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).

Vader with Decrepit Birth, Warbringer, The Amenta, Augury, and Swashbuckle [Worcester Palladium, 11/5/2009]

The great dilemma: work prevents you from seeing the shows you want to, but if you don't work, you don't have the money to go to them and get in the door. I had to take a pass on the first large, ill-matched tour at the Palladium this week, and cut this night's excursion short rather than go the few streets over to see Metal Thursday, but it was a good night of metal all told, despite some extraneous stuff, and the rest of the winter touring season is looking to be shaping up pretty well.

This was another direct-out-from work special, but I timed it right to get through the bullshit on the Pike and up to the venue right about at doors. I also remembered to bung the knife in the car before leaving it, but this was not enough for the security. Twits stole my fucking pen again. It's fucking ridiculous, first that they do this and second that they don't do it frequently enough that I know to grundle it in advance. It was in the process of dying, sure, but stealing people's pens isn't fucking cricket. Not cool; however, they did let me take my phone in to make digital notes with at the price of looking like a lamer. And I still could have easily brought a knife or chisel in undetected to do much more serious vandalism, if that was the point. Paying customers unreasonably inconvenienced, nothing actually blocked or averted; security theater at its finest.

Cussing about this under my breath in a mix of four or five languages, I bought my ticket, got banded, and got in to browse the merch while the bands were setting up. This turned into a Warbringer patch -- which I have serious reservations about actually putting on anything, see below -- as well as their new record to make the change come out, a trip to the bar to break up my bills so as not to inconvenience Vader's merch stand, Necropolis and two special-edition Decapitated patches (to raise money for Covan's medical bills, not just because Vogg's playing in Vader now), and the latest cool shirt design from Decrepit Birth. These guys have mastered the "lots of t-shirts" model allegedly required by the new paradigms in digital music distro, but it'd also be awesome to see this art (and the art on the "Living Doorway" shirt) done up for a 10" pic-disc or something (maybe the song that inspired it, a couple live tracks, a random fuckaround jam...like Out of the Dark..., I don't know, just throwing shit out there). T-shirts fade when used for their intended purpose, pic-discs don't.

Eventually, though, I decided I had to stop buying shit if I wanted to go to Metal Thursday or, for that matter, be able to pay the tolls to get home, and Swashbuckle was starting up anyway. Downstairs for music.

Swashbuckle [5.5/7]
I can't really see Running Wild ever coming out to "I'm On A Boat". However, this just goes to demonstrate that Swashbuckle aren't Running Wild (or, for that matter, Alestorm, who played here Tuesday and may feel put upon by their fans to take themselves a smidge more seriously than that), and that their attack on the pirate trope is their own. They smashed out a decently long set balanced towards the new record to a pretty good reaction, though I'm not sure what other people's reaction to the people in parrot and shark costumes thrashing about in the pit was. If they'd run out from backstage and stagedove, it'd've been as clear as it was in Germany that they were band-affiliated rather than (as some might have concluded) random hipsters in leftover Halloween costumes, causing the ultra-true to become unnecessarily SO FULL OF HATE. On the whole, about on the level of the last time I saw them here, downstairs; not serious enough for the death metal portion of the bill and significantly heavier than Warbringer (who probably got the most heads in the door), they still got a good reaction out of the half-full floor and less negativity than the other thrash band in the lineup.

If you want a different perspective on shows like this one, or just a general idea of what it's like on the other side of the front monitors at this level, you might want to take a look at Commodore Redrum's tour diary; this gig doesn't get its own entry, but the return match in December when they come back with Ensiferum and Hypocrisy might.

Augury [6/7]
The Forest Lapointe Show [7/7]
I don't pay nearly as much attention to new developments in metal as I could or really should. This means that when I haven't seen or heard a band before, especially on a large, weirdly packaged tour like this one, I wait around in general trepidation, expecting that they, like a lot of bands these days, will suck. (This is because I'm an old stick-in-the-mud almost as much as because a lot of newer bands that are just getting national tour exposure do suck.) This was the baseline for Augury, and fortunately, they blew that expectation out of the water. Their set was a little short, but packed top to bottom with a perfect mix of the technical and brutal schools of Quebecois death metal. Stellar all the way across, even the drummer, who landed from Australia in Montreal (their old drummer quit, and the guy from The Amenta was sitting in) days before and learned the material in a matter of hours, but Forest's bass playing was in a class by itself. The guy annihilated so hard on the first song that when Patrick announced before the second that we'd get a bass solo later on if the crowd reaction was good enough, the whole place erupted, even before he strapped on his fretless to take things to another level, even from those who'd never heard the band before. The solo came two songs later, and was as massive as anticipated. Not a perfect set -- time as much as anything else to do with this -- but impeccably delivered, and probably quite well enough to convince anyone who showed up to keep their eyes peeled for these guys the next time they come back south.

