Testament -- Worcester, MA -- February 16th, 2013

[the deathmetaler]

Testament:
-intro-
1. Rise Up
2. More Than Meets the Eye
3. Burnt Offerings
4. Into the Pit
5. Practice What You Preach
6. Riding the Snake
7. Eyes of Wrath
8. Trial By Fire
9. The Haunting
10. The New Order
11. Over the Wall
12. Disciples of the Watch
--encore--
13. D.N.R. (Do Not Resuscitate)
14. 3 Days of Darkness
15. The Formation of Damnation

Overkill:
-intro-
1. Come and Get It
2. Rotten to the Core
3. Wrecking Crew
4. Bring Me the Night
5. Electric Rattlesnake
6. Ironbound
7. Elimination
8. Fuck You

Flotsam and Jetsam:
-intro-
1. Ugly Noise
2. Iron Tears
3. Escape from Within
4. Hammerhead
5. Gitty Up
6. No Place For Disgrace

*Lich King also played but I do not remember their full setlist.

[anomynous]

I saw Skolnick tweet they cut out the new stuff to "keep Chuck's voice intact" or something because of so many shows without a break, but if I got that set I'd be pissed.

Edit: "For tonight's show, to save Chuck's voice (worn from so many shows in a row), we did mostly classic songs. But it went well-great crowd!"

[Nater]

Yeah he apologized a couple times and even said after the show that he was sorry for the shitty death metal concert.


I thought they were pretty good regardless though but Overkill blew me away with even how Bobby was sick he still sounded good.


Best part about the night? It was a free ticket and my birthday!

[sarsip]

Testament will tour the shit out of this album so they will make up for tonight.

I remember some of Lich King's set;

Ed-209
Predator
?
Combat Mosh
Crossover Bands write songs that are too short (Something like that)
We Came To Conquer

I am in the process of really getting into them. My apologies for the omission.

Candy Striper were pretty cool!!

[PVH5150]

2 of my friends' bands (Black Mass & Vivisepulture) were playing the afternoon upstairs show. Anybody see them? If so, thoughts?

[Sanitarium78]

So the three new songs they cut really put that much strain on his voice? I would think TFOD and the songs from The Gathering would be harsher on Chuck's voice. You would think with the higher range vocals in some of the older material would be worse for his voice as well.

I hope Chuck's OK enough tonight to sing the new stuff. I really wanna hear those three songs and the odds are good we won't get them again on this tour after they play here tonight.

[IrritatedTrout]

Wow, I'd be so pissed if I got that set. The new stuff was the highlight of the other night.

[El Gordo]

I'm surprised everyone is so upset that the new stuff got cut. The new album is totally mediocre, so I'd definitely take a bunch of classics over new stuff... depending on how Chuck actually sang the old stuff. If his voice is shot, that would really suck.

[Kevin-J]

We got screwed all the way around in Worcester. Both Overkill and Flotsam each cut a song from their regular set and Testament dropped 3 new songs for 2 songs I've been hearing live since seeing them on the Practice tour.

I'm a huge Testament fan, but I don't buy the reason for his voice being burnt out. If it was, they would have postponed the DVD shoot the night before. What probably happened was that he strained himself giving it all for the shoot and those of us seeing them the night after the shoot got the short end of the stick.

This is why you schedule DVD shoots at the end of a tour or as a stand-alone show. To schedule a shoot in the middle of a tour, especially in the winter in the northeast, is a bad idea on paper, and the Worcester show payed the price.

[Onioner]

Originally Posted by Kevin-J

We got screwed all the way around in Worcester. Both Overkill and Flotsam each cut a song from their regular set and Testament dropped 3 new songs for 2 songs I've been hearing live since seeing them on the Practice tour.

I'm a huge Testament fan, but I don't buy the reason for his voice being burnt out. If it was, they would have postponed the DVD shoot the night before. What probably happened was that he strained himself giving it all for the shoot and those of us seeing them the night after the shoot got the short end of the stick.

This is why you schedule DVD shoots at the end of a tour or as a stand-alone show. To schedule a shoot in the middle of a tour, especially in the winter in the northeast, is a bad idea on paper, and the Worcester show payed the price.

This a million times over. I'm normally one to totally support Testament in everything they do, but they really didn't handle the DVD thing very well. Nowadays, the best live albums are raw snapshots of a tour. Making the DVD show a different one in terms of both the performance and the setlist makes it only a really cool keepsake for those who attended that particular show, not everyone who attended the whole tour. That's why Maiden and Rush can crank out good live records like no tomorrow, they're tour souvenirs, not show souvenirs.

It sucks that Worcester had to deal with the consequences of the DVD shoot, although I can see why they dropped the new songs. At the LA show Chuck struggled/held back the most on the new songs, you can definitely tell he saved his absolute best performance for the studio takes, which is definitely smart in the long run. The older stuff doesn't require as much from him in terms of vocal versatility, and he can pretty much speak/sing Over the Wall if he wants (and basically did until a couple years ago). It might sound weird, but Chuck singing at maybe 80-90% while on tour now will do him a whole lot of good when he hits his later 50s and 60s. It's the reason why Bruce Dickinson and Klaus Meine still totally own live, they held back onstage in the 80s and didn't destroy their voice night after night. And that's why Rob Halford is a shell of his old self, even if dude is sounding way better than he has in like 10 years. Rob screamed his throat out onstage all throughout the seventies and eighties which was awesome at the time, but the long term damage he caused is more or less irreparable now.