Worcester Death Fest [Worcester Palladium, 6/10/2012]

This might have been more accurately written "Scott Lee Finds A Way To Have 21 Mostly-Local Bands Open For Six Feet Under Tour Fest", or I could have just covered the bands I did see in the title, but the first is too long and the second is way too long, as despite continuing my tradition of not watching Six Feet Under close out festivals, I did see enough of about seventeen bands to take down concrete descriptions.  Acculturated as I am to German experience, this barely met the definition of a festival.  Festivals take place outdoors, over multiple days, and pack in a minimum average of ten bands per day.  This "fest" only met one of the criteria, but that's not been a problem in the past, and in the "goddamn everyone shows up and hangs out" department, it did capture a bit of the festival feel.

After shaking off the cobwebs of the night before -- I was on call, and therefore had to play it fine, but even a pint an hour of Guinness adds up if you keep at it for eight hours -- I organized some food and some cash and headed on out, rolling up to the Palladium, around back streets due to a weird roadblock on Major Taylor, in just enough time to stow my steel in the vehicle and hide my pen under my belt before going up to get my ticket and get processed in.  I nosed around a bit and got a CD off Totality before heading down to the main stage; the upstairs didn't look set up yet, and the nebulous rumors that I'd heard waiting in line were indicative that most of the bands I actually wanted to see would be going on sooner rather than later.

Tony (Scaphism) and Brendan (Blood of the Gods) standing by a cairn of guitar cases.  Load in first, find out when/where you're playing after.

Scaphism [5.5/7]
Despite a sparse crowd in the cavernous downstairs, Scaphism got the fest off to a good start with humor, irony, and a good performance of most of their best material.  This wasn't that long a set, but Scaphism tunes tend to be kind of short, so they got a fair few out around Tony bantering with the crowd as well as with other bands setting up on the balcony.  They handled the new space pretty well, but might have brought more energy to the upstairs with a smaller gulf between the band and the audience.  Regardless, this was a good performance, and one that started the fest off on the right foot.

Scaphism on the big stage.

Hivesmasher [6/7]
I practically never goddamn see this band, so my sample space is a little constricted.  From the last time, they've lost their keys/samples guy, but if anything picked the energy up a notch.  In some places the songs seemd to run down after about a minute and a half, but this is why I tend not to listen to grindcore in the first place.  For what they do, though, Hivesmasher are really, really good, and when they're on, in those 60- to 100-second bursts, they are dead fucking on to an extent that barely any bands in the region can stand in with them.  All around killer set.

Aaron Heinold, the secret-Azn Barney Greenway, in a rare standing-still moment.

Since the upstairs bar still wasn't open, I went downstairs to get a beer, if I recall correctly some merch, and happened to see a bit of...

Eyes of the Dead [4/7]
I had not seen this band before and did not get a positive ID on them until checking in with the running order several hours later.  They did not, in the approximately half-set sample that I got from them, do a whole lot to drive me to make that ID, or to check them out on record.  From what I heard at least, they were putting out decently-executed but ultimately replacement-level death-thrash, along old lyrical tropes that didn't do much to grab the attention either.  On festivals, you will get bands like this; decent enough to fill out the lineup in the middle of the day, but fairly interchangeable with the promoter's other options.

Midway through, I ran into Juan from Untombed, who passed along two important bits of info: 1) Spain drew with Italy in what was probably the most entertaining match of the Euros to that point and 2) Sexcrement was going on next upstairs.  I promptly changed zones; I lost a little in terms of total music seen, but getting in place to see all of Sexcrement was more important than making it to the end of EotD's set.

Sexcrement [6/7]
That decision turned out to be well-justified.  I'd missed Sexcrement's release show, but they filled a lot of that value back in, pulling most of the material in this set off the new one, which turns out, unsurprisingly, to be as sleazily slamalicious as their previous output.  There were fewer (well, at least apparently fewer) trannies around than previous, and Adam didn't get his dick out, but even when you take out the chaos that swirls around them, Sexcrement are a damn good death metal band, and they put out a pretty damn good set on this outing.

