Judas Priest, Alice Cooper, Corrosion of Conformity
- Bleeding Priest
- Oct 20
- 5 min read
Shoreline Amphitheatre
Mountain View, CA
October 14, 2025
I can’t believe I saw The Priest and The Coop together at The Shoreline Amphitheatre for the second time in 34 years. The first time was in ‘91 for the Operation Rock And Roll tour. A tour that was promoting the support of our troops in Iraq during The Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm specifically.
The full lineup was phenomenal from start to finish. Opening was Metal Church touring in support of their seriously under-appreciated 4th record The Human Factor. Next was Dangerous Toys touring for their sophomore release Hellacious Acres. Up third was none other than Motörhead touring for their wildly popular and pivotal release 1916. In support was Alice Cooper touring for his less than stellar Hey Stoopid record and lastly was Judas Priest doing their final leg (and tour for Halford until the early 00’s) of the Painkiller cycle.
It’s pretty rare when there’s that many bands on a package tour where I’m a bonafide fan of every single one. The entire show RULED! Especially Alice who put on the best show I’ve ever seen from him.
Unfortunately that tour happened at the absolute wrong time. Grunge had just exploded and Metal was on the decline. So few people showed up that they closed the lawn area and let everyone come down to the seats to fill it up.
If you hang out in the Bay Area Metal scene chances are you know who Moises is. That concert was the first time I met him and I thought he was a nut back then as much as he is now. He worked with my brother at Montgomery Wards in Serramonte. He showed up late with this sleazily dressed junky type chick and missed the first two bands. I was only 18 and he was the most Rock n’ Roll person I had met at the time.
After Motörhead he told us he was going out to the car to do drugs and have sex with his lady friend. Again, the most R n’ R person I had ever met. The only thing was I knew there were no ins and out at The Shoreline. After they left I asked my brother “how does he expect to get back in?” He just shrugged his shoulders and said “That’s just “Moises”. He missed the rest of the concert.
I bumped into him the other night at the current Priest/Cooper show and we had a good laugh about that first time. He hasn’t changed a bit. There were a number of parallels from this show and the first. Let’s dive in…
Like the first time around, this show underperformed ticket sales wise. I heard people could trade in their lawn tickets for seats free of charge. Deja Vu!
Up first was Corrosion Of Conformity. I love Pepper and seeing him up there rocking out with his mates is always a pleasure. Their sound was spot on. The setlist featured lots of songs from their two biggest selling albums Deliverance and Wiseblood. Unfortunately their set was over as soon as it started but they kicked ass for sure.
Up next was co-headliner Alice Cooper. The theme of this tour was Alice Cooper’s Attic. He actually released a new album titled The Revenge Of Alice Cooper a few months ago but oddly enough didn’t play a single song from it. Instead we got 6 songs from his G n’ R era albums Trash and Hey Stoopid. Boo!
There were musical highlights though with the seldomly heard show opener “Who Do You Think We Are?” from the criminally underrated Special Forces record and “Caught In A Dream” from his third (but major label debut) album Love It to Death.
The problem was the sound. The low end, the double kick in particular was so overbearing at times that you couldn’t even hear the rest of the band. And it regularly drowned out Alice’s vocals. His band was on fire as usual with Nita Strauss being the star of the show.
On the theatrical end of things it was classic Alice. The impaling of a bothersome photographer, the “Cold Ethyl” doll, the straight jacket, the 15 foot tall Frankenalice and of course the guillotine. His wife actually played the role of executioner.
Subpar sound and questionable song selection aside it was still a great set but probably my least favorite of the 4 times I’ve seen him unfortunately.
Lastly came the Metal Gods themselves, Judas Priest. Between Alice’s and Priest’s sets I went to the bar and met up with some friends who introduced me to the head of security for the California shows. It turned out I knew him and he was very familiar with Death Angel.
Long story short from this meeting I ended up in the front row for Priest. Mind you this was the third time seeing them on this leg of the tour. The other two were in Europe on the last Death Angel tour. I covered those shows in detail on this site.
This particular tour is celebrating the 35th anniversary of Painkiller so like in ‘91 the set leaned heavily on that album. The set was identical to the other two times I saw them this year but being in the front kind of erased all of that. I had the fucking time of my life. The sound was great and honestly I could hear “Solar Angels” 1000 more times live and not get tired of it.
Halford sounded stronger than he has in quite a while and Ian Hill doesn’t look like he’s slowing down anytime soon. I found myself watching him the most. His stage presence hasn’t changed in 50 years and God bless him for it. I love the man. It was a fantastic performance all around.
Seeing these two icons on the same bill twice in a lifetime at The Shoreline is something I’ll never regret.
–Bleeding Priest
