Jul 13, 2017 4:48:53 GMT -6

At the Gates
Support: Darkest Hour, Municipal Waste, Toxic Holocaust
Date: July 13th, 2008
Venue: the Opera House in Toronto, Ontario

I was not expecting it but I had so much fun at this show. I’m not into the whole thrash revival scene and I don’t listen to any thrash (except Slayer, if they are thrash) so to me Toxic Holocaust sounded a lot like Beneath the Remains era Sepultura. Which was fine with me because I like Beneath the Remains era Sepultura. They was really good but I thought their singer looked stupid.

Toxic Holocaust
1. Death Master 

2. Gravelord 

3. War Is Hell 

4. Wild Dogs 

5. 666 

6. Nuke the Cross 


I’d never heard of Municipal Waste but I just had so much fun watching them that I fell in love. This wasn’t as chaotic as some other MW shows (no crowd surfing on surfboards or guys dressed in wizard outfits). But they made up for it with great songs and lots of humor. I love short, fast songs so I was loving stuff like Thrashing’s My Business…and Business is Good. And song titles like Beer Pressure and the Thrashin’ of the Christ, I was loving it. Then when they played Black Ice in all of its glorious 23 seconds I was sold.

Municipal Waste
1. Headbanger Face Rip 

2. Terror Shark 

3. Mental Shock 

4. Beer Pressure 

5. The Thrashin' of the Christ 

6. Thrashing's My Business... And Business Is Good 

7. Sadistic Magician 

8. Unleash the Bastards 

9. Black Ice 

10. Nailed Casket 

11. Mind Eraser 

12. Bangover 

13. Born to Party

Darkest Hour I was well aware of but I’d never heard anything by them except the Sadist Nation years earlier. But Doomsayer had me sold. That’s still one of my favorite songs ever and one of the best songs you could possibly open a concert with. I remember I enjoyed everything else they played but it’s all a blur. By time they were halfway done I knew this was one of the better shows I’d been to.

Darkest Hour
1. Doomsayer (The Beginning of the End) 

2. Sound the Surrender 

3. Stand and Receive Your Judgment 

4. An Epitaph 

5. With a Thousand Words to Say But One 

6. These Fevered Times 

7. Deliver Us 

8. The Sadist Nation

At the Gates: what more do I need to say? I was a late comer to them and never heard Slaughter of the Soul until 2001. But like so many others I consider it to be one of the best albums I’ve ever heard and still consider the guitar work and sound to be some of the best I’ve ever heard. I thought opening with the title track was very odd. Really, Blinded by Fear should have opened the whole set and Slaughter of the Soul should have closed the concert out. I think that would’ve been better. The crowd was ravenous for anything off Slaughter of the Soul and completely died during everything else. And the band recognized that by playing the entire album, albeit out of sequence. Kingdom Gone is their staple closer so they tried to get the crowd pumped for that song but no one really cared. At the Gates I guess is really a one album band. Everything else I’ve heard by them is good enough but not exceptional. But Slaughter of the Soul is something special.

At the Gates
1. Slaughter of the Soul 

2. Cold 

3. Terminal Spirit Disease 

4. Raped by the Light of Christ 

5. Under a Serpent Sun 

6. Windows 

7. World of Lies 

8. The Burning Darkness 

9. The Swarm 

10. Forever Blind 

11. Nausea 

12. The Beautiful Wound 

13. Suicide Nation 

14. All Life Ends 

15. Need 

[encore]
16. Blinded by Fear 

17. Unto Others 

18. Kingdom Gone

Great show

____________________________________________________
Follow up:

This really was a great show. I don't know if I'd put it in my top ten shows of all-time but I've never tried to do that list; it very well might be in there.

I think At the Gates have played here since on one of those Decibel Magazine tours but I didn't bother going. I really wasn't a fan of their reunion album 'At War With Reality' so it'd be the same thing for me as this show: I'd only want to hear the songs from Slaughter of the Soul. But I know when they tour now they mix it up more by taking out a lot of the pre-SotS songs, some songs from SotS and adding a lot from the new album. So this set was as perfect a set as I'd ever get from them.

Darkest Hour play here all the time and I mean to get out to one but I never do. They still play Doomsayer but the don't open with it anymore and I think that's just blasphemy. Maybe I'll see them some day, maybe I won't. I'm surprised they're even around anymore.

Municipal Waste was my biggest takeaway from this show. I still buy their albums (one was just released a few weeks ago and it's great) but surprisingly I never saw them again until this past December. They kinda went away for a long time while the members did other projects. I saw Iron Reagan twice in 2015.

I saw Toxic Holocaust six or seven months later and they were good again. Then they too disappeared for years and I never heard of them or saw them until this past March opening for Nails. They were just as good now as they were then. I'd never buy their albums or go out of my way to see them live but if they're playing at a show where a better band is bringing me out I'll make sure to get there in time to see them.