I went upstairs to the merch area to pick up the two -- as it turns out, they reissued XXX Bargain Bin -- Sexcrement discs I was short, and by the time I got the purchase done and went back down, Blood of the Gods was setting up.  By this time I was running out of bands that I wanted to see, but hadn't yet, and Untombed and Dysentery were going to be going on later downstairs, so I stuck around rather than going to sample the downstairs.

Blood of the Gods [6/7]
This decision also turned out to be correct, as Blood of the Gods took up the challenge of the space (biggest I've seen them on since Church, iirc) and smashed out a strong, diverse, and yet unified set of their bruising sludge-death.  Their crust roots are still evident, if in nothing else than the fact that they're coming at death metal from a different direction from literally every other band on this bill, but they've moved beyond that point and easy Entombed comparisons to making something new, cool, and almost completely independent.  This was probably the best set I've seen from these guys, and the trend looks to be further up from here.

So that I wouldn't miss Untombed, and also because there was music there and a set change in the upstairs, I swapped zones again, and managed to catch most of Conflagration despite not making a positive ID on tha band, again, until I finally ran across the running order.

Conflagration [4/7]
I hadn't seen this band before, and despite my general distaste for the style, I tried to give them a fair shot, but ended up still with the impression that something was just off.  To a certain degree, I could pick out that this main-sequence metallic-MAHXC band (if you don't know what that is, you apparently haven't ever been to the NEMHF) was fighting the mixing board's legendary badness, but in places, it seemed like they were fighting against their own composition and arrangements as well.  They had some good bits in a few places, but not quite enough to convince me to check out their stuff on record and to see to what degree the downstairs board was fucking them over, and to what degree I just didn't care for the music.  They had a decently appreciative crowd/mosh melee, so apparently people into this style might want to check them out, but for the auld, crabbit, and bepanzert, sets like this are more part of the price to be paid for having festivals.

After Conflagration ended, with Untombed coming up, the floor pretty much 'rotated', with its former occupants clearing out and a new cohort, self included, coming down to fill the space.  There were, obviously, more people filling in now than we'd started the afternoon off with, but there was still a fair bit of space, and I was able to get pretty well forward without great difficulty.

Untombed [5.5/7]
More than the other bands that I'd seen moving up to the big stage for the first time, Untombed seemed to struggle a little at the start, whether from the gulf down to the audience or from the different aural environment (whether actual working monitors, or the Palladium-standard mix getting mispromoted through them).  Once they got their feet under them, though, they steadily improved through the course of the set and ended in characteristically strong fashion.  They'll be playing more sets in more intimate venues in the future, but they did a good job with their shot at the big stage, and particularly with keeping the crowd involved despite the distance.

Dave whips up the crowd for Untombed.

I'd gotten a look at the running order by this point, and 'running' was definitely the operative word.  The last three non-slotted bands that I had a particular interest in were on one after the other, and I had to move pretty quick about it.

Totality [5.5/7]
The main attribute from Totality on this exposure was their relentless tightness; as noted earlier, this is an important attribute for death metal bands working their way up, but the material that was on offer in that disciplined presentation was pretty much where Totality has been since I started seeing them.  The guitar solos have improved from that sample, earning the band some extra credits, and their merch distribution off the stage comes off as slightly less rockstar, but Totality is still a band yet becoming, and not quite where they want themselves to be yet.  They're getting there, and if they can take that step up in songwriting to match their execution, they'll be that much closer.

Totality keep it tight.

Dysentery [6.5/7]
As the afternoon wore on, bands got longer sets, and more people got into the venue, making the clip-overs from one set into the start of the next longer, and travel time between the upstairs and the downstairs longer still.  I missed more of Dysentery's set than other bands that got clipped because of this, but still managed to get up relatively close and in about the action, for about 75% of a weapons-grade slam hammering.  Dysentery had played this building before, though not as I've seen them downstairs, but they commanded the large downstairs stage and decently-filled downstairs room with as much aplomb and ferocity as they would have on a run-of-the-mill O'Brien's outing.  My knees still keep me out of pits, but even just listening to the music and holding the pit edge was a pure battle; the band could hardly have been heavier if they were throwing solid rubber bricks the size of shipping containers off the stage.

