Mammoth WVH @ Mercury Ballroom - Louisville
May 17th, 2024: Mammoth WVH with Intervals @ Mercury Ballroom - Louisville, KY
Mammoth WVH - Photos Courtesy of: Emily May
You could feel the excitement in the air this past Friday night when Wolfgang Van Halen brought his rock band Mammoth WVH to Mercury Ballroom. This was the final show of their Mammoth II Tour, which ended with a packed venue of fans! Opening the show this evening was the Canadian progressive metal band Intervals. Before this evening, I had not heard them before, but I was a fan after hearing them perform! These guys are amazingly talented instrumentalists, wowing the crowd with each song. Guitarist Aaron Marshall chatted with the crowd a bit between songs but the band mostly let their music do the talking. The band was enjoying themselves on stage and, despite having no singing, connected with the crowd, who was enjoying the set! The band, formed in 2011 by Marshall, has released 6 albums, with the most recent one having just been released, so the band made sure to include some new songs in their set! It was a great start to the evening!
Closing out the evening was Mammoth WVH. The band has released two albums, Mammoth WVH (2021) and Mammoth II (2023), with a nice selection of songs from both albums being featured on the set list this evening. Following in his father’s footsteps, Van Halen is a gifted guitarist and, along with his bandmates, wowed the crowd this evening with their guitar-driven rock! Starting this off with “Right?” and “I’m Alright”, the band had fun with each other and with the crowd throughout the set. On a few occasions, fans at the barricade would hold their hats out while the guitarists Frank Sidoris and Jon Jourdan and bassist Ronnie Ficarro put picks in them! “Louisville! It’s been a while since we’ve been here! We’re gonna play you some music!”, said Van Halen, with the band performing a 15-song set list to the hundreds of fans in attendance!
About halfway through the set, he had the band leave the stage and performed a solo acoustic version of “Distance”, a song he wrote as a tribute to his father Eddie, who passed away in 2020. “We always said that if we filled a room on our own, we’d mark the occasion with something special, but never thought we’d fill one so soon!”, said Van Halen, who decided it might be better to perform the song acoustically, like he wrote it. Having a bit of fun with the crowd, he jokingly started playing a bit of “Wonderwall” before launching into “Distance”. Towards the end of the set, he thanked the crowd for making the end of their already great tour so amazing. After performing “Take A Bow”, the band left the stage, only to come back out moments later to a roar of cheers and applause, with Van Halen announcing in good humor, “Why did we do that? That was stupid! We should have just stayed up here, but that’s showbiz baby!”. They ended the evening with “Another Celebration at the End of the World” and “Don’t Back Down”. With sing-alongs, fun banter with the crowd, and plenty of incredible instrumentation this evening, it was a night in which the fun energy lingered well after the music had stopped!
Intervals
