shindov
Summer’s great and summer shows even more especially since I got to wrap mine up with one more head-busting night of sweltering violence. On 9/20, I made our way to one of my favorite local venues, the Brooklyn Monarch, to catch Nails with 200 Stab Wounds, Mammoth Grinder, and Stabbed. Holy fuck this was one of the most intense gigs I’ve been to in 2024. Nonstop slams for four hours straight! It was crowd surfers and stage divers all night long, but we never gave a shit. It’s Nails! These guys are all about getting knocked in the face! Overall it was a fantastic night.
06) W.A.S.P. at the Hammerstein Ballroom on 11/16/24
I was initially disappointed when I took in the news that Death Angel and Unto Others was dropped from the bill, as they would have been a more thematic fit for the charming idea of W.A.S.P celebrating forty-years of their essential eponymous release. Having already seen Armored Saint open for Queensryche six months prior on Long Island, but alas, it was admirable seeing them bringing fifty minutes of classic metal that nodded to the best of their discography. With that minor criticism aside, the brainchild of Blackie Lawless stunned all of us with ten amazing tracks of bangers that birthed that spellbinding formula the band has built up the past forty-two years on tracks like I Wanna Be Somebody, and some deep cut treats that the die-hards of the New York chapter of the W.A.S.P. nation threw down haaaarrrrd for, like the Flame, Hellion, and Tormentor. That’s the stuff that makes an album commemoration fun, alongside just killer performances all around from Doug Blair, Mike Duda, and Aquiles Priester. Plus, the bonus encore medleys featuring Scream Until You Like It, The Headless Children, and more was a treat to witness.
Having become a big W.A.S.P. fan over the years, my take away from Blackie’s monologue about Trump and freedom of speech before closing the set with Blind in Texas is it does not matter if you are a liberal, a conservative, or an independent – the vibe you get from being at a W.A.S.P. show is that metal is for everyone. If metal is our religion, then Blackie is our Buddy Christ.