The dance floor is lit up for Dysentery.

Excrecor [5/7]
Head blasted straight in half, I got into the upstairs in good time for Excrecor, who unfortunately seemed to be having an off night.  Some of it may have been down to the drum monitors, which the band called out to the venue staff as just plain not working, and which could easily have been responsible for some of the desyncs, and some of it was probably the mix, which even in the upstairs seldom gets much past 'functional' for non-nationals, but the most succinct and likely explanation is that the band just had a down set, as bands will from time to time.  Excrecor's material remains what it is, and got a decent performance here, but the band's played more enjoyable sets in the past and will do better in the future than they did on this sample.

At this point, the furious running to and fro was over, and I could spend more inter-band time either browsing the merch stacks, or as I did for most of The Summoned, getting some foods down.  Eight of the nine local openers that I was actually interested in seeing had gone on by this point, and thanks to hard going, I managed to see most of the sets for all of the eight bands in question.

The Summoned [NR]
I heard only bits and pieces of this band, around transactions for food, beer, and merch, some of which were interesting melodeath pieces, and some of which were pieces of less interesting retreaded deathcore.  In total, though, there were not enough of those pieces, nor strong enough connections between them, to make any kind of informed assessment about what the band is like, let alone how this set was on any kind of subjective level.  I did pick up a CD from them, and found a mix of styles similar to that noted, executed at about the level you should expect from a good eastern-New-England local band, but not having a complete impression of this set, I can't accurately tell how much it varied from that recorded performance or in what direction.

Nemecide [4/7]
I had heard of this band before, and seen their name around, but I hadn't actually seen them live or happened on a demo yet.  After this set, I have more of an impression of why this was the case.  Nemecide's Bostonian blend of Behemoth and Killswitch Engage was decently executed, but not especially interesting, and so completely removed from the sound and culture of the local shows that I do go to as to seem to have originated on another planet.  In a way it's good to go to festivals to see that there's such a broad range of viable bands out there, and large audiences for everyone when that range can be unified, but the opportunity to avoid bands like this and overdose on the kvlter than kvlt is why I go to Party.San....and increasingly in recent years, not to NEMHF.

As noted above, I had seen the running order by this point, and yet elected to stay put.  Some of this was due to the fact that even an average metal performance is pretty decent, and inertia is a powerful force, but part of it was the conviction that the remaining bands, upstairs and down, were pretty much of a piece, and I gained more by resting up for later than I might theoretically have been losing by running around.  It all works out in the end.

Conforza [4.5/7]
As it was, I ended up seeing the whole of Conforza's set, another first exposure to a band that I'd seen mentioned on a fair number of bills but not actually seen live before.  They got a good response from the crowd for their performance of a technically proficient deathcore set, though the reigning impression from my seat was of a sound thoroughly past its sell-by date, one that might have resonated a few years ago in the company of Ion Dissonance or Despised Icon, but in 2012 was more just echoing back.  That crowd response indicates there's still an audience for it -- it's just that I'm pretty sure I won't need to take active measures to be a part of it going forward.

The two foregoing notes should contradict any notion that I've lost rigor in score distributions, or pull punches talking about local bands.  The real reason that scores have converged as they have, and that I don't savage bands too often, is that lately I just don't see a lot of bands that I don't like.  There is little that separates Nemecide or Conforza from the national acts in their respective styles that you would see at, for example, the NEMHF -- it's just that I don't go to the NEMHF any more, in large part to avoid seeing seven hours of bands that I mostly don't care for and would be pasting 3s and 4s on, with accompanying commentary pretty much exactly in line with the above.  Some fans may take comfort in that assertion; for the rest, oh wow, an old jerk in an armored kutte doesn't like deathcore.  Shock horror.  Send me hate mail, I'll publish it.

