Front Row Pix: Slayer @ Tsongas Center, Lowell MA

by Frank Poulin

With most people busy doing the family thing, Thanksgiving Saturday is a challenging time to hold a concert and yet enough die-hard Slayer fans still showed up to nearly pack the arena in Lowell.

Admittedly it took a while for the place to fill up; few people were there to see openers 4ARM‘s set, but it was worth getting there early. The band played like it was the last show of the tour — which, as luck would have it, it was. I love to catch those last shows; the bands always let it all go and this was no exception!

Gojira followed suit with the same abandon and slammed us with an even better set than the one we’d seen in March. I just can’t get enough of their latest album, L’enfant Sauvage. And Slayer? Well, they’re freakin’ Slayer… I had never seen them live before so this was quite a thrill. Early on in the set there were some sound issues — the bass drum was so loud you couldn’t hear anything else — bit it was quickly corrected and the rest of the set was fantastic.

All in all it was a great event. Ending your tour in a place like Lowell is a great move for any metal band — you know you’re going out with a bang. For those of you not from the immediate area, Lowell is well known for being a little more, um, fearless than your typical New England city so you’re always in for some surprises when you show up for a metal show up there. Case in point: one guy actually rolled in on his wheelchair right into the crowd in front of the stage, and seconds later he was crowd-surfing. In the chair. Nearly face-planted too but he wasn’t even phased and came back later to do it again. Circle pits are for pussies — wheelchair surfing, now that takes balls, people!

Cue the eye candy: