After seeing Rogue One the day before, it was time to catch the one and only Manowar’s original guitarist Ross The Boss at Brian’s Backyard BBQ – only five minutes from my home. Once this was announced, I told as many friends as I could that I knew would be interested as hearing classic Manowar songs for only 15 bucks. At around 6:30, I met up with a bunch of my normal concert going friends like Birdman, Alyssa, and Jay as well as a few I haven’t seen in awhile, Kevin and Destin. At around 9pm the only opener came on

Metal Inc.

First on was the local metal cover band, Metal Inc. They covered a variety of metal tracks from greats including Accept,  Judas Priest, Dio, Alice in Chains, Black Sabbath, Danzig, Metallica, Pantera, and Motorhead.  They sounded good playing the tracks while also keeping the crowd interested and pumped for the feature presentation.

Ross The Boss

At 10:30 it was time for The Boss to take charge. I was excited knowing that the whole set was going to just be songs from Ross’s era of Manowar, which is the older and more traditional metal sounding Manowar that I prefer. Playing in his backing band was none other than ex- Manowar drummer, Rhino. This was the first show  to feature him as well new vocalist Marc Lopes and bassist Mike LePond of Symphony X.

They started their set with “Blood of Our Kings,” a good indicator of where the set was going. I stood right up front next to Andy from thrash legends Prime Evil and this one guy who seemed to be REALLY into Manowar. We saw more classics such as “Fighting the World,” “Each Dawn I Die,” “Kill with Power,” and “Sign of the Hammer.” The energy of the show was unbelievable and almost everyone in the crowd were screaming along to the band’s awesomely cheesy lyrics, while the guy next to me was adding to that by trying to act out the lyrics such as swinging his invisible Thor’s hammer. They ended their set with “Hail and Kill” followed by an encore with “Battle Hymns.” To me, this was the best way they could have ended it as those are my two favorite Manowar songs. After saying goodbye to my friends and telling Ross that he did an awesome job, I went home from my favorite show at that venue to date.