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o celebrate the 30th anniversary of Metal Hammer magazine; parent company, TeamRock, moved the event to a larger venue and planned to pull out all the stops with an action-packed, jaw-dropping show. Lighting designer Steve Abbiss was appointed by PRG XL Video account director Andrew Strachan, who took care of the lighting and rigging needs of the show. Abbiss explained, “Although the Golden Gods is billed as an awards show, it’s actually a gig with four different bands playing and a bit of talking in between. It’s a bit like doing a festival main stage, in that you have to come up with an all encompassing rig that gives a bit of something to each act for them to feel it’s theirs. The general brief came from a base rider from each band and the front cover to Motorhead’s ‘No Sleep ‘till Hammersmith’ vinyl; the outcome was basically a blend of each plot. There were some additions on the day which took the form of dragons and tombstones for Amon Amarth and the truly glorious Saxon eagle. For those bands which were playing and brought their own operator/designer, I programmed their own pages for them to play around with, although we had some pretty tight time constraints, I think everybody was happy with the end results.”