STAFFORD SPRINGS – Legendary heavy metal singer Doro Pesch made her way to the Palace Theater in Stafford Springs CT this past Friday night. Hailing from Dusseldorf Germany, Pesch has earned legendary status among heavy metal music fans for her amazingly high energy live shows.
Doro Pesch (photo by Mike Augusti)
Pesch formed with the band Warlock in 1982 and gave up a career in graphic design to bring her brand of metal to the masses. Warlock produced a couple of hits in the mid 1980’s including All We Are and Fur Immer (German for Forever). All We Are was a mainstay on MTV for a number of months and brought the band even more attention, which in turn led to some high profile tours with Dio and Megadeth.
Warlock disbanded in 1989 due to a legal battle with her former manager. Doro has since won another legal battle to retain the rights to the name, but currently performs just as Doro.
This tour has Doro celebrating her thirty plus years in heavy metal music. Doro opened with the crowd favorite Earthshaker Rock and proceeded to rip through a sixteen song set that spanned her entire career.
Some of the classics early on in the set included I Rule the Ruins, Fight for Rock, Raise Your Fist in the Air and The Night of the Warlock. Pesch reached deep in her career and pulled out one of the very first songs written by Warlock, Burning the Witches.
Throughout the night Pesch couldn’t stop thanking the fans that attended. Repeatedly stating, “If it wasn’t for all of you, I wouldn’t be up here doing this”. She couldn’t have been more genuine, constantly shaking hands and relishing in the moment.
Some other highlights included True as Steel, Metal Racer, Fur Immer and Out of Control. Although Pesch’s band are all phenomenal musicians, the drum and guitar solos were quite possibly unnecessary as she has so many songs to choose from and perform. I suppose it’s not a heavy metal show if there weren’t the obligatory solos performed.
Doro added a Judas Priest cover of Breaking the Law before taking a slight break for a 3 song encore. The encore consisted of the Warlock hit All We Are, Unholy Love and Love Me in Black.
This night belonged to the Queen and Doro clearly showed why she is called that in the metal world. I can’t say enough about her performance, her gratitude and overall energy on this rainy night in Stafford Springs CT.
On a side note, The Palace Theater is a great place to see live music with an open floor plan and the balcony overlooking the entire venue. However, the place was not even close to full for this show and that’s unfortunate as Doro performed like she was in front of 10,000 screaming fans.
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