Having turned 67 earlier this year, Ice-T still comes across like the toughest guy in the room — basically any room.
“Call me an old man and I will beat your (expletive) right backstage,” Ice-T warned the crowd assembled before him on Saturday at the Aftershock Festival in Sacramento’s Discovery Park.
And, yeah, everybody took him on his word, wisely deciding against putting the legendary SoCal rapper — who was looking cool in his Los Angeles Dodgers gear — to the test.
That was good, because we could all just concentrated on watching Ice-T’s heavy metal outfit — Body Count — deliver an amazing set of music on Day 3 of the festival.
Indeed, what Ice-T and company fashioned on the relatively intimate DWPresents Stage turned out to the best set I saw on Day 3, topping what Iron Maiden, Anthrax, Judas Priest, Staind and other acts would churn out on the festival’s much bigger stages.
The band, which got its start in Los Angeles and has released seven studio albums over the years, opened the set with a nod to the Slayer guys — who headlined the festival on Day 1 — as it rocked through a colossal version of those thrash metal titans’ “Raining Blood.”
Ice-T was in the flow, spitting out stark line after stark line — often with more than a fair share of menace — as he continued to stalk the stage and command the crowd with the title track to 2014’s “Manslaughter” and the first album’s “There Goes the Neighborhood.”
Ernie C, who co-founded the band with Ice-T in 1990, was an absolute beast throughout the gig, putting the heavy in the metal as he ripped through one cool guitar riff/lead after another during a set that included a number of tracks off Body Count’s forthcoming eighth album, “Merciless,” which is due out in late November.
The group also included Ice-T’s adult son Little Ice, who serves as a hype man and backing vocalist. Ice-T also brought out his daughter Chanel Nicole (born in 2015), who helped deliver the words of advice known as “Talk (Expletive), Get Shot” (another “Manslaughter” track).
Of course, Body Count would include its controversial signature cut, “Cop Killer,” which drew criticism from then-President George W. Bush as well as a boycott of the band’s record label after being originally released in 1992. Fast forward 30-plus years, the selection seems like a somewhat incongruent statement from a man now best known the world over for his long tenure playing a cop on NBC’s “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.”
It felt like “Cop Killer” would serve as the finale — given that it’s, by far, the band’s most famous cut. Yet, thankfully, that would not be the case and the best was yet to come as Ice-T and company unleashed their much buzzed-about new cover of Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb.”
The result was nothing short of one of the single best rock-rap hybrid performances I’ve ever seen in concert, containing some of Ice-T’s most fascinating and inspired lyrical work in decades as well as soaring guitar lines from Ernie C that both honored and built upon David Gilmour’s original greatness.
That’s the moment I will think about when I think about Aftershock 2024.
Of course, there was plenty more rocking to be done on Day 3.
Fans got to witness a headlining set from Iron Maiden, which had its fair share of good moments but suffered from a rather lackluster set list that focused too strongly on two albums — one of which was the group’s latest album, 2021’s “Senjutsu.”
Anthrax definitely brought the firepower, delighting thrash-metal fans with a set that included “Caught in a Mosh” and “I Am the Law” from 1987’s excellent “Among the Living.” And we had Judas Priest, still churning out the radio-friendly metal after all these years.
Aftershock was scheduled to wrap up on Sunday with performances by such talented artists as Tom Morello, Royale Lynn and Bob Vylan as well as a headlining set from Motley Crue.
Body Count setlist:
1. “Raining Blood”
2. “There Goes the Neighborhood”
3. “The Purge”
4. “Manslaughter”
5. “Psychopath”
6. “Talk (Expletive), Get Shot”
7. “Cop Killer”
8. “Comfortably Numb”
