REVIEW: Sepultura, Kreator, Death Angel, SpiritWorld at Palladium Times Square | 06.10.2023

Show Reviews

Jun 16

Written By

Sepultura and Kreator's co-headlining tour came to a close last week. The 22-date run, supported by Death Angel and SpiritWorld, was bookended by a sold out show at New York City's Palladium Times Square on Saturday night. While the band's rotating headliner approach put Sepultura in the closing slot for the evening, both bands (as well as their opening counterparts) put on headliner-worthy performances.

The Show

SpiritWorld kicked off the evening with a powerful set showcasing their signature "death western" sound. The band performed with a raw aggression and a cool confidence, not to mention a killer wardrobe to boot.

SpiritWorld’s setlist was an even split of heavy tunes from their two albums, “Pagan Rhythm” and “DEATHWESTERN,” and fans responded accordingly by keeping the mosh pit steady and active throughout.

Bay Area thrash legends Death Angel were next and kept the night going strong with an electrifying performance. Opening with “Lord of Hate” from their 2008 album, “Killing Season,” the band tore through their set with relentless energy and intensity.

Death Angel’s eclectic setlist included classics and recent material alike and though I wish their set could have been twice as long, I was blown away by what they packed into a half an hour, setting the scene and the stage for the “Klash of the Titans” to begin.

A banner with Kreator’s logo hung in front of the stage while a giant inflatable of Violent Mind, the band’s “mascot”, grew into form behind and around the drum riser. My vantage point spoiled the surprise, but it didn’t diminish my excitement when the banner dropped, revealing the band and their demon overseer as “Hate Über Alles” rang through the speakers.

Something about Kreator’s use of an inflatable instead of video screens made it feel like I’d stepped into a time machine; no high-tech production, just lighting tricks and stage props like in the “good ol' days.” I loved every minute of it.

Taking a moment a few songs in to welcome the crowd, Kreator frontman Mille Petrozza parted the GA floor sea to build a giant Wall of Death. The wall closed in at full force as the band launched into “People of the Lie.” Kreator’s setlist covered nearly every album with one song to represent each release. The bar was set high for the next titans, Sepultura, but they delivered (and then some).

Sepultura opened with “Isolation” from their 2020 album, “Quadra”, declaring their intention to melt every face in the audience from the very first note. The band was firing on all cylinders, vocalist Derrick Green already dripping in sweat before the first song concluded, and they kept that momentum going through the very last song.

Sepultura’s setlist drew primarily from “Quadra” but plenty of classics like “Refuse/Resist” and “Roots Bloody Roots” made appearances as well, the latter closing out the band's set and in turn the tour as a whole.

The Shoot

At the Dark Funeral show a few weeks back I had a brief scare when the band was minutes from taking the stage and my camera that had been working fine all night suddenly would not turn on. After a few rounds of frantic battery removal and re-insertion, the same with memory cards, and then taking then lens off and putting it back on a few times, my camera started working again.

The culprit? I think one of the memory cards was giving me trouble and needed to be re-formatted. Can I be sure that's what it was? No. Could it happen again? Sure. What if... What if my camera does it again but this time I can't get it to turn back on? I’d have no camera and be useless in an instant. I have no backup plan. This was my internal thought/anxiety process, and it inevitably led to me buying a second Canon R5 body. I'd be lying if I said I haven't been looking to rationalize the purchase of a second camera body for a while now. Now I had my rationale (clearly I didn’t need that much convincing).

I purchased the BlackRapid Double Camera Harness to make it easy for me to carry both of my camera bodies simultaneously during shows. One has a 24-70mm lens, the other has a 70-200mm. In a smaller venue like Irving Plaza, I can get most of the shots that I need from the photo pit using my 24-70mm. The 70-200mm comes in handy at times, but is mostly useful once I leave the pit. A larger venue like Palladium Times Square, where this show took place, has a stage that's height and depth makes the 70-200mm a more necessary option to have at my disposal. This provided the ideal environment in which to test the dual camera approach.

So how’d it go? Being able to switch back and forth between cameras was obviously much easier than switching out lenses on the same body over and over. I could simply just react in the moment and use whichever lens was appropriate for the shot I was trying to get. I also didn’t have to worry about running out of time in the pit before switching lenses, which has happened to me on a number of occasions. These are both game-changing positives for sure, and I’ll be definitely using this approach moving forward if the stage size calls for it.

I would be remiss however if I didn’t note the challenges I ran into, which are trivial but still notable. First, the decision to switch cameras in the moment sometimes led to me missing the shot I wanted altogether. Say I’m shooting with the telephoto and a guitarist comes right up to me - I realize the telephoto is too tight and drop that camera to grab the one with a wider lens - by the time I have that camera up to my eye the moment has passed. While I wouldn’t have necessarily gotten the shot I wanted with the telephoto, it’s better than no shot at all.

Second, it’s harder to move quickly through crowds or past other photographers in the pit when you have two expensive pieces of equipment dangling from your body at all times. You have to be mindful of that, more so than you think. I learned this the hard way, unfortunately, as the top LCD of my brand new R5 had a crack in it by the end of the night. I’m not sure how it happened and it was a painful discovery to make to say the least. I’ve never damaged a camera I’ve owned (or handled, for that matter) and now I’d managed to damage one I’ve owned for mere days. Far from ideal, but a lesson learned I suppose.

I’ll get another few shows out of the camera before I send it to Canon for repair. Thankfully the damage is purely cosmetic, though it hurts to look at I’ll admit. Anyway, thanks as always for reading. See you at the next one!