ELEGANT WEAPONS : LIVE AT THE ALHAMBRA, PARIS

The Alhambra in Paris was to be the location of the very first headlining show in the relatively “young” career of supergroup, Elegant Weapons.

Consisting of Richie Faulker of Judas Priest on guitar, Ronnie Romero of, among others, Rainbow, on vocals, Accept’s Christopher Williams on drums and Dave Rimmer from Uriah Heap on bass, Elegant Weapons were formed around the middle of 2022, while their debut album Horns for a Halo was released in May of this year. Tonight at the Alhambra in Paris was going to be their first opportunity to play a full set together.

A moderately-sized crowd (considering Hellfest was taking place over on the west coast) were treated to the entire debut album, beginning with the first two tracks (albeit playing in reverse order) and ending with the album’s final track. The band at times seemed genuinely surprised that so many of the crowd already knew all the songs, the epic White Horse drawing one of the biggest cheers of the night.

A few sound glitches – Richie’s guitar blasting out at those of us at the front (no complaints from us on that score) drowned out Ronnie’s vocals a little too much for the first few songs, but that was literally all there was to complain about. Bassist Dave Rimmer played the John Entwistle role to perfection – silently thundering away, both unnoticeable and most definitely unmissable, Christopher Williams looked like he was having a blast, especially when we got to a certain encore …

Given the back catalogue of the individuals on stage, it was no real surprise to hear at least one “cover” for an encore, the surprise being that we were treated to a version of the Judas Priest classic, Painkiller. As ever in these scenarios – a member of a huge band playing one of their classics in a small club, right in front of your face – this was a definite high-point. But don’t let this fact take anything away from the rest of the night. The band were having fun, we were having fun. The night rocked. They knew exactly what kind of a gift they were giving us with Painkiller! Everyone had smiles on their faces.

Bands of this nature tend to vanish after an album or two (and given the workload of the members involved this is to be expected). Hopefully Elegant Weapons is something these guys will regularly find time for … we’ll definitely find the time to go check them out again and again.