Following this, I went up and immediately forked for their record. I haven't gotten a chance to listen yet, but given that the board was kind of inconsistent on the night, it's likely to be even better than what we got out of the band -- and if nothing else, at least more.

The Amenta [4.5/7]
I was in the way back for these guys because there was a shortage of places to stand further forward, and that turned out to be for the better. They were in most ways decent, but I remember a band called Meridian, and if you have qualms about that score, you probably don't, or just haven't listened to The Seventh Sun in a while. "But they came all the way from Australia! And Meridian isn't even together any more, much less touring!" Sure, but that makes the hurdles for The Amenta taller, not shorter. The performance here was ok, and most people probably won't recognize it as being firmly in the shadow of another and better band, but that doesn't mean that they really did anything to get out of this shadow, and you don't cross oceans to play "ok" gigs.

At this point I went up and got a Swashbuckle shirt ("Splashzone", a little more topically unified than their "The Trooper" parody, and it had the tourdates besides) from Pat; I'd been ambivalent about this first due to the possible need to support The Amenta and then pay the door charge at MT, but both of those issues kind of resolved themselves for various reasons about here. Shirt in the belt, it was back down again, now absolutely skint and somewhat foreclosed from drinking the rest of the night.

Warbringer [5/7]
I can now firmly say that I've seen Warbringer, and the impressions from before with their limited lineup and with their first record are pretty much accurate. Warbringer are a good thrash revival band, but somewhat allergic to doing anything new with the style. They turn out good, crunchy, Bay-Area thrash metal, but I still haven't heard anything out of them that I can indelibly stamp as the "Warbringer sound". There are Exodus parts and Kreator parts, but this is an empty foundation without a house on top of it. The guys are talented enough to build said house, but they need to do so ASAP -- does anyone remember when Reanimator was in the pole position of the thrash revival? Anyone remember how bands like Faith or Fear sank without a trace in the '80s because they didn't differentiate themselves? True, Denial, Realm, and Devastation also fell off the map despite being awesome, but obscurity happens faster to bands that can't carve their own name into the listener's brain.

There were a few thumbs down passed out during the performance, mostly by a dude of no small standing in the thrash millieu of this part of New England, but the band shouldn't be too dismayed, as they weren't going to get this guy, or those like him, anyways. As mentioned before, thrash fans who were into thrash before the revival started tend to have a rather simple and brutal means of classifying bands, which likely corresponds in this case to something like the following chart:



















Band goodness is easily seen to be a dependent variable, and Warbringer of course sounds nothing like Sodom, so they get pelters. I have a very similar chart for personal use, but it usually says "sounds like Kreator" at the bottom, so Warbringer gets slightly more of a break on that one.

In here I went more forward, aided by the fact that a suspicious number of people seemed to go back and then not come back to the front for Decrepit Birth, nor noticeably swell the numbers upstairs. If you actually left in this timeframe you are a lamer, and Devin Townsend will come to your house to take back your metal points, cut up any jacket you have attempted to build so far, and force you to watch while he commits indecent acts on any domestic animals you may have lying around. If you're not scared of Devin Townsend raping your pets, that's fine with me; your loser cred is established and there are fewer people standing between me and respectively Matt Sotelo and Waclaw "Vogg" Kieltyka.

Decrepit Birth [6.5/7]
Seeing Augury's set -- and, depending on your perspective, the two bands that played after them -- it might have been reasonable to suspect that they might steal the show. Nope. Decrepit Birth came out and demonstrated that they are still Decrepit Birth, and still on the leading edge of amazing technical things that can be done in death metal. They played a nice balanced selection of material from both records so far, and teased an upcoming new one though (if I recall correctly) they didn't have anything off it at this one. I don't know if Bill actually believes all his weird inter-song banter, but it fits with the music and lyrical topics, and, hey, California. Ferociously good music, easily on a par with Vader, and quite possibly the best (and definitely longest) performance I've seen from them in this building.

Despite the relative length of the set, there was a strong demand for the band to do more, which they of course couldn't without running into Vader's timeslot, who would themselves end up relatively pinched for time. This show didn't exactly get out early, either, so the problem here is probably trying to shoehorn six bands into just under 4 hours. Like the last Maurizio-put-up tour that I saw in this building, backlining was used to good effect for most of the bands, but this time around there was just too much good music.

The coherence of Decrepit Birth and the backstage presence during their set of the NEDF organizers/New England Green Thumb horticultural society members, though, might argue that they would not have played longer had they had the opportunity, choosing rather to undertake other activities as a preparation for Vader. ;) Nothing implied......

