Exodus and Municipal Waste
February 26, 2018
House of Blues – Anaheim, CA
The thrashtacular tour featured San Francisco Bay Area thrash metal legends Exodus and the hardcore punk/thrash metal band Municipal Waste from Richmond, Virginia. The tour was also setup to promote the third season of the Adult Swim show, ‘Mr. Pickles’. When these two thrash metal titans come together, it’s set to be an absolutely wild night. Even on a Monday night, The House of Blues in Anaheim was packed to almost max capacity full of metal heads looking to release their Monday blues with some fast and energetic thrash metal.
Municipal Waste came out and started the show with Breathe Grease, the opening track from the new album, Slime and Punishment. As expected, the floor came alive as thrashers quickly formed a violent mosh pit and not too long later, even crowd surfers started popping up. Things got intense very quickly. Municipal Waste next played a medley of Mind Eraser/You’re Cut Off, followed by Unleash the Bastards and Sadistic Magician. Each song was just as furious as the last. The mosh pits stayed violent the whole time and crowd surfers seemed to be never-ending. Municipal Waste is known for their political lyrics and views as singer Tony Foresta asked the audience, “we can agree when I say fuck Donald Trump, right?”. Many metal heads in the audience cheered in agreement as the band showed their caricature of Trump on their screen with him blowing his brains out with a gun which is also available as a shirt from their merch table. Municipal Waste proceeded to play, I Want to Kill the 
President. Foresta let the audience know that his voice was shot from being sick and was considering cancelling the show, but decided against it and still put 100% percent into his performance. Municipal Waste kept the energy going and the most pits intense as they played classics like Beer Pressure, The Thrashin’ of the Christ, Headbanger Face Rip, and The Art of Partying. Even with a relatively short set, it was one of the craziest performances of the tour. Municipal Waste finished with one of their most popular songs, Born to Party. The song is just over a minute long, but it’s fast, thrash, and to the point. Fans love singing along to the chorus, “Municipal Waste is gonna fuck you up!” and almost the entire floor was consumed by the mosh pit and crowd surfers alike. They finished their set then left the stage to make room for the headlining band of the night. They are truly one of the craziest bands to see live and are a must see for punk and metal fans alike.
Exodus came out to a packed venue and started the show with one of their most popular songs Bonded By Blood from their 1985 debut album of the same name. Once again, the floor came alive with violent and fast mosh pits as once again crowd surfers continued to make an appearance and keeping the security busy and on high alert. Exodus brought the old school thrash metal assault as they next played Blood In, Blood Out from their newest 2014 album of the same name. Iconoclasm was next followed by And Then There Were None. Exodus was happy to see the metal scene still alive and well judging by the amount of support they have been receiving on the tour so far. Fans were ecstatic to see guitarist Gary Holt on tour with Exodus since sometimes he has to miss the tour due to being on tour with fellow thrash metal legends, Slayer. Exodus never slowed down their performance and neither did the mosh pits as they breezed through thrash metal classics like Metal Command, A Lesson in Violence, and War Is My Shepherd. Singer Steve “Zetro” Souza made note to the fans that he wanted to see how the crazy the mosh pits can really get. For that, Zetro announced the song The Toxic Waltz which was written specifically for fans in the mosh pit and is one of Exodus‘ most famous songs and is played at almost every Exodus show and is guaranteed to have one of the biggest mosh pits of the night. It was time to call it an end and so Exodus finished their set with another song from their debut album, Strike of the Beast. Exodus saw a child that had been up front for the whole performance and so brought him out on stage to play guitar for a bit and stay there for the rest of the performance. Exodus wrapped up their show and left the fans with nothing but smiles, satisfaction, and covered in sweat.
Review by: Misael Ruiz
Exodus
Municipal Waste
