Prong

Live at The House of Blues

Anaheim, CA

May 18th, 2017

Review and photos by Travis Baumann

Prong area a heavy metal band out of New York City. Founded by Tommy Victor, they have been influential trail blazers leading from hardcore and punk roots to post-punk thrash metal with experimental and industrial influences.

Standing in line with bands such as Killing Joke, Ministry, and Danzig, Prong have had members that have played in all of those projects and have made a heavy mark on metal music in general.

I first got into Prong in the late 1980's with their scene impacting albums "Beg to Differ", "Prove You Wrong", and later "Cleansing". The last album was my personal favorite and showed their heaviest trek into the realms of industrial influenced metal which added another high mark to the mid-90's music scene.

Prong recently released their eleventh studio album with "X - No Absolutes" and are touring as special guests of trash metal titans, Testament.

Prong are first and foremost, Tommy Victor who is the one constant since the band's inception in 1983. He handles vocal duties as well as all guitar work. He is a notable talent and during periods of Prong's hiatus has played guitar in both Ministry and Danzig over the years.

His signature vocal style is abrasive yet accessible, very much in line with other awesome bands from the era such as Killing Joke - a mixture of hardcore punk with aggressive tendencies, but balanced by the refinement that came post-punk into modern thrash and cross-over metals styles.

Joining Tommy on stage are Mike Longworth on bass guitar and Art Cruz on drums. Both proved to be formidable musicians, balancing out the three-piece with a raw edge of percussion and lower end on top of which Tommy laid his moving guitars and vocals.

They opened the set with a song from the latest album with "Ultimate Authority". I always love seeing new material live and this was a great song to start off with.

They moved back to the beginning with the title track off of "Beg To Differ" for the second song which covered two extremes of their catalog and immediately gave us an old favorite from way back when I was in high school.

Keeping it old school, they did "Unconditional" from "Prove You Wrong" before hitting up "Cut -Rate" from "Cleansing". Less than half way through their set and they already hit upon my three favorite albums from their past.

Kicking it back into the present, they performed another song from "X - No Absolutes" with "Cut and Dry". Tommy took a moment to thank Testament, especially Chuck Billy and his wife for inviting Prong on this tour and had everybody give a big cheer for them.

The 1994 album "Cleansing" was definitely one of their most popular releases and holds a collection of powerful songs that still remain some of fans' favorites. As a great service to those fans, myself included, Prong did three in a row from this album starting off with "Another Worldly Device".

The drummer demonstrated his agility by launching one of his drum sticks off stage and then have a stage hand on the side toss it back at him. Without fail he would stick his arm up mid swing and snag the drum stick out of the air just in time for the next strike. He repeated this through out the song putting on quite a show

"Whose Fist Is This Anyway?" and "Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck" are potentially their two greatest hits ever. They were frequently featured on MTV's Headbangers Ball series and were definitely the highlights of the set for me and the many fans that sang along to them both.

They finished up the set with another new song, "Sense of Ease", which book ended the older material nicely and gave the best of all worlds to the fans. They really have stayed true to their sound as the old and new blended seemlessly.

It was a great set selection, I could not have been happier with what they played for us, giving us an awesome pick of old favorites and a number of new songs worked into the mix to bring people up to speed with the current album.

Glad to see Prong still going strong after all of these years.

Click the banner above to return

the navigation page of the

Virtual Night Angel website