SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY – A mighty triple bill rolled into the Saratoga Performing Arts Center here on 9/27/25, featuring hard rock/heavy metal icons Alice Cooper and Judas Priest co-headlining, with veterans Corrosion of Conformity opening the night. It proved to be a truly bulletproof lineup.
Not only did hard rock and metal fans get to see the sinister Uncle Alice, a man who not only invented shock rock, but also boasts a discography so varied and full of gems that he could be deemed a genre all by himself; on this night there was also the mighty Judas Priest, the first band to unapologetically declare itself to be a heavy metal band in the 1970s. Priest may not have invented metal (Black Sabbath did), but before JP, no band not only admitted, but chest-beatingly boasted that they were, in fact heavy metal.
To top it off, the excellent COC opened; originally an ’80s hardcore band, they morphed into something more metal, groove-laden and Sabbathy in the 1990s. Kudos to Alice and Priest for bringing COC along on this trek. They were truly a perfect opener for this bill.
All of these bands have played the 518 many times over the years, but none have an extensive history at SPAC, which was full for the occasion. The weather was perfect: a pleasant early fall night, ideal for an outdoor show. The lawn was jammed. The crowd was a mix of veteran metalheads and old-school rock fans, but also a fair amount of younger folks (and lots of kids with parents).
COC hit the stage at 6:45 sharp, and although the crowd was sparse as the Raleigh, NC heavies started, the theater filled in nicely before the group finished. COC—which in 2025 only features original guitarist Woody Weatherman and singer/guitarist Pepper Keenan from the 1990s lineup—kicked off their set with the stomping instrumental “Bottom Feeder (El que come abajo)” off the great 1996 Wiseblood set, although it was an intro-type truncated version, not the 10-minute epic from the studio record. This led straight into that same record’s hammering “King of the Rotten.” In contrast to the big stage sets and rock star attire of the headliners, COC kept it spartan and bling-free: jeans, battered Gibson SGs, and loud, pummeling riffs.
The band added “Seven Days” from Deliverance to their set, while another highlight was the ripping “Vote With A Bullet,” from 1991’s Blind, a song originally written to rail against the now long-dead far-right senator of COC’s native North Carolina, Jesse Helms, although the lyrics continue to unfortunately resonate in the current fractured political clime. The rest of the set mined their mid-‘90s years: “Wiseblood,” followed by the (minor) hits “Clean My Wounds” and “Albatross.” Clocked in at 35 minutes, it was a perfect warm-up set, and the band got a great reaction from the crowd.
This is a co-headlining tour, so it wasn’t exactly clear whether Priest or Alice would be closing the show (a different band closes each night), but the advertising suggested that Alice was the “headliner” of this one, and so it was. Priest hit the stage next a little before 8 p.m., as darkness fell, with the intro tape of Sabbath’s “War Pigs” evoking a big singalong from the crowd, followed by Rob Halford barking out the intro to “All Guns Blazing,” as the band blasted out of the traps into “Hell Patrol,” both from the 1990 album Painkiller.
To their credit, Judas Priest in recent tours have dedicated an increasing amount of the set to “deep tracks” across their substantial catalog, and this tour has been advertised as a show which commemorates the 35th anniversary of Painkiller. As a result, your personal enjoyment of this night’s setlist was inevitably related to your own affinity for Painkiller, which marked Priest’s return to heavy after the sins of the lightweight predecessors Turbo and the better-but-formulaic Ram It Down.
Priest did play some of the hits, though, and song three was their biggest American single, “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’,” which led to huge cheers from the more casual fans. It was great seeing them put the thrashing 1984 gem “Freewheel Burning” back in the set, before heading back into hit single territory with the singalong, never-out-of-the-set standard, “Breaking the Law.”
To this writer, it’s still odd to see Judas Priest without Glenn Tipton and K.K. Downing manning the twin guitars, but K.K.’s longtime replacement Richie Faulkner has long settled into his role as JP’s main guitar protagonist, and he does so well, with rock star swagger aplenty, and is ably assisted by JP producer and ex-Sabbat guitarist Andy Sneap. The rhythm section remains intact with Scott Travis (who joined the band just before Painkiller) and longtime bassist and original member Ian Hill, who sways reliably at the rear of the stage.
Of course, singer Rob Halford led the charge, looking more in 2025 like heavy metal Santa Claus than the ringleading drill sergeant of old. His vocal prowess and range has maybe faded somewhat since days of yore, but he was on form this night, not only vocally but in terms of activity, ranging the stage, the cane he’d been utilizing on tours past nowhere to be seen. He remains the Metal God.
Priest’s stage set was great, too: blazing screens in the back, with lots of song-specific graphics and/or video of the band for those in the cheap seats. Halford and Faulkner prowled the stage while Hill and Sneap stayed fairly static, heads down, blasting out the heavy, with Travis hammering away up in the back.
A couple of the more mid-tempo Painkiller offerings were next (“A Touch of Evil” and “Night Crawler”), before JP ripped into the only real non-Painkiller deep track of the night: “Solar Angels,” from Point of Entry. This was a glorious addition to the set; the first song I’d ever seen them play live, it was the opener when I first saw them as a kid at the Palace Theatre in 1981, with Iron Maiden. Amazing choice, and great to see it back in the set.