Vader [6.5/7]
Decrepit Birth set a really high standard, but Vader definitely matched the mark, though to a crowd that was shamefully diminished from the night's high point. For crying out loud, you idiots, bands from Poland don't just wash in every day -- and most of the time when they do show it's fucking Behemoth, so exult, as those of us who stayed true and stayed in did, that you get a good one for a change. There was a lot of new material in this set, which still ripped and popped with as much power as the old. It's Vader -- did anyone expect differently? People were running out of energy by the end, but even if the band were a little let down, they didn't let it affect the music, and both we and they got a good finish out of the night by the time the venue turned the lights back on and foreclosed any further encore.

Unfortunately, this really was the finish to the night; it was late and I was tired as well as dead skint, which cut Metal Thursday out of the plans to continue. No Morgirion, no Mythology, no Kathadin -- well, I'd missed two out of those already just by virtue of what time it was; time to just bear up the pain and get to work in an normal fashion in the morning. This may have turned out to be a blessing in disguise, too, as I didn't have to go in the legendary shambles of the Ralph's parking lot and further aggravate the damage to the tire that ended up dying on the way home from work Friday rather than on the way home from this show. That dead tire may also have bricked any chance of going to Deceased on Saturday, but at that point, I was probably already sick enough that I wouldn't've made the trip back in.

Future shows are up in the air; I've got to finish being sick first, then see what's coming up, and where.

Kreator with Exodus, Belphegor, Warbringer, and Epicurean [Worcester Palladium, 4/10/2009]

Others have commented on how far six and a half years takes you: from not selling out a converted Pizza Hut in Haverhill to getting your gig moved into, and nearly filling, the biggest indoor room for extreme music in New England. Between that day and this one, we've had the internet go to ubiquity, the thrash revival start and come to flower, and probably more importantly, six seriously worthy records from the bands at the top of the bill. Not everyone who bought their first Kreator gear here and immediately pulled it on will go on, half a decade hence, to be among us old crusty misanthropes dividing the world between Sounds Like Kreator and Garbage, but some will, and if these gigs continue to bring in both the young and those who'll become the old at a consistent rate, metal is going to be ok.

With an intro like this, you get the impression that this was a pretty damned epic concert, and yes, you would be right on that one.

As is usual for Palladium shows, I left directly from work, strapping my brace on before I left the building. Traffic on the Pike was garbage, with rain starting soon after I cleared 495, and getting heavier as I moved further inland. Coming in about half an hour after doors, I was moderately surprised to see Epicurean already well into their set, but this would have positive rather than negative consequences for the rest of the evening.

Epicurean [4/7]
I took a few moments after coming in to listen to these guys; if they were real good, I would go forward and listen to them now, then do merch later. I got a beer, then somewhat leisurely browsed the merch tables, but did get down for about the last half of their set, which seemed to run on longer (probably going into what would under normal circumstances have been Warbringer's time) than the band's performance might warrant. They were pretty good, sort of a NWOSDM/prog hybrid that you might get by crossing Into Eternity and Shadows Fall, but the music never left that "pretty good" level, and for whatever reason they had a fair amount of synths on playback. I hadn't seen them before, but apparently the last time they were around, they had a live keyboardist. Epicurean were pretty decent as openers go, but on their own I'd be wary of seeing them anywhere bigger than O'Brien's.

In contrast to some other big shows downstairs lately, merch prices were eminently reasonable, with nearly all shirts at $20. I wouldn't read too much into this in regards bands bowing to recessionary pressures or acknowledging the younger audience; Exodus, as their tour dates on this run show, are about as super-underground as a big band can get, and Mille is kind of an anarcho-socialist, to whom normal economic math may not make moral sense.

Warbringer [5/7]
I'll have to withhold judgement until later as to whether I've seen Warbringer yet. This was a good performance running down basically exactly the same kind of Exodus-leaning Bay Area thrash as found on War Without End, but it was also a short one, necessitated by the fact that their normal drummer had broken a bone in his arm a few days prior, and they had only a few days to start rehearsing with and teaching songs to the drummer from Epicurean, who was sitting in. This made for about a four-song set, but it was a good four songs, and they did manage to get a new one in. As regards the new record, from this limited sample, it sounds like anyone who liked the first record will dig the second, as there does not appear to be a lot of material change.

The original plan was to dodge the hordes by going down front only after Warbringer due to expected audience flux between them and Belphegor. As it turned out, the floor did not start filling in until that point, so I was able to freely come and go from the rail up until when Belphegor started.

