Overkill with Kreator, Warbringer, and Rope [Worcester Palladium, 11/1/2013]

Due to a bunch of mostly-unrelated stuff, I wasn't able to get out the night before to see Dying Fetus/Exhumed/Devourment/a bunch of less notable touring bands/Dysentery among like 900 locals, so it was a definite point of emphasis to make it out to this one; not only as the tentpole big show in a weekend of more big shows than I could actually afford to do all of, but also because it was fucking Kreator and I kind of have a complex.  I got out of work about on time, but the highway was jammed as usual for a Friday with the sun dying right in everyone's eyes, and I didn't actually get up to the venue till about 10 minutes past doors.  Of course, this wasn't ever going to have been right-in in the first place; a short line for tickets and then a longer one, wrapping back around to the diverted upstairs entrance, to actually get frisked and processed in.  I ended up in a little past 7, got a beer, and went down to the next deck but the last from the floor.

Rope [4/7]
I had not heard of this band previously, and their unsearchably generic name fit in well with their over-long and absolutely undifferentiated set of 'AAF-core.  There were flashes of nostalgia at times, as you'd expect from a band fusing the likes of mid-'90s Corrosion of Conformity with Shinedown or not-yet-completely-wussified Staind, but just because something reminds you of what you were listening to on the radio when you were young and didn't know any better doesn't make it necessarily good, or even interesting.  Massachusetts has a habit of producing bands like this, as well as the kinds that I normally report on, and they have the chops and sound to make it farther in the mainstream if that happens for them.  That said, this region also produces a lot of bands that would make better openers for a thrash metal package: Crypter and/or Phantom Glue would have killed it to this crowd in this slot, but Crypter is propping up the Kataklysm show in two weeks and Phantom Glue have more savvy than to let the venue promoters here run game on them.  So we put up with Rope wearing out their welcome over a set that ran about three songs longer than it needed to, and waited for the touring bands.

Rope, at a safe distance.

In this break I got another beer, considered going forward, and figured out how to turn off the flash on my phone, so that later, I could be less obnoxious taking nine million pictures of Kreator that didn't come out.

Warbringer [5.5/7]
I should have known this was going to be a great night when Warbringer came out and hit it dead on.  This was probably the best set I've seen from this band, which truth told is not saying a whole lot, but for the material they have to work with, this was a class performance.  The IV material is a distinct step up from the stuff they've been shoveling since the first album, and the old songs were also blasted out with critical fire and energy that got the floor going like mad.  Maybe if I were ten years younger, and had heard War Without End at eighteen, not knowing Kreator, rather than at 28, after seeing their examples live in Germany and a decade after first spinning Out of the Dark..., I'd react differently to this band, but I really suspect that the shortfall in the writing department would dominate.  Someday, Slayer and Kreator and Exodus and Destruction are going to hang it up, and Warbringer will be left as the living exemplar of thrash metal -- and until and unless they go back to not only their influences, but the bands that influenced them, and level up their songwriting a little more, something is going to be permanently lost.  So what if they're still young?  Mille was still in high school when Endless Pain came out, and had to seriously get a note from Noise Records to get out of class and go to Berlin for recording.

Warbringer opening up.

Total War!!

Honestly, this was a good performance, and Warbringer is getting to the level where they ought to be able to play at least the upstairs as a headliner on their own.  However, the bands to come made the divide between 'thrash' and 'thrash revival' really, really obvious.

The Phantom Antichrist banner, because I know that once Kreator starts playing, you're not going to be able to see this for shit.

Kreator [7/7]
This is what the best set Kreator has played in this building looked like:
Phantom Antichrist
From Flood Into Fire
Warcurse
Endless Pain
Pleasure to Kill
Hordes of Chaos
Riot of Violence
Enemy of God
Phobia
(The Patriarch)
Violent Revolution
(solo - Sami)
United In Hate
Civilization Collapse
Flag of Hate
Tormentor

Modern material cheek by jowl with ancient classics, blasted out at a hundred miles an hour through their typical fan-camera-hostile "rolling barrage" stageshow: smoke, unpredictably shifting spotlights, and strobes triggered off the bass drum.  You have to be here to experience it; there is no way that those of us who were there can bring it out to you with stuff that will get through the door inspection.

