Steel Panther
w/ Them Evils
The Regency Ballroom
San Francisco, CA
March 8, 2018

I will say that it was quite an odd sight: Steel Panther, the comedy glam-metal band from Los Angeles, CA, performing in San Francisco on International Women's Day, of all days. If anyone had walked into that venue not knowing the story behind Steel Panther and what their show was all about, they'd have been in shock and social media outlets the world over would have been in a frenzy.

Fortunately, this was not the case, and those in attendance were quite familiar with the quartet and their onstage antics. Stemming back to the 80s glory days of the Hollywood Sunset Strip, when bands like Van Halen, Guns N' Roses, Motley Crue, and many more ruled the mainstream music world, Steel Panther's set is a satirical ode to those days, filled with both original (comedy-based) songs and covers. Such covers included "You Really Got Me" (Van Halen), "Crazy Train" (Ozzy Osbourne), and "Round and Round" (Ratt).

I wasn't sure how the band were going to be able to make a twelve song set stretch to a full hour and a half, but with interludes between sets peppered with just about every crude mannerism and joke you could find in the book, it became perfectly clear. As someone who is a fan of the Sunset Strip days of rock music and glam metal, Steel Panther were highly entertaining to watch. The jokes and onstage antics might have occasionally gone too far, but I was able to look past it because it's clear that it was all in good fun. Everyone was smiling and dancing by the time "Death To All But Metal", one of their more prominently known tracks, closed the evening.