BLIND ILLUSION Announces Live Album: STAGE FLIGHT: Live At The UC Theatre
- Hectic
- 12 hours ago
- 5 min read
Bay Area progressive thrash metal originals Blind Illusion are releasing a new live album, STAGE FLIGHT: Live At The UC Theatre, on October 16, 2026 through Hectic Records / Bleeding Priest Records.
The album captures Blind Illusion live at Berkeley’s UC Theatre in 2025, on one of those nights where a seriously crazy amount of Bay Area metal history was packed into one concert.
The show celebrated the 40th anniversary of Exodus’ Bonded by Blood, took place on the birthday of late Exodus vocalist Paul Baloff, and featured Exodus, Death Angel, Blind Illusion, and Nukem.
For Blind Illusion, there was another reason the night was special: original vocalist David White, the current vocalist for Heathen since 1985, was back fronting the band, playing songs off old Blind Illusion demos from 1978 to 1985.
Blind Illusion
STAGE FLIGHT: Live At The UC Theatre
SIDE A
Destroyer *
Banshee *
Glass Guillotine *
Blind Sun 🢒
SIDE B
Arc the Iron 🢒
Kamakazi ♱
Smash the Crystal ♱
Rockers Unite (Bonus Track)
All Songs Recorded Live at the UC Theatre, Berkeley, CA on April 25, 2025
Except Rockers Unite, Live at the Old Waldorf, 1983
* From the 1984 Demo Trilogy Of Terror
🢒 From the 1983 Demo
♱ From the album The Sane Asylum
Limited to just 500 copies, the album is now available for Pre-Order on black vinyl LP, with a 4 page color insert featuring many photos from the concert.
For Fans Of: Heathen, Coroner, Watchtower, Exodus
Nearly 50 Years of Blind Illusion
Blind Illusion has one of the longest and most unique histories of any band connected to the Bay Area metal scene.
Originally formed in 1978, the band predates the Bay Area thrash metal explosion by several years.
Over the decades, Blind Illusion has gone through lineup changes, breakups, reunions, and stylistic shifts, with guitarist and vocalist Mark Biedermann remaining the driving force behind it all.
The current lineup features Biedermann on lead guitar and vocals, Phil Cosentini on drums, Avery Thurman on bass, and Martin Lacour on lead guitar.
For most metal fans, the essential starting point is still the band’s completely unique 1988 debut, The Sane Asylum.
The Sane Asylum
There were a lot of great metal records coming out of the Bay Area in the late 1980s. But there really wasn't anything else quite like The Sane Asylum.
Released in 1988, the album featured Mark Biedermann alongside guitarist Larry LaLonde, bassist Les Claypool, and drummer Mike Miner.
Yes, that Les Claypool and Larry LaLonde, who would go on to play together in Primus.
Instead of simply following an increasingly established thrash metal formula, Blind Illusion threw progressive rock, psychedelic weirdness, technical playing, and plenty of straight-up metal into the blender.
The result was an album that sounded like it came from the Bay Area while simultaneously sounding almost nothing like the other bands coming out of the Bay Area.
Songs like “Vengeance Is Mine,” “Death Noise,” “Kamikaze,” “Smash The Crystal,” and “Blood Shower” made The Sane Asylum an underground classic.
It's also one of those records that seems to sound more unique rather than more dated as the decades go by.
Mark Biedermann, Blue Öyster Cult and Imaginos
As if the Blind Illusion story wasn't already strange enough, there is also Mark Biedermann's connection to Blue Öyster Cult.
In 1987, while working with legendary producer Sandy Pearlman, Biedermann contributed rhythm guitar and guitar leads to four songs that appeared on Blue Öyster Cult’s Imaginos.
The lead guitar solos were performed by Biedermann on the songs: “The Siege and Investiture of Baron Von Frankenstein’s Castle at Weisseria”, “In The Presence of Another World" and “I Am The One You Warned Me Of”.
Biedermann also played rhythm guitar alongside Robbie Krieger of The Doors on the song “Magna Of Illusion”.
Not exactly the standard resume for a guy simultaneously making one of the weirdest records in Bay Area thrash.
Blind Illusion Returns
Like plenty of underground metal bands that have been around this long, Blind Illusion has disappeared and reappeared more than once.
The band returned in 2010 with Demon Master, moving toward a more traditional heavy metal sound.
In 2014, bassist Harald Oimoen of D.R.I. joined forces with Biedermann and helped push the band back toward the progressive thrash sound that defined The Sane Asylum.
Another incarnation arrived in 2017 featuring Doug Piercy of Heathen and Anvil Chorus on lead guitar. The band released the 2018 EP and headed back to Europe.
Then in 2020, longtime Death Angel drummer Andy Galeon joined Blind Illusion, playing on the band's 2022 album Wrath of the Gods. More European touring and festival appearances followed in 2023.
By 2024, Mark Biedermann assembled a new version of Blind Illusion featuring Martin Lacour on Lead Guitar, Avery Thurman on Bass and Phil Cosentini on Drums. In September of 2024 Blind Illusion was back onstage and kept the band's wonderfully complicated history moving forward.
David White Returns to Berkeley
On April 25, 2025, original vocalist David White reunited with Blind Illusion for the special Berkeley performance captured on STAGE FLIGHT.
Lee Altus, guitarist for Exodus and the original, longtime guitarist for Heathen, had requested the reunion and a special Blind Illusion retro set for the occasion. Mark Biedermann and David White grew up as neighbors, and were early bandmates in Blind Illusion, before White left to front Heathen.
And if you're going to reunite an old-school Bay Area metal lineup, there aren't many better places to do it than the UC Theatre on Paul Baloff's birthday.
Exodus was celebrating 40 years of Bonded by Blood, with Death Angel, Blind Illusion, and Nukem joining them for the show.
For Blind Illusion, the performance connected several different eras of the band on one stage.
A band that started in 1978. A vocalist from the earliest days performing early demos, plus 2 songs from The Sane Asylum for good measure.
Songs that helped define one of the more unique branches of the Bay Area thrash family tree. All happening a few miles from where much of this music started in the first place.
Fortunately, Ivan Garcia was there to record the whole thing, with live sound engineering by Sonny Reinhardt and Cody Stein.
That performance became STAGE FLIGHT: Live At The UC Theatre.
The Sane Asylum Finally Gets Played in Full
The UC Theatre show wasn't the end of this latest chapter.
Blind Illusion later appeared at the Frost and Fire V Festival in Ventura, California, where the band did something it had somehow never done before.
They played The Sane Asylum from beginning to end.
For an album released in 1988 and obsessed over by underground metal fans ever since, it took nearly four decades before anyone could actually hear the whole thing performed live.
That's pretty fitting for Blind Illusion. Nothing about this band's history has ever happened in a straight line.
Pre-Order STAGE FLIGHT: Live At The UC Theatre
STAGE FLIGHT: Live At The UC Theatre captures one night in a Blind Illusion story that has now been going on for nearly half a century.
It's original vocalist David White back with the band.
It's Blind Illusion playing in Berkeley on Paul Baloff's birthday.
It's part of a night celebrating 40 years of Bonded by Blood.
And it's another piece of recorded evidence that the Bay Area metal story is a lot deeper and more interesting than the handful of bands that usually get mentioned whenever somebody makes another documentary about it.
STAGE FLIGHT: Live At The UC Theatre will be released October 16, 2026 as a 12-inch vinyl LP through Hectic Records / Bleeding Priest Records.
The album is now available for Pre-Order, and will ship on or before the release date.
–Hectic