As might be expected from a fourteen-song set with no obvious weak points, this was fucking incredible.  I've seen Kreator a lot over the past eight years, and obviously been into them even longer, and thus have some standing to describe this as the best set I've seen from them on this continent, and coming pretty close to what I've seen from the band in Germany.  The selection shows that despite other people pigeonholing them into the '80s and their first three records, Kreator in 2013 is still an alive working band, and Mille is as confident in the stuff he's put out since 2001 as that which came out before 1990.  Sure, I'd abstractly have liked to get more stuff off Coma of Souls, "Bomb Threat" instead of "Phobia" for the '90s track, and maybe a few off Extreme Aggression, but here is the kicker: you cannot assume, playing four-figure capacity halls, that everyone in the audience is a longtime veteran who has heard all of your catalog and wants you to play wicked deep cuts, or you will soon end up playing in converted Pizza Huts again.  Those who were at their first Kreator gig got an excellent view of Kreator as they are, as they choose to represent their catalog in the light of their current releases, as well as the excellent set that us old guys got, and perhaps they too will end up hooked for good.

The rolling barrage opens up on "Phantom Antichrist".

Mille with blasting spots behind him.

The rest of the stage actually visible.

Speesy and some dude putting up the horns.

Mille, side-stage solo.

Overkill [7/7]
While they didn't hit quite the heights that Kreator did, or cover nearly as much of their catalog, Overkill still smashed out an excellent set of thrashing metal in excellent fidelity, and if the crowd didn't move as much, it was mostly because the floor was packed a lot fuller.  Bobby made multiple references to the health issues he had after their last gig here, but was in fine fettle, and if he spent most of his non-singing time offstage, presumably huffing oxygenated steam or something, he spent the time on-stage hitting his marks absolutely, which is not something that can be said about a lot of other air-raid singers his age.  Music this intense is a young man's game, by and large, but Overkill are still able to play fast, scream high, and hit hard with the best of them, entering their sixth decade of age and fourth decade as a working band.  This was a killer set, and if it closed up before midnight and didn't include more recent stuff (like, say, "Old School", which people were actually yelling for), it still didn't exactly go gently into that good night.

Thrash hard, strobe out.

A little more stable view of Overkill.

It did, eventually, close up, though, and after the lights went up rather than opening on a second encore, I beat feet for the exits and headed back.  My weekend was otherwise occupied, so I didn't make it out to Death Angel and Revocation, but absent something major I should be able to get out to Morbid Angel, presuming I can still nab a ticket.

Overkill with Vader, God Dethroned, Warbringer, and Evile [Worcester Palladium, 4/2/2010]

Right, this is quite late enough as it is, and if I dicker around any more on this, it's going to run into the review of the next show and cause a pileup like I had last year around this time, but this time without any semblance of reason for it.

There are a lot more bands on the bill than noted in the title, but unfortunately I missed Woe of Tyrants and all of the local support -- who were packed into the upstairs while the touring bands went on below -- due to getting out of work at a normal time and then crunching through the normal Pike traffic. It's good for kids and those on flexible schedules in the immediate Worcester area to see a bunch of good locals in with the touring bands for the same price, but it's a bummer, being kind of a completist and coming from the Boston area, to come out to a show like this and realize when you get in that you've already missed as many bands as you're going to be able to see.

Regardless, I paid my $25 without complaint and mustered myself down to the floor and got onto the rail, because Evile was already warming up, and I had missed goddamn near enough bands already just due to the trip in.

Evile [6/7]
I'd listened to Evile's new record since the last time they came around, and been thoroughly unimpressed, so I was unsure which was the real deal: the solid and in-command live thrash metal band that I saw upstairs, or the the uninspired, samey one that ground out Infected Nation. This performance swung it back to the live take: again, Evile laid out a quality opener set of blasting thrash metal despite stumping for people to spread the word and get them a headlining jaunt, and again, I was impressed by the overall execution. They're not ready for a headlining tour yet, no matter what they think, but if they can continue to deliver at this level -- and find some way of getting it onto record -- they'll be at that level in good time.

After their set wrapped, I went up to hit the merch decks and get another beer, not being emotionally invested in the idea of having to be on the floor for Warbringer. Along with a couple God Dethroned CDs I didn't have yet and a Vader tour shirt, I also picked up the DVD edition of Evile's first record, leading on to the disquisition that's about to follow.

Evile really is a tale of two bands. They deliver really well live, as attested by the two times that I've seen them and the sampling of live stuff that made it into the making-of DVD, and, as demonstrated by their two studio albums since getting signed to Earache, they have colossal problems sounding interesting on record. This is maddening, because self-apparently, it's the same band and the same goddamn material, but from the band's perspective, this probably isn't so bad: it's a lot better than sounding good on plastic and being lame and boring live. However, this leads to the conundrum that there are not going to be a lot of people who hear Evile on record first and then want to go out and see them (well, outside of the eighties-revivalists who will follow anything with a polka-beat that you can pit to).

