riotfest1As we mentioned earlier this week, Chicago festival Riot Fest will be having their 10th anniversary this year. And in addition to spreading to two additional cities and possibly serving as the comeback for GWAR, the Fest has a few more tricks up it’s sleeve. One of the partners of the festival, Michael Petryshyn, has decided to have 10 of the bands playing perform 10 of their albums in their entirety. Yesterday, Glenn Danzig confirmed that he would be part of it, with his post-Misfits/pre -solo career band Samhain performing Initium:

It was just announced that DANZIG’s SAMHAIN will be performing the full INITIUM album at Riotfest in Chicago this September as part of Riotfest’s”10 Years-10 EssentialAlbums”. along with Slayer, Janes Addiction & 7 Others who will also be Peforming their own essential albums. This year also marks the 30 year anniversary of the release of SAMHAIN ‘INITIUM’. INCREDIBLE!!!

That’s right – according to Rolling Stone, Petryshyn was inspired by seeing The Violent Femmes playing their first album unannounced last year and decided to make “10 Years. 10 Essential Albums” part of the fest. Slayer will be playing Reign in Blood from front to back and Jane’s Addiction will be playing Nothing’s Shocking. Other bands playing albums front to back include The Offspring, Weezer, Descendents, Naked Raygun, NOFX, The Get Up Kids and a mystery band. Slayer have played Reign in Blood in its entirety before – in fact, they did it for a whole tour. It’ll be kind of bittersweet to see the album, which has Jeff Hanneman’s fingerprints all over it, being played by the current incarnation of the band, but the album’s timeless. Slayer, along with Weezer and NOFX, will also play the albums at the Denver incarnation of the fest.

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Bram Teitelman