Double Dragon had the unenviable task of opening the night, and to their credit, they got the punters in the mood. Playing a brand of less frenetic, groovier thrash, the South Aussies got a great response from the steadily building crowd, their lead vocalist Lee Gardiner eloquently summing up the anticipation of the evening: “You fuckers ready for fuckin Slayer?...Fuck Yeah!” Nuff said!

Lets be honest, Megadeth are a good metal band, not a great metal band. They do what they do, and they do it well, and whilst on tonight’s bill they were named as co-headliners, they were, in reality, playing second fiddle to a far superior metal band.

Set the World Afire kicked off their set, a blistering exercise in pop-thrash and set the tone for the rest of the their set. Unfortunately, every Megadeth song sounds like the last, built on a framework guitar heroics in dispersed with whiny, faux angry vocals that seem more like a bitch slap than the requisite punch in the face. Case in point was 1320 from the new album, Endgame. Singing about driving “really fuckin fast” isn’t metal! Metallica did it, and even they sucked at it, so how can we buy it from the bloke who got kicked out of Metallica?

Watching Megadeth on stage, to be honest, they may as well have been Bon Jovi with an extra 100bpm, band members seemingly more concerned with prancing about the stage, with “look at me” guitar posturing and wondering if their Pantene treatment gave their mops more volume and bounce.

The highlights of the set, as you may have expected, came at the end. The classic Peace Sells, Who’s Buying? was pretty awesome, showcasing a band writing at their peak, dazzling with it’s musical density and intricate structures and rounded out with a classic audience chorus chant. After a brief encore break, the band closed with Holy Wars…The Punishment Due, a rousing display of the full throttle shred mastery that the band has become famous for.

As the lights dimmed chants of “Slayer, Slayer, Slayer….” began. Visions from the depths of hell were projected onto the curtain hiding the arsenal of war and the men of Slayer made their way to the stage, their silhouettes giving way to the ear-bleeding proto-thrash of World Painted Blood, proof, if any was needed, that they’ve still got it. At this point the difference between the Megadeth and Slayer became obvious: the volume, the intensity, the production, the crowd involvement. This was no “co-headlining” tour.

Classic, War Ensemble, whipped the crowd into a frenzy, devil horns, air drumming and circle pitting ensued. Gods War from 2007’s Christ Illusion was the most clear divergence from the Slayer sound, morphing rock hooks into a demented beast of a track, Kerry King’s shred inciting guitar hero antics and Dave Lombardo cementing himself as a percussive weapon.

Tom Araya asked the crowd if we would “die for another” before breaking into mind-bending, visceral intensity of Mandatory Suicide, Jeff Hanneman’s wailing wall of feedback embodying the absolute insanity of the song. Dead Skin Mask, an ode to mass murderer Ed Gein, saw Hanneman, Araya and King side by side, propelled by Lombardo, riffing as heavy metal’s ultimate gang.

The only real disappointment of the evening was the conspicuous absence of Araya’s blood curdling scream in Angel of Death, the exhausted vocalist letting the punters fill the void with rousing chorus chants. As the PA played the tape of the opening bars of South of Heaven, the crowd went ballistic, the roof of the venue almost lifting off as the live guitars kicked in, the volume pinning the crowd to the floor.

Raining Blood closed the set in epic style, the stage enshrouded in smoke, a Slayer insignia set ablaze behind the drum riser, the band casting shadowy figures in the haze, letting the music do all the talking: no posing, no bullshit – just fuckin Slayer!