William Shatner, 95, debuts his metal band the *uckers at a Chicago warm-up

William Shatner played his first heavy metal concert on Saturday 19 September, at 95, in a club in Chicago. The Park West show was a warm-up for his Riot Fest set the following afternoon, and it ran to six songs.

Three of them were covers of the genre's best-known material: Ozzy Osbourne's Crazy Train, Motorhead's Ace of Spades and Metallica's Enter Sandman. The other three, Rage, Sky and One Fear, come from his own forthcoming album. Shatner delivered all of it in the theatrical spoken-word register he has used on records for decades, while the band behind him played the songs straight.

That band is not an assembly of session players hired for the week. The *uckers are musical director Marcus Nand on guitar, Vixen's Britt Lightning also on guitar, Phil Soussan on bass, who played with Osbourne, and Fred Aching on drums. Stereogum spells the drummer's name Achin; the other outlets covering the shows give it as Aching.

The album the originals come from is What the F Is Heavy Metal?, due this winter on Cleopatra Records. Shatner told the Riot Fest crowd where the title came from: the label suggested he make a heavy metal record, and the question he asked in reply became the name. Brian May of Queen, Rob Halford of Judas Priest, Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath, Disturbed's John Moyer and the former Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo all appear on it.

He had trailed the whole venture on social media in the only way he could. "I have explored space. I have explored time. Now ... I explore distortion," he wrote before the shows.

His requests for the Riot Fest appearance were in the same spirit. The rider asked for fire-breathers, a DeLorean to carry him to the stage, four feet of Polish sausage, an assortment of adoptable puppies, an introductory film made by GWAR, eight pallets of Faygo and a Montreal Canadiens jersey signed by John Stamos.

Underneath the joke is a harder fact. Metal Injection notes that Shatner was diagnosed with stage 4 melanoma in 2023, that it had spread to his lungs and brain, and that he is now cancer-free after two years of immunotherapy and surgery. A first metal show at 95 reads differently with that behind it.

The band may not stop at Riot Fest. Shatner told CNN they were booked for a 30-minute set at the one in the desert next spring, and his daughter Melanie Shatner Gretsch confirmed he meant Coachella, though the festival has not announced him. Riot Fest had already added him to its Chicago side shows. Dates as they are confirmed sit on the tour guide, and more metal coverage sits on our genre hub.