Saturday 10 November 2007

Heaven & Hell @ M.E.N. Arena, Manchester

THEE CLAW went along to the M.E.N. in Manchester last night to see HEAVEN & HELL. As usual we got wrecked and had a ball. Sabbath with Dio on vocals was pretty sweet - we got pretty close to the front of the crowd when the main act came on, we were stood over on Tony Iommi's side of the stage, not 10 feet away from him. At the end of the gig he threw a handful of picks into the crowd, I got one. Go me!

DIO rules. What a guy he is. His vocals are sharp, crystal sharp. After the show we went along to a rock night in JILLYS in Manchester city centre and the DJ played the song "Heaven & Hell" for us... the whole room of 100 or so people must have been along to the show to see Sabbath play because when it came to the chorus everybody joined in with the singing.

ICED EARTH and LAMB OF GOD were support acts for H&H on this tour. I enjoyed the Iced Earth set, Ripper Holmes' sounded great. I wasn't too taken with the Lamb Of God singer, he kept asking the Manchester crowd to start circle pits and stuff like that. Sorry my friend, it doesn't work like that around these parts. Plus the crowd was mainly made up of people's dads who had come out to see Sabbath, I don't think that many 50-year-old men have much interest in circle pitting.

Heaven & Hell setlist (guessing):

1. "E5150"
2. "The Mob Rules"
3. "Children of the Sea"
4. "Lady Evil"
5. "The Sign Of the Southern Cross"
6. "Voodoo"
7. "The Devil Cried"
8. "Computer God"
9. "Falling Off the Edge of the World"
10. "Shadow of the Wind"
11. "Die Young"
12. "Heaven and Hell"
13. "Neon Knights"

Dunno if we'll ever get another chance to see these guys together as a group again but it was so good to be able to grab this opportunity to go along and watch them while we could! A five star performance, this was definitely one of my gigs of thee year.

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