The inaugural two-day Metal Injection Festival was held at the Observatory OC and House of Blues Anaheim on September 16th and 17th! The fest was sponsored by Metal Blade Records, Nuclear Blast, Century Media, Thunderflix, and ESP Guitars. You may remember that Metal Injection founder and company director Frank Godla saved our sanity during the pandemic with the virtual festival, “Slay at Home.” I remember sitting there crying happy tears that we metalheads could be together even through our screens. That went so well, that he decided to do his first live festival! Unfortunately for me, I somehow missed it was a two-day event and only saw Sunday with Testament headlining. Testament has been one of my favorite bands since 1989 and I may have had tunnel vision when I saw that they were headlining on Sunday. I did hear fans and fellow colleagues talking about how amazing night one was!
I dropped in on night two which was held at House of Blues Anaheim!
It’s a great spot right off Disney Way with a parking garage, restaurants, and shops all right there. It’s such a cool venue with two stages, custom band skateboard decks covering the walls, plenty of room for merch tables, an outdoor smoking section, and places to hang out without feeling claustrophobic. There was a table with a big screen and we were asked if we had ever heard of Thunderflix. I thought oh lovely another movie channel app, but this is a Metal app! Think Netflix, but all metal! Metal concerts, metal videos, metal docuseries, just Metal! I will definitely be subscribing to Thunderflix.
Fear Factory played songs from albums “Demanufacture” released in 1995 and “Obsolete” released in 1998, celebrating 25 years. During their second song “Edge Crusher,” Bleeding Through’s lead vocalist, Brandan Shieppet joined them on stage. The mosh pit was crazy and crowd surfers were flying over the rail. There wasn’t a lot of security but the ones in there were hustling to catch people coming over.
Kyng started in the Parish Room. I was a little worried that not many people were in there, but then they started coming in after Fear Factory. It was a small stage but they brought big energy. Machine Head has been on my must-see list. I always hear, “How have you not seen Machine Head?” I don’t know but they were amazing live! Of course, as a photographer, I love that gorgeous windmill hair. Brandan Shieppet came back out on stage, sang a few words, and stage dove into the crowd and Chuck Billy made a brief appearance during “Davidian.” They closed out with “Halo.”
Next up, my boys in Testament!
Before Testament took the stage, Metal Injection raffled off an ESP guitar signed by Alex Skolnick. As the number was read, one person jumped up and down waving her arms but didn’t even have a raffle ticket, just wanted 5 seconds of attention I guess. Three numbers were read before finally finding the lucky winner of that beautiful signed guitar. I always think of “Catacombs” as their intro song, but something different was playing, it was “Eerie Inhabitants” off The New Order album. Testament has recently reclaimed six of their albums, The Legacy, The New Order, Practice What You Preach, Souls of Black, The Ritual, and Low, and they will be re-released with Nuclear Blast. In celebration, they played The New Order and The Legacy albums, which was an amazing surprise for us old-school fans. We may be Gen X and in our 50s, but we still jumped “Into the Pit.” The boys looked like they were having the time of their lives up there. Next year will be the 35th anniversary of Practice What You Preach. How about next year’s Metal Injection Festival with Testament celebrating the albums Practice What You Preach, 35 years, and Low, 30 years. This was a great inaugural Metal Injection festival and we look forward to the next one!
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