Photos and Review by Max Stewart

There are summer rock shows, and then there are nights that feel like somebody cracked open an old issue of Hit Parader, poured gasoline on it and tossed it onto the stage. Mötley Crüe’s Return of the Carnival of Sins rolled into Ameris Bank Amphitheatre in Alpharetta on August 12 with Tesla and Extreme, a three-headed monster of a bill celebrating the glorious era when guitar solos were long, hair was longer and subtlety was generally considered a character flaw.

Extreme drew the early shift and nearly stole the whole damn thing. Gary Cherone remains a rubber-limbed frontman seemingly incapable of standing still, but the gravitational center is Nuno Bettencourt, whose guitar playing somehow looks both completely effortless and impossible. “Decadence Dance” and “Play With Me” hit hard before the acoustic one-two punch of “Hole Hearted” and “More Than Words” turned the amphitheater into a massive singalong. Then Nuno went back to setting the fretboard on fire with “Flight of the Wounded Bumblebee,” “Get the Funk Out” and “RISE” (that solo…) The surprise exclamation point was an Ozzy Osbourne tribute weaving “I Don’t Know,” “Bark at the Moon” and “Crazy Train” together, a fitting salute to the Prince of Darkness.

Tesla followed with exactly the kind of no-frills, blue-collar hard rock that has kept them on the road for four decades. There was less theater here and more grease under the fingernails: “Modern Day Cowboy,” “Hang Tough,” “Heaven’s Trail (No Way Out)” and “Mama’s Fool” sounding like they were built for an outdoor amphitheater with a cold beer in hand. “Love Song” provided the obligatory arms-around-your-neighbor moment before “Little Suzi” and their cover of “Signs” closed a tight nine-song set. Tesla has never needed the circus surrounding many of their contemporaries. They plug in, turn up and let the songs do the heavy lifting.

Then the circus actually arrived. Mötley Crüe hit the stage with “Red Hot” and spent the rest of the night unloading the Sunset Strip arsenal: “Wild Side,” “Shout at the Devil,” “Too Fast for Love,” “Looks That Kill,” “Primal Scream” and “Live Wire.” John 5 has become a fascinating addition to the Crüe machine, bringing surgical precision to music that was born in beautiful chaos, while Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee remain walking monuments to rock-and-roll excess. “Home Sweet Home” offered the breather before the final stretch of “Girls, Girls, Girls,” “Dr. Feelgood” and “Kickstart My Heart” sent Alpharetta into the night with its ears ringing. Forty-five years into Mötley Crüe’s story, nobody is pretending this is 1985, and that’s beside the point. For one humid Georgia night, three bands reminded everyone why this music survived in the first place: huge riffs, bigger choruses and absolutely no interest in behaving itself.