Belphegor [6/7]
I'll have to check, but I'm not sure that I've seen Belphegor before either; I missed them several times on several previous tours, and as a result seem to have missed out on the period where Anthony (ex-Zircon) was playing second guitar live for them. (I did see him in the audience for their set, though...and if they've got any sense of decency, he was on the list.) This was a shortish but high-quality set of death-black metal that should probably be reckoned a "low 6"; I'd feel more confident about marking them at this level if they had gone on a little longer, but I, and I expect nearly everyone in the hall, would be willing to take slightly less good Belphegor in exchange for more truly excellent Exodus and Kreator.

I picked up Belphegor's new record, Bondage Goat Zombie (talk about your RttP title generator...) from the band along with a patch that I now have to put somewhere, and on later inspection, found a writing credit for someone called "Pagan Megan". If this is the person that the Northeast thinks it is, there is a dramabomb planted somewhere and waiting to go off. If you know why this intersection might lead to ridiculous internet drama, get your popcorn and image macros ready; if not, just go on with your life, it's probably better to ignore this. Support Music, Not Rumors.

Exodus [7/7]
As mentioned above, I made sure to equip my leg brace before going down for this one. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough -- not because I got hurt or anything, but because "Piranha" is still too fucking good to have to stay in one place because you can't afford major joint damage because Kreator is next and you have to bend yourself up to get in your damn car after that. Exodus kicked extreme ass, putting up a better show than the last time I saw them in this building -- which was at Metalfest, so any set longer than 30 minutes would automatically become better -- and probably better than when I heard them at Wacken this summer -- and while the pit was, as expected, fucking bananas all the way around, nobody was beating me about the head and shoulders with a shoe at any point during the performance. The single notable break in the thrash avalanche came when Rob went backstage and brought out a cake for Tom Hunting's birthday (yes, he's back in, so Exodus is no longer at zero original members), and Gary jammed through "Happy Birthday" for the audience to bellow along with. Other than that, yeah, continuous circle pits and a wall of death on "Strike of the Beast" that was hell of fun catching. If this had been the headline set, I don't think that anyone would have minded, except for the part where it was only about an hour long. Still fucking killer.

While standing around between them and Kreator, still burning out excess energy, I encountered Eric from CSDO, flyering for his band (and if you're going to advertise CSDO, you could hardly find a more receptive audience than the people standing around after Exodus because they want to see Kreator at as close range as possible), and Alex from Razormaze, who thanked me for writing them up favorably in an old number of this record. We'll see if I manage to make it down to any of the matinee-and-night Robinapalooza they're playing at O'Brien's today; if you've got working feet and fewer family commitments, though, get the hell over.

Kreator [7/7]
As alluded above, my first time seeing Kreator indoors, and for me even as much as for those who don't even know that Club 125 ever existed, a hell of a way to start. We got the standout material (ok, modulo "Demon Prince") from the new record woven cleanly into highlights from the band's last 25 or so years, and fitting perfectly in beside them. While Hordes of Chaos isn't as good as Enemy of God, it's still a good D-thrash record, and it shows this most clearly by transferring exactly into the live setting. This wasn't a quirky a set as I saw at Wacken, or clinically perfect either ("Voices of the Dead" was done better both times I've seen the band before, but the dudes around me were just pumped that the band played it, so all was good), but it was a Kreator set, complete with high execution, lighting effects to knock your skull in, and ferocious floor movement that benefited from having more space than Exodus did, even if exhaustion was starting to cut into the crowd's vigor. I've got a bad sample space of Kreator shows for comparison; this is tied for second out of three for me, but for normal people, this is likely to be the best set they've seen from the band and may well stay that way for a while.

After it became apparent that they weren't going to do another encore, I went up and dropped my last dollar on the merch stand; they were out of the At the Pulse of Kapitulation shirts, which have a hellishly awesome design, but I was able to score a Live Kreation number before they ran out of those. I also bumped into Dave (ex-Summoning Hate), and asked him about his separation from said band; he quit, which is better than getting kicked, but I didn't go into particulars, as band business should stay band-internal rather than having some yob come and pry about it.

Homeward bound, things were simple: having barely the money left to do tolls, I didn't stop, and as a result got home a little after 2, gunned a glass of water to make up for the fluid volume I'd lost by thrashing and not drinking, and sacked out to start the recuperation process. I'm in functioning form now, but probably won't be hitting any gigs until Thursday, warming up for the NEMBVF (New England Metal Blade and Victory Festival, lolz) with Metal Blade Recording Artists Ravage (I'm not sure, but I think that's how we have to refer to the band now) at Metal Thursday (not yet sponsored by Metal Blade), then sticking in Worcester for Friday and Saturday. We'll see how synchronously the reports on those come in; I may have to work on Friday morning, which would give me a little time to write, but thrashing's of course going to be a higher priority.