As 2024 comes to a memorable close this holiday season, California metal masters STEEL PANTHER are spreading more holiday cheer with the announcement of two more legs of their “Feel The Steel 15th Anniversary Tour”. The first leg is scheduled for March throughout the United States and the second leg heads to Europe next summer. The US leg of the tour kicks off on March 5 in Lincoln, Nebraska and wraps up on March 28 in Dubuque, Iowa. The tour will make stops in Boise, Idaho; San Francisco, California; Tempe, Arizona and Kansas City, Missouri, to name a few. The European headline leg kicks off on June 18 in Dublin, Ireland before concluding three weeks later on July 6 in Geiselwind, Germany. The band has already been announced as part of the following European festivals in 2025: Download (United Kingdon),Lisaää Löylyä (Finland),Tons Of Rock (Norway) and Rockmaraton (Hungary).
a special BLABBERMOUTH.NET presale for the US leg will begin on Thursday, December 12 at 12:00 pm (noon) and end on Thursday, December 12 at 11:59 pm local time. When prompted, type in the presale code “SPBBM” to access tickets before the general public. Check back here on Thursday for ticketing links to individual shows. General on-sale will be Friday, December 13 at 10 am local time.
US tour dates:
Mar. 05 – Lincoln, NE – Bourbon Theater
Mar. 06 – Des Moines, IA – Val Air Ballroom
Mar 08 – Billings, MT – Pub Station Ballroom
Mar. 11 – Boise, ID – Knitting Factory
Mar. 12 – Salem, OR – Elsinore Theater
Mar. 14 – San Francisco, CA – The Fillmore
Mar. 15 – Sacramento, CA – Ace of Spades
Mar. 16 – San Luis Obispo, CA – Fremont Theater
Mar. 18 – Monterey, CA – Golden State Theater
Mar. 19 – Ventura, CA – Ventura Theater
Mar. 20 – Tucson, AZ – Rialto Theater
Mar. 22 – Tempe, AZ – Marquee Theater
Mar. 23 – Albuquerque, NM – Revel
Mar. 26 – Oklahoma City, OK – Diamond Ballroom
Mar. 27 – Kansas City, MO – The Midland Theater
Mar. 28 – Dubuque, IA – Q Casino & Resort
European tour dates:
Jun. 18 – Dublin, IE – Vicar Street
Jun. 21 – Leipzig, DE – Hellraiser
Jun. 23 – Arnhem, NL – Musis
Jun. 24 – Cologne, DE – Essigfabrik
Jun. 25 – Dusseldorf, DE – Zakk
Jun. 29 – Braunschweig, DE – Applaus Garten
Jun. 30 – Frankfurt, DE – Batschkapp
Jul. 01 – Bochum, DE – Matrix
Jul. 04 – Regensburg, DE – Eventhall Airport
Jul. 05 – Memmingen, DE – Kaminwerk
Jul. 06 – Geiselwind, DE – Music Hall
Formed in 2000, STEEL PANTHER specializes in imitating and exaggerating the less flattering aspects of 1980s hair metal, with unrepentantly crude, non-PC sexual content as a favorite lyrical theme.
The group’s music has been described as “VAN HALEN meets MÖTLEY CRÜE meets RATT meets ‘Wayne’s World’complete with operatic shrieks, misogyny, shredding guitar solos and libidinal overdrive.”
Sixteen years ago, STEEL PANTHER changed its name from METAL SKOOL to its current moniker and shifted the focus of its act from ’80s metal covers to originals.
STEEL PANTHER‘s sixth studio album, “On The Prowl”was released in February 2023.
In September 2022, STEEL PANTHER announced the addition of Spyder as the band’s new bassist.
Two months ago, STEEL PANTHER‘s debut album, “Feel The Steel”was certified gold by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) for sales in excess of 100,000 copies in the United Kingdom.
“Feel The Steel – 15th Anniversary Edition” was released worldwide on November 15. The 15th-anniversary edition features two tracks that were only released on the original Japanese import: “You Don’t Make Me Feel Dumb” and “I Want Your Tits”. The album was produced by Jay Ruston (ANTHRAX, COREY TAYLOR).
To celebrate the 15th anniversary of the album, STEEL PANTHER embarked on the first leg of the “Feel The Steel 15th Anniversary Tour”. The trek kicked off in Huntington, New York on November 20 and will run through December 13 where it will wrap up in Orlando, Florida.
In a recent interview with Celebrity Jobber Podcast With Jeff Zito, STEEL PANTHER vocalist Michael Starr was asked when he and his bandmates came up with the idea of a fun, satirical rock group. I responded: “That’s a great question, man. And I can answer it in a short version or a long version. And I’m gonna do the medium version because it’s important to start from the beginning. So when we first started out, grunge had just taken over heavy metal. And if you were in a heavy metal band, people started making fun of you — kind of like if you were in NICKELBACK. And it was that thing going on. But we were, like, ‘You know what? We like NICKELBACK‘ or we were, like, ‘We love heavy metal.’ We didn’t cut our hair. We kept playing, and we kept playing heavy metal and people made fun of us, and we were just, like, ‘Hey, we’re gonna bring heavy metal back.’ And really, at the core of it, all four of us, at that time, all were just having fun anyways, so we just brought it on stage and we started making fun of ourselves. And people started making fun of the fact that we were making fun of ourselves and then we would start just pointing out all the absurdity and excessiveness of the ’80s, that was funny about it, and just started talking about it, ’cause it was funny. I mean, you think about a girl dancing on a Jaguar? And you’re, like, ‘Wait, what? Why is he on the hood of the car dancing? This is so weird.’ It’s funny as hell, but at the time it was, like, ‘This is so metal.’ And it just became kind of funny, and we just kept doing it. And actually, people would say to us, ‘Shut up and play some music. Quit talking.’ I think the longest time we had in between a song was 25 minutes. And the only reason I know that is ’cause our drummer times everything. So he makes sure that we start on time and we end on time and we’re on time. So, yeah, that’s the record we held. And at the core, we like to have fun, we like to crack jokes, and we pretty much do the same stuff backstage. And then we just kind of developed it over the years. And then people started calling us a comedy show. And we were, like, ‘Really? Comedy? We’re not comedians. Really?’ And then once it got bigger and we started playing really big shows and we realized that a lot of the quick stuff that we were doing worked in a small venue, we couldn’t do that anymore. We had to slow it down and really just kind of make everything a little bit bigger. And it was different, so you had to really kind of plan out an outline of what you’re going to do and then you can kind of use improvise in between all that. So that’s how it developed into it. We didn’t really sit down and go, ‘Hey, let’s be a heavy metal cover band that makes fun of the bands we love.’ We never thought it would be that.”
Photo credit: David Jackson
