The Ashes of Leviathan Tour brought nostalgic metal mayhem to the Orlando Amphitheater on a sweltering night in Central Florida on July 24th. The tour celebrates the twentieth anniversary of two landmark metal albums—both released on August 31, 2004—Lamb of God’s Ashes of the Wake and Mastodon’s Leviathan. Malevolence and Kerry King opened for the co-headliners.
English metalcore band Malvolence kicked off the show. With an unusually early set time of 4:55 pm, the metal band played while most fans were stuck in rush-hour traffic or trying to find parking. Those who made it early were treated to a seven-song set mostly comprised of songs from the band’s 2022 release, Malicious Intent.
Slayer co-founding guitarist Kerry King then played a set of frantic thrash metal backed by his new band: vocalist Mark Osegueda (Death Angel), guitarist Phil Demmel (Machinehead), bassist Kyle Sanders (Hellyeah), and drummer Paul Bostaph (Slayer).
Flanked by stage lights in the shape of inverted crosses, King and the band tore through rapid-fire thrash songs from King’s debut solo album, From Hell I Rise, released in May. Osegueda shrieked through the King-penned songs while King and Demmel laid down aggressive speed metal riffs.
Between songs, Osegueda acted as the band’s hype man, introducing the songs and riling up the crowd. He introduced “Shrapnel” as being about “the atrocities of war” and said that “Toxic” is about “being fed up with politicians and the people who blindly follow them.”
When Slayer disbanded in 2019, King wasn’t done yet. The music on From Hell I Rise is strikingly similar to Slayer’s music, and the Orlando Amphitheater crowd ate up the new songs like they were old favorites.
Of course, the biggest crowd-pleasers were the two Slayer songs played near the end of the set, “Raining Blood” and “Black Magic.” After those two raucous songs, King and the band ended with the title track from the new album.
Atlanta progressive metal band Mastodon then partied like it was 1851. In celebration of the twentieth anniversary of Leviathan, the quartet played the Moby-Dick-inspired album in its entirety. Before the band took the stage, a clip from the 1956 film adaptation of Herman Melville’s famous novel played on the video screens, with Gregory Peck playing Captain Ahab.
The band then ripped through “Blood and Thunder” with a fury befitting the song about Ahab’s obsession. Pyrotechnics exploded behind bassist Troy Sanders as he belted the chorus, “White whale, holy grail.”
While the rest of the bands on the tour focused on head-banging fury, Mastodon’s performance highlighted its nuanced musical tapestry. The music ranged from fast and nasty to slow sludge to psychedelic melodies. Songs were played in odd time signatures and dramatically shifting tempos while there was as much focus on melody as punishing riffs. The music was beautiful at times and brutal at others, sometimes in the same song.
Sanders and guitarist Bill Kelliher rocked out onstage, while guitarist Brent Hinds offered a more stoic approach. Brann Dailor pounded out hard-charging drums full of jazz-inspired fills. Sanders, Hinds, and Dailor shared lead vocal duties, with each band member contributing backing vocals. Scott Kelly of Neurosis was the lead singer on the recorded version of “Aqua Dementia,” but on this night, Hinds and Sanders shared the duties.
After some heavy songs, Mastodon ended its Leviathan set with the epic psychedelic jam of “Hearts Alive”—played with the backdrop of a sinking ship on the video screens—and the swaying instrumental dirge of “Joseph Merrick.”
They concluded the set with three tracks not from Leviathan: the mid-tempo crunch of “More Than I Could Chew,” the high-octane riffer “Circle of the Cysquatch,” and the bouncing groove metal of “Steambreather.”
After the set, Dailor remained onstage and told the story of the good friends in Mastodon and Lamb of God being excited to see their new albums on display together in Best Buy. “We decided right then that, years later, we should do a tour together to commemorate this moment,” he said. “Talk like that normally happens at 4:00 am and is forgotten the next day, but here we are.”
Like Mastodon, Lamb of God played Ashes of the Wake to celebrate the album’s anniversary. Unlike Mastodon’s nuanced sound, the pioneers of the New Wave of American Heavy Metal movement had one thing to offer: loud, fast metal with aggressive rhythms and roaring vocals.
Their show was relentless—all heavy all the time. Drummer Art Cruz’s punishing double-bass rhythms and the rapid-fire guitar riffing from Willie Adler and Mark Morton ignited mosh pits and waves of crowd surfers. Singer Randy Blythe paced the stage like a caged predator and always seemed ready to attack.
Blythe also talked about the fate of the bands’ two landmark metal albums being released on the same day and how grateful he was to celebrate the milestone. “I can’t believe all of us are even alive to play this for you,” he said.
Ashes of the Wake, inspired by the Iraq War, is considered one of the best metal guitar albums of all time. On songs like “Break You” and “Blood of the Scribe,” Morton and Adler showed why.
Lamb of God’s best song of the night was an instrumental rendition of “Ashes of the Wake.” Without Blythe’s throaty roar, the musicians’ virtuosity took center stage, and the dueling guitar riffs didn’t disappoint. After playing through Ashes of the Wake, Lamb of God ended the night with two songs from 2006’s Sacrament, “Walk With Me in Hell” and “Redneck.”