They do have some good material, and it's a sign of their good judgment and strength as a live band that they can pick, pretty much, exactly those songs and make a solid opening set out of them, then deliver at an extra notch up when actually out on stage. This makes them a good bunch of thrash metal musicians, despite their difficulties in (so far) producing high-quality albums; if they go on to become the Overkill of the current thrash generation, the band will probably take that.

Warbringer [5/7]
Warbringer, another new thrash metal band touring behind their second generic and often samey record, was up next, and fired up a solid if completely unsurprising set. They're about as material-bound as Evile is, so the differences in relative quality of the material were down to execution (and, as always, subjective listener experience). Would that have been different if I was on the floor instead of on the lowest tier of carpet? Probably not; I saw Warbringer from the rail while waiting for Kreator last year, and then upstairs in front of Vader in November, and this is about where they are as a band. Warbringer are still good live, and even if I have my doubts about buying their next record, I'm certainly not going to complain about this set. They're not ready to headline yet either, but they do quality support, and even if they don't take it to the next level up from here, the kids in their audience will probably buoy them to headlining slots before they get old, grumpy, and fixated on comparing bands to Kreator.

God Dethroned [5/7]
God Dethroned lost a fair number of people with their set, which was kind of to be expected from the only black/death band on a largely thrash metal bill. I really don't know what they and Vader were doing here, but for those who were up front, able to give them a chance, and 'got' the melo-death influenced black metal, they put out a good set. Some of the Passiondale material did not mesh in that well with the other stuff, and despite it being Good Friday they did not do "Bloody Blasphemy", which was intensely disappointing, but it was still a good performance, all things considered. If all tours were booked by the same higher authority, God Dethroned should have been playing this building in the slot that Swashbuckle, for no immediately rational reason, has on Hypocrisy's tour at the end of May, with the aforementioned pirates playing somewhere on this package, but the world is not run to such general advantage.

Vader [7/7]
As will be discussed below, this was the reason that I came out mainly, and Vader didn't disappoint. Pounding out a strong set of blasting death metal, they justified their presence on this bill -- at least, for anyone primarily going on musical quality and not an absolute thrash purist -- with blast and fire. Abstractly, I might rather have seen them, as in November, on a purer death metal bill, but they led back from God Dethroned to thrashing metal in convincing fashion, and gave a real shot in the arm to anyone lost by the previous band or, like I was, with wavering uncertainties about the headliners. If this had been the headlining set, it would have been a worthy capstone to a solid concert.

Fortunately, though, Overkill was still to come. And fortunately, that's a "fortunately". I talked a bit with Aaron before Evile started up, and he was of the opinion that "Overkill never disappoints". Bearing Wacken 2005 in mind, I couldn't completely agree with that assessment, but it was a strong enough endorsement -- respected source, and I'd never seen Overkill indoors with a US audience before -- for me to stay on the rail, which turned out to be the right decision.

Overkill [6/7]
That rainy Saturday on the plains of Schleswig-Holstien must have been the anomaly, because Overkill, to pardon the pun, completely killed it, laying down a solid hour and a half running through their whole history as a band, which at this point is going on three decades. The performance was top-notch, high-energy and ceaselessly entertaining; the limitations of the material showed up in a few places, but given the band's history, you'd be hard-pressed not to expect this: if Overkill's writing was generally at that higher level, then with this level of performance, they would have taken over the world a long time ago. Overkill's M.O. for the past 25 years and change has been the same: to take good music and execute the hell out of it. Because this is, fundamentally, live music that finds its worth in the live experience, whether in a grimy basement, a mud-soaked infield, or a club like this, as long as Overkill plays out like this, they can afford to make albums, occasionally, like W.F.O, which contributed in long measure to my uncertainty about them.

I'm still skeptical about buying Overkill records, but for now and the future, they're a must-see whenever they come around.


Things being concluded, I made my way on home, in time for the rest of the weekend to be occupied with family stuff and another week of work. Tomorrow is Finntroll and Moonsorrow, and then the calendar starts getting dense with local shows again. Good stuff, can't wait, and fortunately, I'm not super let down by being on-call for Metalfest weekend (which I wasn't planning on going to anyway).