Safe space for headbangers only: GATECREEPER comes back to Tucson three years later
- Justin de la Cruz
- Sep 5
- 3 min read
Before taking off to Europe for the “Blood Dynasties” tour with ARCH ENEMY, AMORPHIS, and ELUVEITIE, Valley death metal caniacs GATECREEPER brought Arizona metal out in full force at 191 Toole in Tucson, bringing other Arizona metal bands VEHEMENCE, NUCLEAR REMAINS, TERRITORY, and EXSUL along for the party.
The masked death metal group EXSUL would greet their hometown crowd with their wall of oppressive and harsh noise drenched with cold blue stage lighting. The following act would be the most off the wall choice in the night’s lineup as TERRITORY took over the stage with blood red lighting and angry, relentless hardcore. NUCLEAR REMAINS made the crowd go even crazier with people beginning to fly off of the stage.
As I was taking photos, the man who took the first dive tapped me on the shoulder and gave me a fair warning before taking the stage and diving into the wild audience. This unfortunately cost him his unsupervised drink, as it was disposed of by security to prevent spilling on the speakers and outlets. As the band would go on to sing about depravity (“Festering Disfigured Whore”) and abortion (“Spontaneous Abortion”), the under-21 crowd would put the over-21 section to shame as they partied and moshed much harder than my side of the room. Perhaps I should be grateful for that, as it spared me from having to play human dodgeball.
At least, for the moment it seemed.
Through various breakups and reunions, death metal group VEHEMENCE would find themselves united once again in the year 2025. Back in May of this year, they played their first show in nine years to a sold out crowd at The Nile Underground. Three months later would see them touring alongside two younger generations of sonoran death metal sickos a la NUCLEAR REMAINS and GATECREEPER. Tucson gave them a warm welcome by sustaining the energy of moshing and stage diving as they played through their back catalog from “God Was Created” and “Helping The World To See.”
As the lights went dim, the song “Arizona” by ST. MADNESS blasted through the speakers before the band stepped out to greet the Tucson crowd. GATECREEPER had not played 191 Toole since 2022, and the anticipation since then had been palpable. The opening riffs of “Dead Star” wasted no time getting everyone in the room to bang their heads and lead singer CHASE MASON demanded them to keep going. The excitement of the crowd almost cost me some of my camera equipment as someone ended up diving on top of me and my camera flash.
The dangers of taking photos in the heat of the action are what excite me about taking photos at venues such as 191 Toole: there are no barriers to separate the photographer from the crowd, so if you wanna get close for a shot, you must accept the risks (whether it be equipment damage or bodily injury), for anything wild that may happen.
For heavy metal shows, the risk is that if you aren’t a headbanger, it’s not a safe space for you.
The merch area would also prove to not be a safe space, as one person crowdsurfing almost landed on GATECREEPER’s merch table. The frenzied crowd was being taped on a camcorder for GATECREEPER’s upcoming music video for their song “Mistaken For Dead,” and would kickstart another circle pit when that same song began. Towards the end of the show, guitarist and Tucson native ERIC WAGNER would once again crowdsurf (luckily not into the merch table) as they were playing their final song “Boiled Over.” The show ended with a callback to their stage intro music in the past where they played AZ Channel 3’s Good Morning Arizona jingle.
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