Godsmack closes out Chula Vista with 25 years of muscle, while Stone Temple Pilots and Dorothy prove the undercard was never just filler.
Three bands, one warm night at North Island Credit Union Amphitheatre, a stone’s throw from the Mexican border, and not a wasted minute among them. Godsmack‘s Rise of Rock World Tour rolled into Chula Vista with Stone Temple Pilots and Dorothy in support, and the billing was less a hierarchy than a relay — each act handing off more momentum than it received.
Dorothy took the stage while the 20,000-seat amphitheater was still filling in, the cruelest slot in live music and one the band treated like a dare. Opening with “Down to the Bottom” and moving through “Raise Hell,” “Rest in Peace,” and “Whiskey Fever,” Dorothy Martin sang with a rasp engineered for exactly this kind of open-air room. Her band plays lean, blues-rooted hard rock with no filigree, and by “Raise Hell,” a crowd that arrived indifferent was on its feet. Martin has called the tour a dream for her sixteen-year-old self, having grown up on both headliners — it showed in how hard she worked the thirty-odd minutes she was given.
San Diego’s own Stone Temple Pilots carried the heaviest burden of the night, which is the burden of memory. Jeff Gutt has now fronted the band longer than some of its original run lasted. The set leaned into the catalog without apology: “Wicked Garden,” “Vasoline,” “Big Bang Baby,” “Down,” “Big Empty,” “Plush,” “Interstate Love Song,” “Crackerman,” and “Dead & Bloated,” with the DeLeo brothers doing what they’ve always done — Dean’s riffs snarling and Robert’s basslines quietly holding the architecture together. “Still Remains,” dedicated to Scott Weiland, landed as the evening’s one genuinely still moment. Then “Sex Type Thing” detonated it.
Godsmack arrived to AC/DC’s “For Those About to Rock” and spent nearly two hours making the case that Sully Erna has never had much use for subtlety. “Surrender,” “You and I,” “1000hp,” “Straight Out of Line,” “Awake,” and “When Legends Rise” came in a near-unbroken block. The production is enormous — walls of light and a stage a size too big for an amphitheater — but the band still plays like a club act that got lucky. Midway through, Erna stopped to ask the ages of the youngest fans in the pit; one answered with a defiant “nine!” That turned into a genuine exchange with the crowd about staying present instead of watching the night through a phone, and a thank you to the parents who’d brought their kids. Later, he spoke at length about mental health and the band’s Scars Foundation, urging the audience to learn the signs of someone struggling and to reach out — to the foundation through the band’s site, or to each other.
The centerpiece remains “Batalla De Los Tambores.” It opens with archival Neil Peart footage on the video board before Larkin’s kit motors downstage left and Erna’s rolls from behind the stage to meet it stage right, the duel performance threaded with snippets of “Back in Black,” “Enter Sandman,” “Moby Dick,” and “Tom Sawyer.” It’s a bit, it’s been a bit for twenty years, and it still works. The encore turned on an acoustic “Under Your Scars,” before “Bulletproof” and “I Stand Alone” sent everyone toward the parking lot at a volume Tijuana could probably hear.
Four hours, no lull. For a weeknight, at today’s ticket prices and economic pressures, that’s a small miracle.