Vattnet Viskar [6/7]
I moved up again for this band, if only to catch them as at the time of signing, since it had been a while.  What I got was worth it, an intense and driven set of third-wave black metal that shed a lot of its alleged hipster aspects, following Fell Voices more closely than Wolves In The Throne Room.  (Observant TWBM elitists/completists will notice that this merely ameliorates, rather than straight-up eliminates, the nebulous accusations of hipsterism.)  Though their history is fairly short, and their antecedents deemed by some as "politically unreliable", it's difficult to see on this set how Vattnet have not earned their 'promotion'; they were fully able to carry both the large stage and the overwhelmingly death-metal crowd, with enough poise and violence to be able to take this sound on the road, and avoid the drop for longer than the couple months the band are estimating it at right now.  There are going to still be a few dead-enders who begrudge them the nod, and probably a couple more who'll assert that on material alone, another band from the area (Obsidian Tongue, say) should have been the one to carry the third-wave banner out of the Boston area, but if Vattnet can continue to hit these marks (and kick Liturgy in the goolies at any opportunity), most people will be fine with them getting the exposure.

Vattnet peel the layers back.  (Also: footwear doesn't show up, but uniformly met with the censors' approval.)

Fit For An Autopsy [5/7]
The last of the localish bands up, Fit For An Autopsy dumped out an earthshaking set of competently-tuned deathcore that ultimately came out with a lot more hitting power than originality.  Despite this, it was a decent time, as this music usually is at this high a level of delivery -- and Nate had probably the best-tuned banter of the night, even with Frank Mullen's gems later.  In every opportunity to talk to the crowd, he continually barked up the next three bands: Revo, Fetus, and Suffocation alone, with never a mention, for the whole run of the set, of Six Feet Under.  I regularly ignore Six Feet Under as well, and would end up going home on the night without seeing them, but it was still humorous to get this attitude from someone on the bill, on the stage, where he'd have to deal with the wrath of publicists and tour managers.

Revocation [6/7]
Though there may have been a tour or two that I missed, this was at least the first time I'd seen Revocation on the big stage at the Palladium, and they handled it well -- more accurately, they flat killed it, despite no Anthony (whether a tendonitis flare-up, or other non-band-life issues) and not really enough time.  Most of the set was off Chaos of Forms (entirely appropriate, as it's the latest that they have out), but there was a fair amount of older stuff as well, including opening with "Re-Animaniac", which just goes to show what the hell I know.  They've done better on smaller stages, but this kicked a lot of ass, and when they come back next month, they'll likely be more in command of the larger stage.

Revocation slashing into "Dismantle The Dictator".

It's worth mentioning that while the sound downstairs was really not that bad for most of the bands, it took a definite step up for Revocation and the bands following them, either because they got a real sound check on arriving at the venue in the morning, or because the touring bands brought their own sound guy, who was less of a boots-on-the-head] than the normal Palladium knob-twirlers.  I was watching the bands, not the soundboard, so I can't tell for certain, but the improvement was marginal enough to suggest the former rather than the latter.

Dying Fetus [6/7]
Though I moved off the floor and back up onto the terraces for Dying Fetus, the effect carried all the way back.  This was another and brutal strong set, but a little more weighted towards the band's older material than I've seen from them before, likely synching up with the re-releases of older material that I indulged in at the merch stand.  It was pretty decent runtime-wise, but still felt a little short; maybe due to closing out with "Kill Your Mother, Rape Your Dog", or maybe they went back to that classic grindblast pisstake due to runtime constraints.  Either way, this set was relentlessly impressive, and to a certain degree could have kept going for another hour and still left the audience wanting more.

Suffocation [7/7]
Suffocation were technically another "name local" along the lines of Vattnet or FFAA, but the set that they delivered was fully headliner-worthy (Note: Suffo-Fetus-Revo-FFAA, not a totally terrible tour package, either artistically or as a commercial proposition).  Despite the lineup changes (no Mike, boo to the wasted energy executing his parts), Suffocation delivered a monster set of ceaseless slams with ceaseless professionalism.  We got a couple tunes off the forthcoming album (due to start recording in August to drop next year, iirc) in with a good mix of newer and older stuff -- with a definite concentration on Effigy..., which the band, at least per Frank, appears to have accepted as their definitive record -- and uniformly first-rate banter from Frank, who kept it focused as well as funny, and got to the punchline of his Miami-bath-salts-zombie joke before any of the Celtics fans in the crowd bounced any empty containers off his skull.  Most Suffocation sets, as the sample space of the last eight years indicates, do not turn out quite this good, but when they do, they are fucking killer.

