Quintannica on Haight Street
- Hectic
- 4 hours ago
- 3 min read
Updated: 4 hours ago
Stanyan Stage
Haight Street Fair
September 7, 2025
It was a hot Sunday in San Francisco, by which I mean it was in the 70s, instead of the usual wind and fog common out by Golden Gate Park. September means summer (sometimes) in the City. We sweated our way up the hill to upper Haight Street for the annual fair.
I hadn’t been to the Haight Street Fair in years, maybe when Death Angel played there in 2009, or Old Grandad a few years before that. It was a pretty mellow scene and not too uncomfortably packed, despite the unusually great weather and usual throngs of tourists in the upper Haight.
We started out at the Masonic Stage at the start of the Haight Street Fair, to check out a band our friend Doug plays keyboard in, Violet Thrones. Not a metal band but more goth / ethereal with what felt like 70s rock influences to me.
They got a pretty good reception from the crowd, including those dancing hippie ravers who've taken more drugs in a day than most of us do in a lifetime – but hey, at least they are having a good time.
Their frontwoman could really belt out some very haunting melodies, resplendent in a red sorceress’ dress. As a death metal / thrash metal fan, it always takes me a few songs to adjust to clean guitar tones. And I could have done without the cover of Ring of Fire, a bit overplayed even though their version was different. But otherwise I thought they were pretty great, I dug most of their original tunes quite a bit. They closed with a cover of Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit, very appropriate for the setting even though the summer of love folks are mostly gone these days.
After the Violet Thrones set ended, we grabbed a second round of 24 oz Modelos at a store, and headed down to the Stanyan Stage at the other end of the fair.
Quintannica was playing out on a stage in the center of the street by the great Amoeba Records. This “Bay Area Metal Supergroup Tribute” as they were described features some friends and heavy hitters all:
Rick Hunolt (ex-Exodus)
Doug Piercy (ex-Heathen)
Tom Gears (ex-Blind Illusion)
Will Carroll (Death Angel)
Larry Abunda (Hellhunter)
Mark Merrit (Ancient Mariner)
That’s not your imagination, it was in fact 4/5ths of the current Nefarious lineup. But with Katon away on an impressive tour schedule with Hirax, the rest of the guys will play. Larry from Hellhunter and Mark from Ancient Mariner teamed up and switched off on vocal duties.
Quintannica tore through a set of Bay Area thrash metal classics, with an Iron Maiden tune for good measure, and closed (as all metal bands seem to be this month) with a Black Sabbath song as a tribute to the late great Ozzy Osbourne.
It sounded great, though I was in the shade on the side by Amoeba so couldn’t always hear the solos well (not a rookie mistake, it was just too damn hot in the sun front and center, where you can hear all the amps best). But it was a fantastic set and a pretty good crowd, plus always entertaining at an outdoor show watching the reactions of random tourists and kids going by in strollers to the metal onslaught.
Quintannica Setlist
Angel Witch - “Atlantis”
Iron Maiden - “Killers”
Heathen - “Goblin’s Blade”
Death Angel - “Mistress Of Pain”
Exodus - “Deliver Us To Evil”
Nefarious - “Snarler”
Black Sabbath - “Children Of The Grave”
–Hectic
