Disclaimer: Non-metalheads may not understand what the hell I'm talking about.

Back in 1991 I had a choice between two different concerts - The Dead Milkmen were playing at a club called the Button South, and the Clash of the Titans concert was at Miami Arena. For those who don't remember, the 1991 Clash of the Titans featured Alice in Chains, Slayer, Anthrax, and Megadeth, four of the greatest metal bands of all time. Now, I am a Dead Milkmen FREAK, but I'm not gonna miss out on four awesome bands for the price of one. 

I got a ride to the concert with two friends; Brian G. and Jesse M. We met another friend, Patrick R., once we got to the arena. We sat around yammering, bumming all of Brian's cigarettes until the lights went out and the show began:

Alice In Chains was the opening act . We weren't very familiar with them at the time, since MTV had only begun playing "Man in the Box" about a month earlier. Personally, that was the only song I knew at the time. Alice jammed and all, but I remember that we pretty much ignored them for most of their set, because we didn't know any of their songs. How were we supposed to sing along? One of us should've invested in Facelift. Anyway, we sat around looking confused and stupid until "Man in the Box" came blaring though the PA. We stood up and shouted the chorus along with the band:

"AAARRG MAAAAH EEEYES (Can't a donut cut?) 
JAAAAY-SUS CHRIIIST (Something something pager)
HEEEEEEE WHO CRIIIIIIIEES (Will be toasted)
EEEEEEEAT MY FLIES..."

...I didn't say we knew the words. We just yelled out whatever. Nobody could hear our individual voices anyway. During the song, the band had people come out on stage to boogie around with cardboard boxes on their heads. "Man in the Box". Get it?

The next band was Slayer - The only Slayer album I had at the time was Seasons in the Abyss, but it was enough. At the time, Seasons was my favorite album. I mowed the lawn to this album. Seasons was in my walkman when it got stolen in high school. Slayer were my heroes...

...So I came pretty close to pissing my pants when they started playing "War Ensemble". There was a "No Moshing" rule at Miami Arena, but I remember seeing folding chairs being passed over the crowd as sort of a feeble substitute for crowd surfing. There was some pushing going down on the floor, but since we were like on the second level, and we were pussies, we just stood there banging our heads and doing the forked "Devil Sign" with our hands. Ever watch Beavis and Butthead? Just like that. We even had the haircuts - my parents wouldn't let me grow my hair long, so the best I could do was skip a few trips to the barber so it could get shaggy and nasty. I didn't have a mullet haircut - but I wanted one. Jesse had a mullet. Brian had braces. Oh, and I had braces too. Yup, we were dorks (Pat was cool, though. He had long hair).

Somewhere in the middle of their set, they played the masterpiece, "Seasons in the Abyss"! The song's intro is like, fifteen minutes long, full of big, fat, slow guitars and twangy arpeggios - then, finally, the moment we'd been waiting for, the greatest riff of all time...

dunt dunt dunt dunt dunt dunt DUNT dunt dunt dunt dunt JUNT duntdunt JUNT (Play 8 times)

Slayer fans know what riff I'm talking about. This is where I blacked out and started kicking people. 

Slayer pretty much kicked everybody's asses that night, playing most of the songs from Seasons in the Abyss, and some bitchin' heavy older stuff like "Raining Blood" and "Angel of Death":

"Angel of Death! Something something something something something dead. 
Infamous... Butcher... Angel of Death!" (I didn't know the lyrics to this song either)

• Fun concert fact! At one point during Slayer's set, a Domino's pizza guy came onto the stage to hand (vocalist/bassist) Tom Araya a pizza! Tom asked the audience, "Anybody order a pizza?", and the crowd yelled the affirmative. Then he asked, "Who's paying for it?" - The arena became dead quiet, because you see, headbangers have no money.

A cool thing about Slayer is that they recorded a live album during this particular tour. Check out Decade of Aggression at Amazon.com!

Anthrax - Remember, this is back when the cattle disease was a thing of the past, and the band was mentioned often in the news. Now, the band is pretty much a thing of the past, and the cattle disease is mentioned often in the news! What a country!

There's not too much I can say about Anthrax, since I've kinda blocked them out of my memory. Really, Anthrax was one of my favorite bands, and then one day they weren't. I used to have three or four Anthrax albums - now I have none. What happened? Perhaps I'd listened to "Startin' Up A Posse" and "Bring The Noise" one too many times (BASS!). I do remember ENJOYING Anthrax, and singing along with all of the songs (I knew almost all of their lyrics at the time). 

"I'm The Man" was fun. I was the first person in my section to recognize the simple drum pattern and scream, "NOT!"

Example: dum da DUM dum dum -- NOT! (Repeat a whole bunch of times)

And of course, as usual, almost as if they planned it, Joe (Belladonna, vocals) messed up on the drums, and we were all forced to yell "Joey fucked up!"

Poor Joey. Later, Anthrax kicked him out and tried to sound like Pearl Jam.

They were the only band at this particular concert to have a cool stage set. They had a bunch of clocks in the background (resembling the Persistence of Time album cover) which started spinning out of control during the title track, "Persistence of Time". Giant clocks that spin backwards are quite entertaining to seventeen-year old metalheads. We were easily hypnotized by shiny objects, fire, and boobies.

Megadeth was the final band of the evening. 

We listened to Megadeth in the car on the way to the concert. We all practiced singing along with our whiny, sneering Dave Mustaine Voices (I think mine was the best). 

They started their set with "Holy Wars... The Punishment Due" from Rust In Peace. Awesome tune. Of course, Megadeth played flawlessly, because if anybody in the band made a mistake, (vocalist / guitarist / composer / perfectionist) Dave Mustaine would have fired them. 

We were worn out from the other bands, but Megadeth gave us a kick in the forehead and got us off of our asses. It was just like a groovy cycle, man. They played, and we got that energy, and we gave it back to them in the form of applause and yelling, and they sent it back out to us, and we gave them our money, and they spent it on smack. It was a wonderful thing.

• (Note: At this point in the article, I started getting nostalgic and realized I wasn't listening to any music. I got up to get Megadeth's Peace Sells... But Who's Buying, and I ending up clumsily knocking over a good stack of CD's (by accident, not on purpose) I'll take a few minutes to pick them all up... Ok, I'm done. Now I'll get back to writing).

Megadeth played an awesome set, and closed with "Anarchy in the UK", by the Sex Pistols. Have you noticed how almost every metal band has done a cover of that song? Megadeth, Motley Crue, even Green Jelly have had a crack at it. Why hasn't anybody covered "Astro Zombies", by the Misfits? I love that song!

After the concert: I bought an awesome Slayer t-shirt. The design is called "Siamese Twins", and it had two demonic heads with their flesh melting together, and their tongues intertwined. Rock on! I loved that shirt, but the movers STOLE IT when we moved to Japan. Movers love to rob children of their sentimental possessions. They stole my radio watch when I was a kid, also. I would have kicked their asses, if I wasn't a skinny ten-year-old and they weren't 200 lb movers, and I wasn't a pacifist.

I couldn't speak for a day or two after the show. I wore my voice out completely, screaming, "SPOOORT THE WAAAAAAAR!", and "NO, I DON'T HAVE ANY CIGARETTES - ASK BRIAN!". That concert was well worth losing my voice over - It was the best 20 dollars I ever spent.

-Michael