Hatebreed/Crowbar

Live in Grand Rapids (2018)

TomTrauma

For me, it was a match made in heavy heaven. A long running East Coast hardcore band teaming up with a long running New Orleans sludge band, and a couple of great, well established supporting acts too. Unfortunately, I wasn’t going to be able to make it to suburban Chicago the following weekend to see Cro-Mags, Eyehategod, Murphy’s Law and FYPM, so I settled for this instead. I kid, of course. Well, sort of. As far as consolation prizes go, this one wasn’t too bad.

Hatebreed was calling this tour 20 Years of Desire and 15 Years of Perseverance, and it seemed appropriate to me. It had been well over 20 years since I’d last seen Crowbar, and at least 15 years since I’d last seen Hatebreed. I haven’t really listened to Hatebreed much in that time, but I’ve enjoyed the last couple of Crowbar albums. Winter is a pretty slow time for touring bands in Michigan, and this early spring show seemed like a good time for me to peek my head out of my igloo. That’s how I found myself at the Intersection in Grand Rapids on Sunday March 18th.

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, I was able to check out the openers without bothering to show up on time. Ironically, once I had checked them out I lost all desire to show up on time. I left a little early, because there was a sold out Pink show at the nearby hockey rink. I knew finding a free spot to park was going to be difficult. (I hate to pay to park.) The first thing I did when I got there was hit the bathroom. (I’m old, and I had stopped at a friend’s house for a couple of Moscow Mules beforehand.) There was a dude in there with a badly busted up face bleeding all over. He said he couldn’t remember what happened. I was there alone, so this made me a little paranoid. I didn’t have a single beer.

I missed Twitching Tongues, but my timing was off a bit and I got there in time to catch most of The Acacia Strain. This was unfortunate. I wasn't very familiar with the band, but I would call their style a mix of hardcore and death metal. It's not as good as it sounds on paper. Maybe it's the worst parts of hardcore and death metal. They wore camo shorts and played guitars with lots of strings. They also seemed to have a lot of fans in the house. I could not get into the singer’s voice at all. Their set was too long and actually took some of the wind out of my sails.

Luckily, Crowbar put things right. They were the band I was most looking forward to seeing, so it’s not surprising that they were the band I most enjoyed. I went all the way up front for their extremely heavy 45 minute set. When they took the stage, frontman Kirk Windstein said, “We’re Crowbar from New Orleans and we’re gonna kick your ass”. Then they proceeded to do just that. Windstein and bassist Todd Strange were both quite animated and really seemed to be enjoying themselves. They were drinking beer (Coors Light for Windstein and High Life for Strange), and they would toast each other when they both went to take a drink. Strange was the bassist in the classic lineup, but only recently rejoined the fold. His return seems to have breathed a new energy into the band. It was damn near heartwarming.

Crowbar was celebrating the 20th anniversary of their Odd Fellows Rest album, so they played a couple in a row from that. They also played some old stuff like “All I Had (I Gave)”, and some newer stuff like “Walk With Knowledge Wisely” and “I Am the Storm”. They have a pretty deep catalog at this point, so I only knew about half the songs. I don’t think the majority of the audience was familiar with them at all, but I feel like they won a lot of them over. They even managed to get a bit of a “CROW-BAR, CROW-BAR” chant going. I last saw Crowbar (with Suffocation) way back in 1995. I hope I don’t have to wait as long for next time.

The chanting picked up considerably for Hatebreed. I hadn’t seen them since they opened for back to back Slayer tours in the early 2000’s. I had been boning up on the Satisfaction is the Death of Desire and Perseverance albums to prepare for this show. I enjoyed them more than I expected. I guess I was a little surprised how well they’ve aged. I kind of figured they were going to play both records all the way through, but that didn’t turn out to be the case. They pretty much played their normal set with a few extra tracks from those early albums thrown in. The crowd was brutal. The pit was huge and excessively violent. There was neither the politeness of metalheads nor the camaraderie of punkers. I’m slow to blame a band for its followers, but these are not my favorite people to see a show with. I think Hatebreed might be the rare band where I prefer their albums to their live show.

Frontman Jamey Jasta was definitely the focal point as he tirelessly bounced around the stage. He was wearing a Cyco Miko bandana, and even seemed to ape some of Muir’s stage moves. Jasta is an interesting character. The dude has an undeniable charisma. The guy is a familiar talking head and is all over the place. He was the former host of MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball, he regularly appears on radio’s Loudwire Nights and hosts his own popular podcast. He’s more famous than his band. (See also Scott Ian from Anthrax and Mark McGrath from Sugar Ray.) His personal fame hasn’t really translated into greater success for his band. I always thought that Hatebreed would do for hardcore what Metallica did for thrash. That is to say that they would drag it into the mainstream. That never really happened. The truth is, Hatebreed drew about 1000 people in a secondary market on a Sunday night. Maybe that’s as mainstream as hardcore was ever meant to be.