A hefty double-bill of old-school metal stomped into a packed Empire Live in Albany on April 26 – Queensryche and Armored Saint. Both acts have long legacies of gigs in the Albany area: Seattle’s Queensryche first came through the area promoting their debut e.p., opening for Twisted Sister in Scotia in 1983, and have played the area fairly regularly for 40+ years, most recently warming up Judas Priest at the MVP Arena in 2022.
L.A. metal heroes Armored Saint first played the region in early January 1985 – again, in Scotia – warming up for Metallica and WASP and promoting their debut LP ‘March of the Saint’. So there’s some history here, and Albany showed up for this gig – the venue was sold out, and vintage metal tees and battle vests were on display for a great Friday night of heaviness.
Happily, there wasn’t a long, agonizing wait through a half-dozen opening bands – Armored Saint hit the stage at 8 p.m. sharp, walking on stage to an intro tape of Judas Priest’s classic “Delivering the Goods”, and proceeded to deliver the goods with a crushing 50-minute set of headbanging gloriousness. As vocalist John Bush pointed out early on, although Saint were a regular visitor to the Albany region through the late 80s (mostly at the long-departed temple of metal, Saratoga Winners in Latham), it has been almost 33 years since the band has been here. The last gig this band played hereabouts was at Winners in October 1991, with Wrathchild America. Soon after, the band went dormant when Bush joined New York’s Anthrax, and since they reunited early this century, they have not been back to their Albany stomping grounds of yore. They more than made up for their absence this Friday night.
Saint kicked off proceedings with the hammering “End of the Attention Span”, an ode to the damage done by small screens, social media and on-demand culture, taken from the killer newest AS record, ‘Punching the Sky’. Unlike Queensryche, who were playing an album-specific vintage set, Saint covered their entire discography this night, launching immediately thereafter into a steamrolling “Raising Fear”, title track of their underrated 1987 third record. Next up were a pair of songs from Saint’s (arguably) most-acclaimed LP, 1991’s Symbol of Salvation, the propulsive “Tribal Dance” (during which drummer Gonzo Sandoval earned his wage admirably), and a soaring “Last Train Home”, with the audience roaring the chorus back to Bush and the band. The title track of their 40-year-old (!) debut LP, March of the Saint, followed, which spawned headbanging and more vocal crowd participation, and the excellent “Left Hook From Right Field” (from 2010’s La Raza) was a cool surprise – the Saint have been mixing up setlists on this run with Queensryche, and while killer second record Delirious Nomad was sadly unrepresented this night, “Left Hook” was one that hasn’t been played every show, a great choice.
Next up was “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants”, another standout from newest LP Punching the Sky, which saw guitarists Jeff Duncan and Phil Sandoval unleashing some Thin Lizzy-esque guitar harmonies. Saint, in contrast to the headliners, is pretty much the same guys who have been with the band since back in the day. Bush, the Sandoval brothers and bassist Joey Vera have been in the band since their inception, and guitarist Jeff Duncan has been with the band since 1988. Only guitarist Dave Prichard, who sadly passed in 1990 from leukemia, is missing from the lineup that recorded their debut EP in 1983.
Other than Bush talking about how many years it had been since the band played Albany, the band kept the stage banter to a minimum and used their time for music, hammering out each song into the next. “Win Hands Down”, the roaring title track from their 2015 LP, came next, into another crowd favorite, “Can U Deliver” (again from the ‘84 debut), with the band wrapping up with a blasting, high-velocity “Reign of Fire” (again from Symbol of Salvation). When this band’s debut hit the streets in 1984, the slogan was “Saints Will Conquer” – and they did so in heroic fashion this night.
Unlike Saint, who have always led the charge for traditional, real old-school metal, Queensryche have historically cast a wider net, dipping their toes into prog-metal, concept albums (including 1988’s legendary ‘Operation: Mindcrime’), and mainstream success (1990’s ‘Empire’), and over the years leaning fairly far away from their trad-metal beginnings. But not tonight – this was a old-school, early Queensryche set, with the band playing their debut self-titled 1983 EP, and 1984 debut album ‘The Warning’ back-to-back and in order.
That debut EP was a monumental beginning for this band – in 1983, every metalhead on the planet seemed to own and love that record, including this writer as a 15-year-old, and you cannot deny the quality of those 4 songs, which the band opened their set with this night: the legendary “Queen of the Reich” began proceedings, arguably the most well-known song of the night, into the raging “Nightrider” and “Blinded”, both long-ignored deep tracks in the band’s catalog, but truly excellent, hammering real metal. “The Lady Wore Black” is more epic, and more indicative of what was to come for Queensryche after 1983, and sounded great.
The rest of the set was debut LP The Warning, soup-to-nuts, in order, from “Warning” through “Roads to Madness”. The band played it flawlessly. While Armored Saint’s lineup is fairly unchanged from days of old, three of the five band members who recorded the music from these early Queensryche records are no longer with the band: only guitarist Michael Wilton and bassist Eddie Jackson remain from the ‘classic’ lineup, but vocalist Todd La Torre (who had been with the band for 12 years now) is able to replicate former singer Geoff Tate’s vocals on these early songs with uncanny accuracy. In all honesty, my personal enthusiasm for ‘The Warning’ is nowhere near the nostalgic appeal I feel for the debut EP, but the band nailed it and there was a percentage of the crowd who were all-in for every single moment.
The band didn’t deviate from the stalwart, old-school vibe for the encore, trotting out “The Prophecy”, an EP-era deep track that never made the record, but eventually saw light on ‘The Decline of Western Civilization – Part II’ soundtrack a few years later, a great choice. It was only the final track, “Empire”, that post-dated 1984. And to their credit, the band kept the set-list old-school and metal instead of taking the easy route for the encore and playing crowd-pleaser hit singles like “Silent Lucidity” or “Jet City Woman” (or something from ‘Mindcrime’) – no doubt some of the more casual fans would have preferred that, tonight was about the old-school. All hail both bands, but game, set and match went to the Saint.
