Show Review: Havok, Vicious Attack, Trials, and Product of Waste, May 17th at Reggie's in Chicago, IL

I have made a habit lately of going out and videotaping my friend Megadeth John's band Vicious Attack. They play straightforward thrash metal in the vein of Slayer and their motto is "Show up, Destroy, Leave" haha, They may not destroy the place every time, but all in all they're one of the best metal bands in Chicago right now. One of the bonuses of going to their shows, is that they play with bands which either really suck or are really good (Havok for instance). Sometimes I like to film horrible metal bands of which you can find a truly good (or bad) example of in one my past blog posts. This particular show started off a little later than on schedule due to a poor turnout. For awhile it seemed like there was only the bands and their friends, slowly some other assorted metalheads began to trickle in. The turnout of the night was in the end fairly poor, but what the crowd lacked in numbers they made up for in enthusiasm. I had a really good buzz I might add, and had a good time. Product of Waste was up first, they sounded like exactly that, a piece of shit. Just another generic metal bands whose music was entirely forgettable. I watched them for a couple songs and then me and John went downstairs to the band "Green Room". I should add that John got me a band wristband because I watched their merch table for a bit and filmed them. There was to behold an interesting amenity on the way down the stairs.....a beer vending machine, which I thought was really cool. I didn;t have a camera with me so I asked this dude Adam to use his phone and send it to me.





The green room itself was pretty cool. Upon entry there is a row of lockers, walk into the room and turn the corner and there is a multitude of couches and a bathroom. I hung out for awhile and went upstairs. Midway through the show two guys from Havok came down and started smoking some delicious smelling medicinal marijuana straight from Colorado. Now I understood why they call it "The Green Room". By the time the next band went on there was a front row of people headbanging and fistpumping Vicious Attack took the stage, and played a set of some solid thrash metal. You can clearly hear me on the video of it yell out for a Sepultura cover which they didn't play. They did play some new originals which were decent but not as good as their CD EP material. It was a good set though. Trials was next and wasn't anything that really stood out to me. While watching the merch earlier I saw that the headliner Havok from Colorado has some cool shirts. I honestly didn't go there anticipating on filming them, but on the strength of the T Shirt designs I decided that I would. I'm really glad I did as they put on a great show and had everyone in the place entertained, and even with the not so big crowd put everything they had into their set. When they first came out and said "This is Havok from Denver, Colorado and it's time to fucking party!" I knew I had a winner What amazed me more is that they are usually a quartet, but are playing shows as a 3-piece on this tour for some reason. They seriously killed it, their set was the highlight of the night for me and for awhile it made me forget about all other problems I had in life....it was like meditation. During their set the 1 guitar player dude played all these killer leads and had spirited vocals. The bassist was all over the stage, putting one leg up on the amp and doing all these metal poses. A true showman, haha. They sounded like awesome thrash metal with killer guitar solos and semi melodic vocals. I should also mention that they had huge perms which they were freely headbanging with during their set. Awesome. They announced one of their songs as "Morbid Symmetry", I thought they said "Mormon Symmetry" and me and John had a good laugh. I'm sort of glad my camera battery died out during their set, because it gave me a chance to mosh and circle pit a little bit.


Below are the first parts of the Vicious Attack and Havok sets. For the rest of the sets go to my youtube channel at http://www.youtube.com/charlienumbers





Thanks to Adam for taking the vending machine photos on his camera and sending them to me. Shout out to Shane Merrill for booking the show.