William Shatner has done a great many things in ninety-five years. Heavy metal was not, until Saturday night, one of them.
The Star Trek actor made his live metal debut on September 19 at Park West in Chicago, fronting a newly assembled band called The *uckers. The show was billed as a Riot Fest aftershow and served as a warm-up for his main festival appearance at Douglass Park the following evening. He played six songs. Three of them were covers that any classic rock audience could hum from the first bar.
He opened with Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train,” worked through Motorhead’s “Ace of Spades,” and finished the covers with Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.” In between came three originals from his forthcoming record: “do not go gentle into that good night,” “will we care when the sky turns black,” and “damn old age.”
Anyone expecting Shatner to sing in the conventional sense was always going to be disappointed, and that appears to be the point. Consequence described his delivery as sounding “more like a dramatic reading of the lyrics” while the band ripped through the instrumentals behind him — the same declamatory style he has been putting on record since 1968.
Shatner had trailed the whole enterprise on social media with a line that reads like a mission statement: “I have explored space. I have explored time. Now … I explore distortion.”
The band behind him
The *uckers are not a novelty pickup group. Guitarist Marcus Nand, who has worked with Mike Tramp and Candice Night, serves as musical director. Britt Lightning of Vixen plays second guitar, and Fred Aching of Kings of Thrash and Dead Groove is on drums. The bass belongs to Phil Soussan, who played with Ozzy Osbourne — which lends a certain symmetry to a set that opens with “Crazy Train.”
Soussan, speaking to Blabbermouth before the show, framed it in fan terms rather than professional ones: “I’m excited to play with one my childhood heroes.” He added that he had been a huge Star Trek fan, and that the gig was “a bucket list type of event.”
An album, and the question that named it
The Park West set doubled as a preview of What The F Is Heavy Metal?, Shatner’s forthcoming album for Cleopatra Records. The title is not a pose. Shatner told The Moynihan Report earlier this month that it was his literal reply when the label proposed the project. He then heard Guns N’ Roses’ “Patience,” and the two of them wrote a song called “Impatience.”
His account of how he approached the genre is disarming. “You gotta start with the premise that I really know nothing,” he said, before landing on emotion as his way in: “I thought heavy metal has gotta be about emotions — violent, passionate… Not violent — passionate emotions.”
The guest list suggests the metal establishment is happy to play along. Queen’s Brian May, Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi, Judas Priest’s Rob Halford, Disturbed’s John Moyer and former Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo are all set to appear on the record. Shatner’s back catalog already includes collaborations with Ben Folds, Brad Paisley and Iggy Pop, so the company is less surprising than it first looks.
Riot Fest, Coachella and what comes next
Riot Fest’s organizers say they secured Shatner “after years of persistent letter writing,” according to a July announcement on the festival’s website. Having got him, they then had to satisfy his rider, which he laid out in a video with an entirely straight face: many fire breathers, four feet of Polish sausage, a Montreal Canadiens jersey signed by John Stamos, and an assortment of adoptable puppies sourced from a reputable local animal rescue.
NME reports that the list also included an introductory film made by GWAR, eight pallets of Faygo and a DeLorean to carry him to the stage. Blabbermouth’s account of the same rider adds a bowl of sauerkraut.
Accounts differ a little on the scale of what follows. NME says the Douglass Park set was scheduled to run forty minutes; Consequence put his stage time at 5:25 p.m. local, without giving a length.
There is a similar wrinkle around Coachella. Shatner told CNN in July that he would play a half-hour set at a festival “in the desert” in spring 2027. Blabbermouth reports that CNN anchor Elex Michaelson confirmed the festival was Coachella, while NME credits that confirmation to Shatner’s daughter, Melanie Shatner Gretsch. Coachella has not released its 2027 lineup, so on either account the booking remains unofficial for now.
What is not in question is the context. In 2023, Shatner was diagnosed with stage 4 malignant melanoma, which spread to his lungs and brain. After two years of immunotherapy and surgery, Blabbermouth reports, he is cancer free. Three years on, at ninety-five, he spent Saturday night in a Chicago club barking his way through “Ace of Spades” with a Vixen guitarist on one side and one of Ozzy’s old bass players on the other.
Whether any of it constitutes heavy metal is a debate the comments section is welcome to have. That he turned up and did it at all is harder to argue with.
