Heavy Quarantine: live metal videos to watch at home of Venom, At The Gates & more

May 15, 2020

Every weekday during this quarantine, we’ve been posting five amazing live videos from YouTube since no actual live shows are happening. Our daily posts aren’t genre-specific, but every Friday, we also post an all-metal edition. Here’s this week’s, which ranges from Accept in 1981 to Pig Destroyer in 2007, with plenty of other cool stuff in between.

At The Gates in Krakow, Poland – 11/27/1995

Slaughter of the Soul was At The Gates’ final album for 19 years (until they released At War With Reality in 2014, which was then followed by To Drink from the Night Itself in 2018), and it’s also one of the most influential albums of the ’90s. They weren’t the only Swedish band with a bright, melodic, super catchy brand of death metal, but they perfected it in a way that their peers didn’t, and their sound became the basis for the American melodic metalcore boom of the early 2000s. Some of the stuff they influenced leaned on the corny side, but there’s nothing corny about Slaughter of the Soul, and it sounds as fresh today as it ever has. This pro-shot video captures At The Gates supporting that album in Poland right after it came out, and the songs sound as sharp in this video as they do on the album. Frontman Tomas Lindberg — who starts the show in an Eyehategod long sleeve — encourages the crowd to keep moving and they happily oblige.

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Pig Destroyer @ Peabody’s in Cleveland, OH – 7/26/2007

Pig Destroyer are true lifers. Their last album, 2018’s Head Cage, was one of our favorites of that year, but as good as that album was, it was a pretty major change for Pig Destroyer. It saw them going in a slower, more metalcore direction and it was a more polished album and featured a bassist for the first time in Pig Destroyer’s catalog. For something a little different than that, here’s Pig Destroyer a month after they released one of their rawer, noisier, grindier albums, 2007’s Phantom Limb, and this live video (which includes a nice selection of even older songs too) transports you right back to that gnarlier era of their career. The guys sound vicious, and the video quality may be a little rough, but that kinda just makes it even more perfect.

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Venom @ Hammersmith Odeon in London, UK – 10/8/1985

Right now, there are two competing versions of Venom: Cronos’ version (just called Venom) and Mantas’ version (called Venom Inc, and which used to also include Abaddon), and both continue to do cool things, but there’s still nothing like Cronos, Mantas, and Abaddon all together. 1985 was the classic lineup’s last year together (until reuniting a couple times down the road) and it also kinda closed the book on Venom’s era as a raw, proto-black metal band, and this pro-shot video (from the Live In London film) does a fine job of capturing how uniquely great that era was. They played plenty of Welcome to Hell and Black Metal, and they were on fire all night.

https://youtu.be/MROyGsNszcw

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Accept @ Solothurn Rockfest in Switzerland – 9/26/1981

Like Venom, there are two competing versions of Accept at the moment: Accept (original guitarist Wolf Hoffmann with newer members, including vocalist Mark Tornillo who does do a pretty fine job) and Dirkschneider (original vocalist Udo Dirkschneider). But thanks to this excellent video, we can go back in time to 1981 and witness Wolf and Udo together again (and other classic Accept members too). Wolf and Jörg Fischer’s dual leads absolutely scream on this recording, and Udo’s Bon-Scott-meets-NWOBHM wail cuts through the mix as well as it does on the early Accept albums. And like on the records, this video shows how great Accept were at embracing the tremendousness of NWOBHM while staying badass and not falling victim to the pomp or bombast.

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Eyehategod @ Sandstone Amphitheater in Bonner Springs, KS – 8/3/1996

In 1996, Pantera and White Zombie headlined the “War of the Gargantuas” Tour, and Phil Anselmo brought his NOLA neighbors Eyehategod along to open. This is the Kansas stop, and even on this big amphitheater stage with a crowd who kinda looked like they weren’t sure what to think, Eyehategod ripped. The sludgy riffs are as ass-kicking and face-melting as you’d hope, and Mike IX Williams sounds like he swallowed gravel before the show (in the best way). It’s a great set, and the video is (all things considered) pretty great too. And bonus: you can see Anselmo and Dimebag Darrell rocking out sidestage.