Although the tour is titled “Shield of Pain,” there wasn’t much from the newest Invincible Shield record. “Gates of Hell” was one, but it’s maybe not my favorite song off that album. (I would’ve preferred the title track, or the jittery “Panic Attack,” but I get it; they played those last tour, and are mixing it up.) But you can’t complain about what followed: the unmistakable intro music of “The Hellion” played over the PA to huge cheers, and then JP destroyed all with a smoking rendition of “Electric Eye,” re-added to the set a few shows before, in place of “Between the Hammer & the Anvil.” It was certainly a more crowd-pleasing choice than the relatively obscure Painkiller cut.
The band then did a tribute to fallen metal heroes with another Invincible Shield track, “Giants in the Sky,” which featured video backdrops of the faces of departed rockers from Janis Joplin to Maiden’s Paul Di’Anno, the biggest roar coming when Ozzy’s face showed up last on the video montage. JP wrapped up the regular set in fast, heavy, headbanging fashion with “Painkiller” itself, before an encore mirroring that of the past few tours: the motorcycle, “Hell Bent for Leather” (sadly, the only 1970s JP song in the whole set; how do they not even do “Victim of Changes”?) and the anthemic finale of “Living After Midnight,” to huge applause.
Great Priest show. They always are great live. The best setlist? Nah. Do I need to hear five Painkiller songs and no “Victim,” or “Sinner,” or “Ripper,” or “Metal Gods,” or other vintage classics? Nope. But that’s a product of when I discovered JP, while to people who came in on Painkiller, this was surely awesome.
On the other hand, if we want to talk about face-destroyingly fantastic setlists, then look no further than what came next. This was a great Alice Cooper gig. It had to be, after Priest, and Alice brought the A-game. Interestingly, Alice had been playing (up until the end of August) the same setlist he’s been playing for a few years now (which featured a lot of focus on the mid/late ’80s material along with the old classics), and the same one we saw at Albany’s Palace Theatre in July 2024. The Coop has since shuffled the set almost completely, with a great new song selection, mixing a few reliable standards in with a fantastic array of deep tracks.
Alice hit the stage (after an instrumental “Hello Hooray”) with a surprise opener: a portion of the 1981 deep cut “Who Do You Think We Are?” (from the underrated Special Forces), which led into “Spark in the Dark,” from the 1989 Trash record. There was a lot from Trash and 1991’s Hey Stoopid; three from each album. But it’s still the stuff up to and including 1975 which gets the big reactions, like “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” and “I’m Eighteen,” from the original band.
The vintage stuff wasn’t just the hits, though, as Cooper unveiled “Muscle of Love,” title track of the final album from the original band, and a stupendous version of the rarely played ‘Caught in a Dream,” from Love it to Death, mixed in with late ’80s and ’90s tracks like “Feed My Frankenstein” (featuring the giant monster), “Hey Stoopid,” “Dangerous Tonight,” and the more recent, “Dirty Diamonds.”
Sadly, Flush the Fashion gem “Clones,” which was in the set at the start of this tour, wasn’t played this night. A heavy “Brutal Planet,” weaved in an extended solo from guitar shredder Nita Strauss, with jamming from guitarists Ryan Roxie and Tommy Henriksen, bassist Chuck Garric, and drummer Glen Sobel, all of whom have been with Alice on and off for quite a few years. They are a crack unit—rock stars all—and a killer band.
The solo and instrumental spots set the stage for Alice’s return to the stage and the theatrics: Cooper was the focus for the mental breakdown of “Ballad of Dwight Fry,” into a heavy “Cold Ethyl,” and Alice’s ageless wife/dancer Sheryl Cooper took center stage for “Only Woman Bleed.” Of course, Alice must die before the end of the show, and Sheryl took the lead, manning the guillotine and beheading her husband. It was cool to hear “Second Coming”—absent from the set since 1971—weaved into the show during the execution, along with the Go To Hell gem “Going Home,” which had never been played live before this month.
Surely the night could end with only one song: “School’s Out,” one of those evergreens you could be happy to never hear on the radio again because you’ve heard it so much, but somehow live it is just purely celebratory, and you don’t mind hearing it for the trillionth time. They added in a jam on Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” with band intros, plus those giant balloons floating around the crowd, all of which Alice manages to pop with his sword. A great finish, as ever.
For three bands that almost never play SPAC, it was a top-notch night of heavy, and a stark contrast to the inevitable Dave Matthews/Phish/legacy band shows that dominate the venue’s calendar each summer. Here’s hoping we see more tours like this one stopping off in Saratoga Springs next season.
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Alice Cooper – 9/27/25 at SPAC, Saratoga Springs, NY (Photos by Mark Kurtzner)
Judas Priest – 9/27/25 at SPAC, Saratoga Springs, NY (Photos by Mark Kurtzner)
Corrosion of Conformity – 9/27/25 at SPAC, Saratoga Springs, NY (Photos by Mark Kurtzner)
