Sepultura/Obituary/Agnostic Front @ Palladium Times Square, New York, NY 10/12/24

This was a bill of bands I hadn't seen in a while. The headliner, Sepultura, was the one that I saw most recently back in 2012 at Irving Plaza. By that point the founding brothers Max & Igor Cavalera were long gone. Actually current vocalist Derrick Greene joined in 1998, so it has been a while and now more than half of the timeline of this 40 year band. Still, it says something that "Ratamahatta/Roots Bloody Roots" from 1996's Roots were still the peak of the show. That album was special because it was unique, combining thrash metal with an indigenous Brazilian influence. Guitarist Andreas Kisser and founding member, bass player Paulo Jr. have decided to break up after this anniversary tour supposedly, but you know how retirement tours go when the musicians are healthy and selling tickets.

Obituary I last saw in 2008 at BB Kings. At the time, I thought the main problem was the volume in the venue was very low from Bloomberg's then recently passed noise ordinances. At the Palladium it was a bigger room and there wasn't that sort of problem. I remember Larry Lifeless from Kilslug talking about them which motivated me to buy their catalog and check them out at the time.

The longest time between shows for me today was Agnostic Front, who I last saw with GBH on the Punks and Skins tour at the Paradise in Boston 1986. That's a long time! They since have recorded their biggest, show closing song "Gotta Go." I heard that song in a bar the other night and thought it sounded good and made me look forward to seeing the band for the first time in 38 years. I actually met Vinnie Stigmata after Gogol Bordello played after one of their shows last year walking to the after party bar and he struck me as super nice and genuine which also gave me the urge to check in to one of their shows again. He never gets tired of people from all walks of life talking about “Victim In Pain” which was a big radio record for my show back then when they were underground and not mass marketed by Combat Core. Well, they are something different now, more like an institution that doesn’t need marketing, especially in NYC. They are never going to get bigger or smaller. Even if the circle pit is 10 times the size, there doesn't seem to be the violent edge the band once had. Roger Miret nowadays is a two time cancer treatment survivor looking in great shape onstage. Roger is 60, came from Cuba and built himself and now he's gonna push you. He is gonna put the crowd through the paces as your NYHC workout instructor. Circle pit, jumping, moving are all mandated. Part of this might be strategy because if everybody is in the pit there isn't really the liability of stage diving. In the old days, you had to have an idea of what was going on above you as well as around you and you still might have gotten landed on. My arm and 6th sense got very very good at catching feet after getting clocked a couple times as a teen. You learn.

Unfortunately I couldn't get to the Palladium from South Slope in time for long running Brazilian death metal band Claustrofobia. I was in the building by 7pm, but they must have went on at 6:15 or something. I wasn't fully convinced they had already played when the stage was being set up for AF with the Obituary banner behind them.