Eatons Hill Hotel, Brisbane
Thursday October 18, 2018 :
It’s not every day that a particular band that I was rather obsessed with back in my teenage years, comes to tour our far away Australian shores. So it was with much anticipation and fond memories from my youth, that I was once again going to witness one of their electric live performances. Whilst the band has seen vocalists come and go over the years, the core of the band, bassist Rachel Bolan and guitarists Dave “Snake” Sabo and Scotty Hill, are still the backbone, 32 years on from when the band was originally formed.
The band is SKID ROW, and it’s been a long 4 ½ years since their last visit to Australia, and since then new singer ZP Theart has joined the fold, and it’s the first time us Aussie Skid Row fans would get to witness the band with ZP on vocal duties.
They wasted no time kicking things into high gear with the heavy and chugging set opener ‘Slave To The Grind’, followed straight up with ‘Sweet Little Sister’ and ‘Piece Of Me’. Now it wouldn’t be a Skid Row show without some of their epic ballads thrown in amongst the rockier tracks. ’18 & Life’ and ‘I Remember You’ were well received of course, and there was no shortage of back-up singers helping out in the crowd.
An awesome surprise was the addition of ‘Quicksand Jesus’ in the latter half of the show. Not only is this song in my opinion one of their best, it would be a difficult task to hit some of those “Sebastian Bach” high notes, and I’ll tell you right now, ZP delivered the goods, well above any expectations. Not only can he nail the vocals, ZP’s positivity and infectious smile has obviously had a great effect on the band as a whole, as it was really refreshing to see the band having such a great time on stage. The setlist was more or less, apart from a couple tracks, a greatest hits collection of the first 2 albums, which let’s face it is what the majority of fans came to watch. The small but enthusiastic crowd lapped up all of the classics.
Other highlights were Rachel’s turn in the spotlight singing a cracking cover of The Ramones classic ‘Psycho Therapy’, and ‘Monkey Business’ including a guitar dual interlude, where both Snake and Scotti got to show off some of their 6 string prowess. To end the show there could really only be one possible song, and that was the bands breaking first ever single and monumental anthem, ‘Youth Gone Wild’.
While the band left there youth years ago, the lads in Skid Row still have that hunger, know how to put on a great show, and rock out like its 1989!
Reviewer and Photographer : Davey Rintala
