HOUSTON — When it comes to the quaint gathering known as the metal festival, Hell’s Heroes doesn’t have the notoriety of Rocklahoma. It may not have the pomp of Louder Than Life or the circumstance of Aftershock.
What it does have is so much more meaningful: resonance with those who matter the most.
The artists and the fans.
Hell’s Heroes VII concluded another stellar year Saturday, March 22, at White Oak Music Hall, culminating the four-day, two-stage affair with a lot of something for everyone (see 185-photo gallery).
Enjoy your metal with a side of Satan? Goatwhore was happy to oblige spotlighting its 2000 debut album The Eclipse of Ages Into Black.
Fan of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal? Saxon headlined the finale with a special “The Eagle Has Landed” set 24 hours after playing Wheels of Steel in its entirety at the Tobin Center (coverage here).
Want to be a part of history? S.A. Slayer reunited for its first performance in 40 years (coverage here).
How about possibly reliving your high school years with a trip down Memory Lane from a guy who shouldn’t even be alive? That would be original Danzig guitarist John Christ highlighting that band’s first two game changing albums from 1988 & 1990 despite the fact he was nearly killed in an auto wreck in 2004.
Then there was Celtic folk / black metal band Primordial from Ireland, whose vocalist A.A. Nemtheanga performs with a noose around his neck.
And that was just scratching the fretboard.
The architect of Christian Larson, Hell’s Heroes VII may not be on the same platform as the bigger-name fests or performed on a cruise ship. Nevertheless, a big phat set of horns needs to be raised to Larson and his cohorts because it was a raging success with those who witnessed it no matter from where they came, independent of whether they were there one day, all four or somewhere in between.
Larson is the vocalist of heavy shredders Night Cobra, which kicked off Saturday’s festivities at 12:30 p.m. How many festival founders would put their band on first when the least amount of fans would be in attendance?
But Larson did just that, demonstrating he’s not interested in any sort of ego interfering with how his festival would be run.
And what a run it was.
Though Alamo True Metal was there only for the final day due to paying the bills and covering the aforementioned Saxon, Riot V, Lizzy Borden gig the night before in the Alamo City, the fest made quite an impression in many ways.
Despite the fact it was an 80-degree day in March as opposed to a brutal 100-degree muggy affair in July, both photo pits were stocked with cases of bottled water that security offered up for free to the hardcore fans that spent hours by the barrier.
There were no fights or visible signs of trouble. Instead, there were hours of safe metal mayhem accompanied by food trucks, and vendors selling everything from T-shirts and beanies with your favorite band’s logos to dog and cat jean jackets (somebody say MUTT-allica?).
Larson undoubtedly also put his band on first so he could spend the remainder of the fest overseeing the goings-on while admiring the fruits of his and the White Oak staff’s labor.
Larson, who also sings and plays guitar in black-metal outfit Necrofier, which headlined Hi-Tones in San Antonio on Jan. 26 (coverage here), fronted a slew of songs from Night Cobra’s 2020 debut EP In Praise of the Shadow and 2022 lone full-length Dawn of the Serpent.
Bass player Trevi Biles, meanwhile, offers up a different type of double duty. According to Encyclopaedia Metallum, he teaches high school students Precalculus and Algebra II Accelerated.
Speaking of double duty . . . drummer Dave McClain, who’s also in Sacred Reich and known for his time in Machine Head, went from S.A. Slayer’s reunion to providing the backstop for Danzig guitarist Christ less than 90 minutes later.
A stagehand resembling Glenn Danzig, complete with the sideburns, introduced the band simply by bellowing, “Do you wanna cross that line,” to which the crowd erupted, “ ‘Cause it’s a Long Way Back From Hell!”
That would be just one of the eight Danzig songs Christ, McClain and Co. would perform as part of a 45-minute set.
Each minute Christ lives, let alone plays guitar, is a victory in and of itself. While driving a truck in 2004, a tire blew out. Christ’s vehicle rolled, ejecting him into oncoming traffic and leading to years of physical and mental therapy.
Prior to launching into “Snakes of Christ,” (ATM footage below), Christ used a sense of humor to regale the audience about his frightening experience.
“I wanted to go for a helicopter ride, right? The only way I found out (how) to do it was to get thrown out of a truck on the freeway and get run over by traffic going the other way,” Christ said. “But I got my helicopter ride. I shut down the freeway in both directions in L.A., and I almost kicked the bucket. Broke half my body, and it took five years to be able to play guitar again. I had to learn how to talk everything and walk. Some people say I still can’t talk or walk at the same time. But anyway, and now it’s 20 years later. I’m back. I missed you guys.”
Christ, who stamped Danzig’s sound on the first four albums after a stint with Glenn Danzig in Samhain, was playing his first gig in Houston since 1995. The crowd ate it up on classic riff-laden opener “Twist of Cain,” “She Rides,” “Am I Demon” and of course, the hit that broke Danzig’s MTV bank: “Mother.”
“MTV hated us until ‘Beavis & Butt-head’ loved us in ‘93,” Christ said.
There was also Swiss trio Coroner, still being spearheaded by singer/bassist Ron Royce. It was a little surreal standing in line with them at one of the food trucks immediately after their set, but that’s the intimacy you get at Hell’s Heroes that doesn’t happen at all festivals.
There was Scotland’s Hellripper, packing them in during the hottest part of the afternoon while marking their first trip to America.
There was San Antonio’s own Las Cruces, which learned only about a week before that they’d be replacing the absent Blood Ceremony. Vocalist Jason Kane was a headbanging and singing machine, while guitarist Mando Serna, bassist Jimmy Bell and band leader George Trevino made the Alamo City proud throughout the set, a taste of which can be seen below on ATM’s footage of “Ringmaster” and “Cocaine Wizard Woman.”
Lest anyone call it a night early, they would have missed Saxon putting a metallic bow on another year of Hell’s Heroes.
At one point, vocalist Biff Byford lamented the discrepancy in Saxon’s appearances at festivals overseas compared to the dearth of American ones, saying, “We should play more festivals in America. We don’t get asked to play festivals here. It’s a bloody shame, really.”
But all it took was the performance of a few tracks Saxon didn’t perform at the Tobin Center such as “This Town Rocks” plus “And the Bands Played On” to make things right again immediately after thundering through “1066” and “The Eagle Has Landed” (ATM footage of both below).
Following the latter, Byford told the crowd Saxon would play “a few extra songs.” He gave the people the choice of hearing the two aforementioned ones along with their cover of San Antonio native Christopher Cross’ “Ride Like the Wind” before yielding, “Maybe we’ll do two of them. Or all three.”
After ending the trifecta with the remake, Byford instructed of Houston: “Don’t tell San Antonio we played that one.”
The generosity, however, came at a small price. As Saxon began to exceed the 11 p.m. curfew, the venue pulled the plug after the first verse of finale “Princess of the Night.”
It was the only blemish on the evening, if you could even call it that.
Barely a breath after the final note, Hell’s Heroes was already reaching out to fans asking for which bands they want to have at next year’s fest. A good start would be the groups that couldn’t make it due to visa or travel issues such as the aforementioned Blood Ceremony and Onslaught.
But again, Hell’s Heroes has something for everyone. Whatever the choices, they’re bound to be worth the time and price of admission you’re willing to invest in it in 2026.
Next time, you might want to bring your pet. Just don’t forget to raise those horns, and paws, high to the sky.