Suffocation only finished up at 10 PM, but at this point I'd been thrashing out for 9 hours, including that frantic four hours back and forth, back and forth, at the start, and was worn down to a bare nub of permanently-dissatisfied kutte-wearing elitist.  I considered things over, and decided to take a pass on Six Feet Under in favor of not dying on the way home or sleeping through my alarm Monday morning.  Both of those turned out to be close calls -- don't listen to Woods of Ypres if you're concerned about falling asleep behind the wheel -- but ultimately I got back, unpacked the four shirts and eight CDs -- two Sexcrement, one Totality, one Dying Fetus, one The Summoned, and three, from Abacinate and Hammer Fight plus a Scion (spit) sampler that I'd gotten Relapse-grab-bagged while picking up a Revocation shirt -- and plowed through the work week largely unaffected.  Of course, the recuperation time and the time needed to actually write this up put in some delays, but you do what you can.

Abigail Williams with Nachzehrer, Dysentery, and Mythology [Ralph's, Worcester, 1/31/2012]

Not being a Thursday, I didn't have as much cleanup to do at work and as a consequence got bored faster and started out earlier. I accordingly got out earlier, chawed the fat with various dudes from the Boston-area openers, drank an extra beer, and in all ways killed more time than absolutely necessary while the bands got set up to go on. Soon enough, though, Mythology was ready, and things got rolling.

Mythology [5.5/7]
The intervening weeks have done the band good; Mythology came out faster, tighter, harder, and better than last time; there were a few desynchs and a couple places where the sound might have used another guitar to keep the rhythm churning, but this was a step up from last time and definitely within the margin of error as regards replicating the power that they present on record. In the first slot, they didn't have the time for as long a set, but kept it vital, with a new song or two in the mix with the stuff from The Impaler, and matching up pretty well. Chris/Gallows expressed the hope that the next time they came back, they'd have a new record out; hopefully, this is more from "we've got it mostly written and will be recording in the immediate future" and less from "we've played here twice in the last 30 days, Chris is gonna put us on OFF THE LIST for like two years". There is, as often noted, kind of an oversupply of good metal bands in this part of the country, and the MT orgas do try to rotate through them as consistently as they can, but there are a lot of Metal Thursdays and MT-branded shows in the calendar, and it's not impossible that Mythology might be back before the leaves fall, especially if they can get a new record done and out by the end of the summer.

In the break, I picked up two records from Abigail Williams, because I wanted to support the touring band, was not down for vinyl, and without listening to their current iteration was not going to endorse them by adding to my shirt pile. At least one of these records was a critical mistake. I haven't listened to the other one yet. More on this further down.

Dysentery [7/7]
Whether despite or because of the fact that they were singularly ill-matched to the rest of the bill (Drew noted beforehand that "this is the grimmest show we've played on in, like, ever"), Dysentery came out with all guns blazing and smashed up the crowd with an explosive, near perfectly-pitched set of tooth-shattering slam-death. Yes, this was completely the wrong audience, and yes, the pit action was so pitiful that Will didn't even bother hectoring the crowd to move around more, but the actual musical performance delivered was complete top class. Via almost perfect lock-in between the band members and skullcrushing levels of absolute volume, Dysentery imposed their will on the audience and left people if not rapt in awe, at least too stunned to resist. The skill and professionalism levels in this band are at just ridiculous levels for a band that still has not quite gotten out of the regional DM underground; expect sets this killer when you see them, expect pit violence on a completely different level, and expect that Internal Devastation and more touring with more performances this good will get Dysentery more national sooner rather than later.

