Headbangers Boat 2026
Miami, FL to Great Stirrup Cay, Bahamas
October 30-November 2, 2026
Lamb Of God's Metal cruise Headbanger's Boat. First time for Death Angel but our sixth cruise in total. The other five being 70,000 Tons Of Metal (3 times), Mega Cruise and the one time only Sweden Rock Cruise.
This particular cruise, like Mega Cruise, is on a smaller scale with fewer bands and people. In other words MORE ENJOYABLE! As fun as 70,000 Tons is, it's a bit overkill with 60 bands playing all morning, day and night. Nothing's sadder than seeing Malevolent Creation at 4:30 in the morning...believe me.
Since there were fewer bands (15 I think), every band played three times. Which I think is kind of cool. You got an opportunity to see every band at some point...in theory. There's actually a number of bands I didn't get to see. Although I was quite busy most of the time so I have a valid excuse for missing The Haunted, Kylesa and X-Cops. Three acts I very much wanted to check out.
As for the bands I did see some standout ones were Soilent Green, D.R.I., and especially 200 Stab Wounds. They sounded nothing like I was expecting. For some reason I connected them to the whole Tech-Death, Summer Slaughter pool of bands but these guys were way more my style of Death Metal: brutal, catchy and Old School!
Gwar was on the boat as well. I mean who doesn't love Gwar on Halloween? I may not really follow them since the passing of Dave Brockie (Oderus Urungus), but they still know how to throw a good time. They pulled out a couple of old gems as well such as "Saddam a Go-Go" and one of my personal favs "Je M'Appelle J. Cousteau".
There were some fantastic, outrageous costumes on board too. Unfortunately I didn't get any pics. I did my annual "Piece Of Mind" Eddie costume and to my shock was the only Eddie on this METAL cruise! At least I didn't see another one.
Zakk Wylde did his Black Sabbath thing. Look, no one's more qualified to do Ozzy era Sabbath than this man and his band are great players but would it kill them to play a deep cut here or there? I mean there's eight albums to work from.
The closest they got was playing "Orchid" over the PA leading into "Fairies Wear Boots"!?!? That made zero sense to me. Why not go into "Lord Of This World" like it is on Master Of Reality? I guess I'm knit picking here but shit like that drives me batty. Apparently he did do some deep tracks on subsequent sets such as "Under The Sun", which I would've loved to have seen.
Death Angel played three sets with varied results. Two of them were in the theater. One was good and the other, due to SEVERE technical difficulties, was maybe the worst set we've ever played! The final show was on the pool deck stage and was a glorious redemption.
Speaking of the pool deck stage there was also a celebration of the 40th anniversary of Master Of Puppets with the album played in its entirety by people from most of the bands performing on the boat. I did my favorite track on the record "The Thing That Should Not Be". Super fun.
On the way off the cruise we were walking down a narrow hallway lined with cabins on either side. The cleaning staff were already hard at work pulling sheets and such. The smell of feces permeated the air. And then Zack heard a woman scream and shout in Tagalog with the only word in English being "ANIMALS!"
He glanced into the cabin and it looked like three grown men had shit the bed. I mean, you've never seen a shit stain quite like this. Like, if it were blood this person would've been dead ten times over. Metalheads, whaddaya gonna do?
–Bleeding Priest
