Pop Break Live: Fozzy at House of Independents in Asbury Park, NJ
The title of this review, at face value, can be construed as a not-so clever play on the title of Fozzy lead singer Chris Jericho’s WWE theme song.
And while this is true to some degree, there’s a lot more than just a pun at play here.
See, whenever a celebrity brings “their band” out on tour, people tend to go see them for the novelty of it all. “Oh it’ll be cool to see (INSERT CELEBRITY) perform music.” If you’re a wrestling fan, seeing Chris Jericho in a venue like Asbury Park’s House of Independents is a much more intimate experience than seeing him at say Wrestlemania with 80,000 people, or even an arena show with 10s of thousands of fans.
However, what Fozzy proved on Friday night May 19, was that they weren’t a band with a famous lead singer. No, they proved that they are an elite live music experience that is a must-see when they roll into your area.
As a fan of Fozzy since their days of being known as “Fozzy Osbourne” and having Spinal Tap-esque nicknames like Mongoose McQueen (Jericho’s moniker), I was amped to see this band finally headlining a show in my home state. Having never seen them before (missing their opening date for Theory of a Deadman in 2014), I was highly intrigued to see what Y2J and the gang could do live.
I was expecting a solid show, but instead I was given a balls to the wall, melt your damn face off performance. The band had the crowd from the opening riff of their new single “Judas” to the final note of “Enemy.” As a lead singer and frontman, Chris Jericho is as charismatic as WWE persona, and his pipes are 1000 times more impressive than what the band has committed to record for nearly 20 years. As for the band, every single one of these players — Rich Ward (guitar/vocals), Frank Fontsere (drums),
Billy Grey (guitar), and Paul Di Leo (bass) — are out of this world. As a huge fan of guitar solos, Ward set the House of Independents on fire with his scorching solos.
There was another thing that made Fozzy so damn good on this night — you could tell they were having an absolute blast. And if the band is having fun — the audience sure as hell is going to have fun.
And by the end of the night, Fozzy had truly broken down a lot of walls — those walls being the expectations of the crowd in Asbury Park.
Setlist:
Judas
Sin and Bones
Tonight
To Kill a Stranger
One Crazed Anarchist
Inside My Head
Eat the Rich (Krokus cover)
Sandpaper
With the Fire
God Pounds His Nails
Spider in My Mouth
S.O.S. (ABBA cover)
Do You Wanna Start a War
Lights Go Out
Bad Tattoo
Encore:
Enemy
