Celebrating their 40th anniversary W.A.S.P. embarked on its long-awaited fall tour, bringing along Heavy metal veterans Armored Saint and guitar hero Michael Schenker's MSG to the party at the awesome Tech Port Arena in San Antonio, Tx.
Armored Saint would hit the stage first, giving the audience a set spanning their full career of four decades. John Bush and co. would get the crowd on their feet and keep them there for the duration of the set with songs like "Reign of Fire" and "Can U Deliver"how can you remain seated?
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Michael Schenker (MSG) would hit the stage next. San Antonio has always been a supporter of all things, Schenker, yes both of them including older brother Rudolf who was just here last month with his band the Scorpions. Michael played a blistering set covering all the bases of his musical career including plenty of UFO songs. Frontman Ronnie Romero (Lords of Black, Rainbow, The Ferrymen, Michael Schenker Group) absolutely killed it handling the lead vocal duties.
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With a killer night of music behind me on what could have been a great show in itself, the mighty W.A.S.P. was still yet to come. As the lights went down and the sounds of air raid sirens filled the arena the long-anticipated return of W.A.S.P. was upon us. Opening the show with a medley of some heavy hitters "On Your Knees / The Flame / The Torture Never Stops / and Inside the Electric Circus" the crowd absolutely went wild.
W.A.S.P. last toured the U.S. in 2010, and their last U.S. show took place in 2013 at the M3 Rock Festival. The touring band unfortunately has no original members but, the current lineup of fantastic players has been with Blackie for quite some time now. Mike Duda,{Bass} Doug Blair {Guitar}, and relative newcomer Aquiles Priester,{Drums} who joined in 2017.
Blackie and the band performed an hour, 45-minute set of “hits”, "classics", and fan favorites never diving too deep off into unfamiliar territory as to keep everyone on board. The highlight of the set for me was of course "Blind In Texas" which is a must-play while performing in said state. The night would end much the same way it would begin for 40 years of musical success for W.A.S.P. with what is perhaps their most successful song and the rock anthem "I Wanna Be Somebody"
Setlist :
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The venue must have a no profanity rule, because they did a G-rated version of Chainsaw Charlie, and Blackie did not talk to the audience. They also cut three songs from the setlist that I saw them play two days earlier in Houston.