The UK has had no shortage of amazing heavy metal shows with absolutely stacked bills and the latest one to hit Manchester is the Thrash of the Titans tour. Led by Testament on the release day of their latest album, Para Bellum, and featuring Florida death metal legends Obituary, teutonic thrash royalty Destruction, and one of the best up and coming thrash acts, Nervosa, it was a long night of powerful riffs, devastating drumming and violent pits.
First up was Nervosa, a thrash band from São Paulo, Brazil led by the legendary Prika Amarel. Their breed of wailing thrash metal made for a killer early start to what would be an extremely long night. Despite largely watching from the merch “queue”, you could tell that the audience were amped and ready for the show as they played a smattering of tracks from their most recent album, Jailbreak.
The set was short but you still got a good impression and understanding of what the band actually is: a collection of vicious thrash riffs and harmonised guitar with intense downpicking skill with tracks like ‘Venomous’ and ‘Kill the Silence’. It may not be the most ground-breaking collection of songs but it’s still a high quality bit of anger that kick-started a night of wall to wall violence and speed.
After a bit of a break and a return to the merch stand with hopes of the line going down, Destruction made their way on stage with the crushing thrash metal classic, ‘Curse the Gods’. Their set was a wall to wall buffet of wild flailing guitar work and edginess, like on the iconic anthem ‘Nailed to the Cross’, an insane blending of harmonised guitar work and punishing drumming, all working with Schmier’s iconic snarl as the audience banded together to scream its classic edgy chorus.
There were skulls all over the place and Destruction’s mascot, The Mad Butcher, watched over from the sides, waiting for the time to strike. There’s so much over the top edgy imagery throughout the set that it becomes endearing and you just stop criticising it and allow yourself to get enveloped by the aggy tone on tracks like ‘Scumbag Human Race’ and ‘Bestial Invasion’. I have no idea what Schmier was saying throughout the set but it sounded intense and angry, which is all the crowd needed as they blasted through absolute all-timers like ‘Thrash till Death’. I’ve had my criticisms of Destruction’s studio work over the years but they absolutely destroy live.
Next up was Obituary and having seen Obituary 3 times over the past 12 months, I came into this set with no expectations of being surprised and I wasn’t. I got an hour of brilliant groovy death metal that prioritised being stupidly heavy and there’s really not much you can ask for beyond that.
The band came out to ‘Redneck Stomp’, as usual, and just got on with it. Their set was largely made up of Cause of Death songs, an album that is celebrating its 35th anniversary. Everything on this record is a certified classic: ‘Dying’, ‘Infected’, ‘Body Bag’, ‘Chopped in Half,’ it’s all here and it’s all stupidly heavy. The simplistic riffing gives more space for the drumming from Donald Tardy to shine and the phenomenal mix makes it sound absolutely massive at all times.
All the favourites are here. ‘I’m in Pain’, which featured a mini drum solo, and ‘Slowly We Rot’ closed out the set and they’re still damn good closers, but it may be worth it for Obituary to change up their set a bit more for when they next return to the UK. It’s all high quality stuff and the energy is all there but fatigue with the setlist has started to kick in considering how many times they’ve been back to Manchester over the past year.
Finally, Testament made their way to the stage to rapturous applause and Chuck and crew absolutely ripped through the ominous borderline death metal masterpiece that is ‘DNR’. Testament have always been able to blur the line between death metal intensity and thrash speed brilliantly with the use of Chuck Billy’s powerful vocals, the two-pronged attack of Alex Skolnick and Eric Peterson and their brand new secret weapon: Chris Dovas on drums.
Chris Dovas has the unenviable task of filling the shoes of two of the greatest drummers in metal history: Gene Hoglan and Dave Lombardo (yes, he was only in the band for 5 minutes but it still counts). He’s integrated into the band brilliantly and adds so much power on tracks like ‘WWIII’, ‘More Than Meets the Eye’ and the mini drum solo that led into the iconic drum intro of ‘First Strike is Deadly’.
There’s a few classics missing like ‘The Preacher’ and ‘Over the Wall’ and the fact that there were only singles played from the new album was a bit disappointing but with any luck, they’ll return soon with more stuff from Para Bellum. The new album is one of the strongest they’ve put out in a while. Having listened to it on release day, I crossed my fingers and hoped to hear the live debut of ‘High Noon’ but no such luck. Maybe next time – it’s already a fan favourite based on social media reception.
Everyone is firing on all cylinders. Alex Skolnick once again does an amazing job playing some of the greatest guitar solos ever made including the emotional and feel-driven tracks like ‘Return to Serenity’. There’s a reason he’s considered one of the greatest of all time and it only takes a few seconds of ‘Electric Crown’ to fully understand why.
Testament are practically a supergroup at this point with bass legend Steve DiGiorgio taking up the low end and his skills had the perfect mix to shine through. There’s so many little details and twiddly bits that you’d be able to catch if you just paid attention, the man truly is a master of his instrument and one of the few people I’d be able to tolerate a bass solo from.
While the show only featured ‘Infanticide AI’ and ‘Shadow People,’ they made for solid additions to the set. ‘Shadow People’ is a bit long for what it is but it got the crowd moving and the fact these songs were close to the end of the show meant the audience had proper time to warm up instead of just tolerating new stuff that they may not be familiar with.
The show ended with the certified bay area classic and national anthem for running around in a circle: ‘Into the Pit’. It may only be a short track but you can fit a lot of mania into just three minutes and every single second counted as a frenzied tornado erupted in the centre of the room. A genuinely phenomenal close to a brilliant thrash metal show.
These kinds of bills are becoming more popular lately because the audience gets more value out of their ticket and the appropriate people can charge more for the ticket without feeling like they’re pushing their luck (for the most part). This is just one of many stellar bills that have been hitting the country and it shows no signs of slowing down as 2026 already has banger tours from the likes of Kreator in the pipeline.
Who would you like to see touring together in an insane four-band bill like this? Tell us in the comments…
