Concert Review: Quiet Riot / Anthony Corder of Tora Tora @ Cohoes Music Hall, 10/13/2023

Veteran hard rock/metal band Quiet Riot really rocked the house Friday night at the Cohoes Music Hall.

It was great to see this historic venue packed to the rafters with an enthusiastic crowd more than ready to “bang their head” at every opportunity.

First up was a set by Anthony Corder, the singer with Tora Tora, the Tennessee band who made a splash back in 1989 with their debut album “Surprise Attack,” which cracked the Billboard top fifty. Although the band is still in existence, Corder is currently touring with just the accompaniment of his own acoustic guitar and Ben Hans on percussion. Together, they made a full sound, with Corder’s gritty, bluesy vocals standing out. This was an educated hard rock crowd and whoops of recognition greeted their minor hit “Walkin’ Shoes,” much to Corder’s genuine delight.

Then came the main attraction. Quiet Riot formed in L.A. in the seventies but didn’t achieve their national breakthrough until the eighties, becoming one of the quintessential “MTV Sunset Strip hair metal” juggernauts. Famously their 1983 album “Metal Health” was the first heavy metal album to top the Billboard charts, inspiring a plethora of bands that followed and whose use of Aqua Net threatened the ozone layer.

Quiet Riot also had hit singles, crossing over to a younger demographic. Interestingly, two of their three biggest hits were, in fact, cover versions. Both “Mama weer all Crazee now” and “Cum on feel the Noize” were songs by the British glam rock band Slade, who never quite broke in the States. Quiet Riot retooled and repackaged these seventies anthems, complete with Slade’s deliberately defiant schoolteacher baiting misspellings, by heavying them up for the kids in America. It worked (although, in my opinion, the originals are still superior. Give ‘em a listen.) The hit that they wrote themselves was the equally anthemic “Metal Health (Bang your Head.)”

What legitimizes this current incarnation of the band, saving them from being branded with the moniker of “tribute band,” is the presence of Rudy Sarzo. Bass player Sarzo has been a member, on and off, of Quiet Riot in every decade they have existed, including the glory years of the eighties. And he’s the undoubted star of the show, incessantly pacing up and down the stage, throwing shapes, switching his left hand under and over the neck of his instrument, balancing it on his head, and playing it behind his shoulders, all the while somehow still playing his churning bass lines.

Lead singer Jizzy Pearl is excellent; his high, raspy, powerful voice is reminiscent of me of Klaus Meine. Pearl has been around the block (or the strip), serving time in Love/Hate, L.A. Guns, Ratt and Adler’s Appetite, and is a confident frontman. The band even threw in a cover of Love/Hate’s “Blackout in the Red Room.” The powerhouse drumming required is provided by the most recent member, Johnny Kelly, ex-goth metal band Type O Negative. And the quartet is rounded out by Alex Grossi, who shredded admirably but was somewhat buried in the mix, at least for those of us up on the balcony. Grossi’s solo spot included a tease of the Ozzy Osbourne classic “Crazy Train,” the Quiet Riot connection being that their original guitarist back in the seventies was the pre-fame Randy Rhoads who played on that Ozzy record.

They ended with “Noize” and “Metal Health,” their two biggest songs, and there was no following that, and therefore no encore. The capacity crowd didn’t seem to mind and departed happily, having been treated to an evening of eighties rock at its most rad. For sure? Totally.

Quiet Riot setlist:

• Run for Cover
• Slick Black Cadillac
• Mama weer all Crazee Now
• I Can’t Hold On
• Sign of the Times
• Love’s a Bitch
• Condition Critical
• Thunderbird
• Party all Night
• Blackout in the Red Room
• The Wild & the Young
• Let’s Get Crazy
• Guitar solo (including Crazy Train snippet)
• Let’s Get Crazy (Reprise)
• Cum on Feel the Noize
• Metal Health (Bang Your Head)