I arrived solo at the Voodoo Lounge last Tuesday night to watch Exodus rock the Bay Area on their last stop of this year’s tour.‚ I had never been to the Voodoo Lounge before, but the place seemed alright.‚ The stage is kind of tucked away in the corner so the space where the band can interact with the crowd is a little smaller, but on the plus side you can see the stage from every spot in the venue, even the bar.‚ I was a little disappointed at the lack of enthusiam in this crowd, maybe it was because the show started so late, but people just seemed f***ing out of it.‚ Even trying to talk to people there, no one said anything.‚ Meh, maybe I just haven’t experienced San Jose enough…

I came to the show a bit late and missed the first band, and most of the second band, but I did catch one of my new favorite bands:‚ &&Mantic Ritual&&.‚ I’m 99% certain that these guys devised some sort of a teleportation machine, something similar to what Jeff Goldblum had in &”The Fly&”, and tried to teleport themselves.‚ Only with these guys, instead of a fly sneaking in to the machine as they were about to teleport, they piled a big ass heap of thrash metal records from 1985 and hit the &&GO&& button. ‚

They may not be old enough to drink, but they’re old enough to kick some serious old school ass.‚ Their live show is pretty awesome, but unfortunately the crowd sucked, so damn you San Jose if this band doesn’t return to the Bay.‚ I was surprised to find out later that these guys are signed to Nuclear Blast!‚ Dude!? ‚

Exodus took stage around 11 and proceeded to rock the house with a lengthy set of newer and older material; they played some songs from Deathamphetamine and Tempo of the Damned, and older songs like Strike of the Beast and Toxic Waltz.‚ The crowd started to wake up about this time, thank god, and the pit was pretty out of control for such a small venue.‚ Sometimes you get security stepping in at these small venues to break up the pit, but they just stayed back and watched the mayhem.

The sound was alright, but the vocals were lost in the mix and my ears are still ringing from the snare drum and the left guitar speaker cabinet.‚ Overall, the show was pretty sweet but the crowd could’ve been better.‚ You can’t win them all I guess…although someone was enjoying the show enough to bootleg it: