Four months after my second visit to Donington I boarded another bus run by St Martins records taking metalheads to see bands, this time to the far away city of Leeds where Megadeth were headlining the ‘Christmas On Earth/Speed’ festival at the Queens Hall. As a rabid thrash maniac, the opportunity to attend such a festival in the UK was definitely not to be missed and the fact that it was held indoors (inside a disused bus station no less) made it even more appealing.
Note the T-Shirt says 'Christmas on Speed', not 'Christmas on Earth'
When I arrived I heard about two minutes of dismal UK thrashers Virus being heckled by the crowd who were not impressed with their performance. I made my way to the merch stall and bought myself a Megadeth T-shirt, an Overkill ‘Fuck You’ T-shirt and a Voivod ‘Cockroaches’ vest thing… at this point I was still super excited that I was going to see Voivod, but as it turned out this was not on the cards.
Laaz Rockit were next up and they were great. Not really thrash exactly, but certainly thrashy enough to justify their place on the bill and bristling with energy. I really enjoyed them and a few years later I managed to get hold of a ‘Know Your Enemy’ T-shirt which I wore to death (before Rose stole it). I had bootlegs of most of this show and I listened to the Laaz Rockit one many times, it was a very short set, only about six songs, but a great start to the day.
Rumours were circulating that Voivod were not at the venue and this seemed to be confirmed when Crossover band ‘Cro Mags’ took the stage next. I was never into the Cro Mags, but during their set I noticed there was a song that sounded oddly like Metal Church. To be honest I never really explored this and I still don’t know anything about them.
Kreator were next, kicking off with the AWESOME ‘Awakening of the Gods’ from the ‘Flag of Hate’ single, one of their best songs ever and one that should absolutely have been on a studio album, but there you go. Venom, Sodom and Slayer all had career best tunes on singles and it never did them any harm!
During the show Millie confirmed that Voivod had been detained by customs en route from Belgium and would not be playing. This was hugely disappointing, but it didn’t detract from the Kreator show which was a complete melee of stagediving and chaotic German thrash. Again it was a short set and it really didn’t need a drum solo in it, but other than that it was cool and this was another bootleg I played many times.
Apparently John Connelly had an asthma attack just as he was about to go on stage with Nuclear Assault, but nobody knew. That combined with a suddenly terrible sound scuppered Nuclear Assault’s performance considerably and so it was honestly a relief when they finally left the stage. My abiding memory of their performance was when John (or possibly Dan Lilker) dedicated the song ‘Stranded in Hell’ to Voivod and rebranded it ‘Stranded in Belgium’. It was a shame really because the first Nuclear Assault album (Game Over) is pretty cool… but hey ho.
Thankfully the mood was improved when New Yorkers ‘Overkill’ took the stage and stormed into their set comprising songs from their first and second albums plus their cover of the Subhumans ‘Fuck You’. Honestly, despite the fact that I always liked Megadeth and Kreator better than Overkill, the New Yorkers were the best band on the day.
According to Setlist.com the last song of the set was ‘In Union We Stand’ but I think that’s wrong. I’m pretty sure they finished up by playing ‘Overkill’ and ‘Overkill II’, if only I still had my bootleg cassette to check.
This was only Megadeth’s second gig in the UK (their first took place the year before at Hammersmith Odeon in London with Flotsam & Jetsam supporting) and since then Gar Samuelson and Chris Poland had been ‘let go’ and replaced with Jeff Young (who MegaDave apparently hated) and Chuck Behler (who he tolerated). Jeff Young wasn’t in Poland’s league and he looked a bit of a dork too.
I think the guy was out of his depth joining a band as intense as this, he would have been better off in a straight ahead metal band like Malice or someone (Jeff Young was originally teaching Malice’s Jay Reynolds Megadeth songs so that he could audition for the band), but here he was, stage right (presumably where Dave didn’t have to look at him too much) and taking the occasional barbed comment from his ginger overlord.
In the middle of the set, Dave left the stage and returned wearing his double necked guitar and announced that they were going to play a new song from the as yet unreleased ‘So Far, So Good… So What?’ album (rel: 22 Jan 1988). Dave explained it was a song that he wrote the night he heard Cliff Burton had died, and that was the first time I ever heard ‘In My Darkest Hour’.
They followed this up with another unreleased track (Hook In Mouth) before a volley of deep cuts from ‘Peace Sells…’, followed by ‘Mechanix’ and a cover of ‘Anarchy in the UK’ which also ended up on the ‘SFSGSW’ album. It was a great show and they only narrowly lost out to Overkill, maybe if it had been the original line up it would have been a different story.
