This show was not affected by the sad and recent death of Tom`s dad who passed away on the 7th Feb 2002,understandably some of the tour dates had to be rescheduled including the Anaheim LA show the night before at the Grove on Tuesday 12th Feb. We had flown from England to LA to see the Anaheim show,only to find out on the night when we got to the Grove that it had been postponed and that a new date had yet to be confirmed,we agreed to sell our tickets to a bloke who lived in the area as he`d be able to get to the gig whereas we`d be back in England by then. I checked the net for updated info about the other shows and found out that the San Fran show was still going ahead,and i called the venue in the morning of the 13th,they said it was going ahead but was sold out,this was not good news. We decided nonetheless to drive from LA to San Fran which took many hours on the road and we were making good progress until we got about 30 miles from the city where things slowed down a bit as we were hitting the rush hour traffic and it was raining hard making the driving quite hazardous.

We called the Warfield again and they said they had 100 tickets on a first come first served basis on the door from 6.30pm,we were still a good 30 minutes away and time was against us as my friends drove and frantically read the street map to find the venue,time really was against us now. Eventually we found the Warfield,and the time was about 7.15pm,it really was a hit and miss situation as to whether we`d get in or not,and i could see quite a few people hanging around outside. I walked up to the front as my friends found a parking space and spoke to the head security man there i explained we`d flown from London to see Slayer,and he said no problem,this was superb news. I gladly bought the tickets and after a quick bodysearch by security we were in!!!!!!!!

The Warfield is a fairly small place somewhat like our legendary London Hammersmith Odeon here in England with an upstairs and a downstairs-upstairs is seated and down below is standing only but on 2 separate levels. The front part of the downstairs area is quite heavily monitored by bouncers and the other section is a bit less policed so to speak and has section standing only areas to keep the aisles clear by having yellow and black lines on the carpet. I`d say the place holds about 2000 people,if anyone knows for sure please tell me!!!!!!!!!!!!I got just left of the second part of the downstairs area in the lined section and a friend decided to observe from upstairs-he`d never seen slayer before and was curious to see what they could do live.

We caught the first support band and the other one,personally i found them tedious and very much like all the other current bands and was glad to see them finish,sorry if anyone is upset or disagrees with me but Slayer for me anyway set such high standards most bands seem very mediocre in comparison.

One cheeky so and so asked me if he could have my ticket stub,i politely said `no`-well i keep as many of my gig ticket stubs so he was out of luck,lol!The crowd was getting a bit restless as the stage was getting ready for Slayer to appear-much chanting of `SLAYER SLAYER SLAYER`!!!! could be heard from every nook and cranny inside the venue,i was now getting very very excited,in fact i can still feel that excitement right now as i type these words,true!But then Slayer has always had that effect on me ever since i first heard them in 1985,and this was to be the 17th time i have seen them play live. Then all of a sudden,the lights slowly dimmed and the band walked onstage,yes!!!!!!!!!!!!They started with `Darkness Of Christ` and damn it felt sooo good,a real rush which was further reinforced by the very impressive stage setting which was very dark and eeiry with `GOD HATES US ALL` written in a couple of places glowing red-you had to be there to appreciate how awesome that looked believe me. Then the stage lights came on and we could see SLAYER-the moshpit right at the front of the stage went absoloutely ballistic,arms flying all over the place and crowd surfing,circles and slamming as well,really fierce.

And of course Dave Lombardo their origianl drummer was back with them albeit on a temporary basis to help out whilst they find a permanent replacement for Paul Bostaph-this was the first time i`d seen Dave with Slayer since Nov 1991 at the London Hammersmith Odeon,but i have seen him play with Grip Inc and Fantomas where he impressed me greatly.

On this night however he did mess up a few times including half way through `Chemical Warfare` which was very noticeable,certainly to me,perhaps Dave is not as good as he once was or maybe he was still a bit `patchy` here and there needing more time to get to grips with the tunes..... i really was surprised to hear that he`d even agreed to help Slayer out in the first place,after all his departure from the band wasn`t very clean or friendly-perhaps Dave wanted to prove a point,i don`t know maybe we`ll never know.Jeff and Kerry cut the mustard as good as ever,they really feed off each other so well,that`s one of the great things about Slayer IMO.Dave Lombardo is still number one on the double kick drum i have to say,he has great timing and power. The sound overall though was powerful and coherent with the usual sledgehammer delivery the band are legendary for,and Tom did a good job like he usually does but his voice was definitely not quite up to his best-i can only presume that could well be down to him still mourning the loss of his dad. Don`t get me wrong,he did a very good job on the night,it didn`t retract from his brilliance as the frontman for Slayer,i`m sure i couldn`t have done as good a job as him if my dad had died a week earlier.

The yellow and black lines where i was standing really restricted much movement because so many people were crammed in so it was nigh on impossible to headbang etc,but i did as much as i could despite the bouncers regularly coming over with their flashlights and saying `get behind the line`. The moshpit was overflowing big time a it was a regular occurance for bouncers to frogmarch some of the fans out of the venue,some were girls-respect to them! One mosher had 5 bouncers struggle to get him out,he was really hyped up and i was nearly knocked to the floor by a coloured bloke who was been chased out of the moshpit-all i saw were these 2 big and bold eyes running right at me,then bang,lol!!!Luckily i wasn`t hurt and carried on enjoying the gig which had a great selection of tunes(see the other gig review for this show for the set list)including the new `Payback` and the classic `Born Of Fire` They played a 90 minute set inclusive of encores and it was very much worth the effort to see my all time number one band play in California with the original lineup,but as to who will be the new drummer i`m sure we`ll find out soon. My friend who saw them from upstairs was quite impressed but he too picked up on Dave`s drumming errors but he want`s to see them again despite some crowd surfer who booted him on the back of the head whilst he was watching the show-he has a minor cut on his head,a souvenir to remind him of his first Slayer show.