2003-10-14 - 3:09

7:45! Oh . . .

'Twas a very full and satisfying long weekend. Friday night I fulfilled a long overdue concert date, when I finally got a chance to see Anthrax in Montreal. Anthrax was always one of my favourite bands when I was growing up, after a string of consistently great albums.

Although their previous effort was somewhat flat, their latest disc, We've Come for You All is a solid return to form, so it was a great tour on which to catch them. The concert itself was excellent, with Anthrax living up to my high expectations.

The middle act was something of an oddity as it was a Cro-Mags show . . . sort of. The former Cro-Mags singer had assembled a line-up from other bands (including Suicidal Tendencies, Alpha Omega, and Parliament) and they delivered a set culled almost entirely from Age of Quarrel, with a couple of Bad Brains covers. Cool to hear those songs; but it wasn't accurate to call it the Cro-Mags.

Despite having a history of two decades, Anthrax is not one of those bands that puts out a new album just to tour on the hits. (Didn't Metallica play practically nothing new on their summer tour?) Instead, they had a great mix of new tracks and songs spanning their career ("Madhouse," "Caught in a Mosh," "N.F.L.," "Antisocial," "Belly of the Beast," "Got the Time," "Only," and "Inside Out"; and an encore of "Be All, End All," "Metal Thrashing Mad," and "Indians"). Great performance, excellent energy level, a typically strong Montreal crowd: very, very fun.

As per my expectation/hope, the concert did wrap up in time for me to catch the midnight bus back home. Richard was in town this weekend; and we went to the hockey game on Saturday. It's always cool to see Richard again; and the game was pretty decent, as well. Some play was a bit sloppy, but it is the start of the season; and it ended with a Red Wings overtime victory, so that was exciting.

Sunday I was mainly hanging out with Laurie; and we went over to Greg and Kelly's for Thanksgiving supper. Free, quality cooking--no complaints.

For today's holiday, I stayed fairly lazy, although I did get out for supper with Laurie. A very satisfying long weekend, overall, I must say.

J.