I did get shirts from Dysentery and Nachzehrer, via the perpetually attractive combo of 1) band is killer and 2) design kicks ass. I have far too many shirts and need to purge them in the intermediate future, but as long as good bands keep putting together cool designs, I keep getting stuck buying more of them.

Nachzehrer [6.5/7]
Nachzehrer's sound is really and immediately different when cut down to a four-piece, and there were parts in this set where the absence of Erik's guitar was really, really felt. That being said, though, the material that they brought out was so strong that even with the reduced instrumentation, the quality eventually cut through. The 4/5ths of the band present executed damn well, and covered their misses equally well, allowing the writing and composition to do the talking. "...on the shores of Sheol" may not have made it onto the split with Ipsissimus, but if it's a representative sample of that recording session, that only speaks better for the material that is going in, which will hopefully get these thrashing black satanisms into more ears. Class set even under-strength, and the prospect of performances this good with the band's full complement is something to be looked forward to for metalheads along the Yankee part of the 95 corridor.

Before going on to hear about Abigail Williams, it may be worth checking in with my assessment of the band from five years ago, almost to the weekend.

Abigail Williams [6/7]
Score is not adjusted for apparel; if you want to, then THAT'S A FUCKING 50 DKP MINUS!!!, to mix nerd memes. In contrast to everything that had been bruited about previously in regards "symphonic" black metal, what we got was for the most part a Forest Stream cover band influenced heavily by Agalloch, WITTR, and Drudkh. The Cascadian bands don't tour often, and Drudkh and Forest Stream don't tour the US at all, so having this style come by is welcome, but everything Abigail Williams did in this set was so obviously a remanufacturing of that period of Russian black-doom as to make the performance less a set for appreciating and more for cutting apart to see which riffs came from Radigost and which were more like Painful Memories or Mental Home. People who don't happen to have been steeped in this particular subscene might have found this performance less of an academic exercise, but an extremely unscientific sampling of such individuals (sample space=people snarking in the show thread on RTTP post-facto) finds that these people tend not to like Forest Stream as much as I do, which makes it basically a wash.

As briefly alluded to above in a couple places, this performance bore no resemblance to how they were in '07, and also almost no resemblance to how they originally reinvented themselves on record. The following was stuck to the front of my copy of In The Shadow of A Thousand Suns:



















For the bad at reading blurry writing, that last sentence, which reads "For fans of Dimmu Borgir & Emperor.", is the only part of this sticker that is remotely true for the record it was pasted on, mostly because anyone willing to put up with a subpar remake of Covenant's Nexus Polaris album is probably into Emperor and Dimmu. More important than the lack of quality or any kind of interesting material is the fact that this midpoint shows that the band have now reinvented themselves twice (provided the sample from this gig sticks, and was not just a response to getting the fear relative to their ability to outdo Mythology and Nachzehrer). This is like Spinal Tap talking through their transition from skiffle group to Maiden-in-all-but-name, but at least their taste is improving. In '07, they were a subpar Sacrilege, and by dint of this record they were a second-rate Covenant sometime before the end of 2008....and now, at the turn of 2012, they make a passable synthetic Forest Stream substitute. I'm not holding out any great hope that In The Absence of Light will be good or even interesting to listen to (if nothing else, any surprise will be pleasant), but I'm at least glad I got it to get another data point in.


I managed to successfully avoid to crashing into anything in the pea-soup fog coming home, but it's up in the air as to whether I'll make it out to actual Metal Thursday tomorrow. I should, in the abstract, but concretely this is determined by a multivariate equation involving exhaustion, gas levels, and spare cash. We'll see what's next.

Exhumed with Goatwhore, Havok, and Dysentery [Worcester Palladium, 11/8/2011]

I got an earlier start out to this one than last night, and turned out to need it: traffic was heavy as shit, and I ended up getting over, in, and through doors just barely in time to get Dysentery's new record off Drew (and crack wise about previous transactions) before he had to go downstairs and strap his bass up. I blame the economy sucking slightly less, and me forgetting how Palladium shows work, not having gone to ones on weeknights in like a year.

Dysentery [6/7]
While this wasn't the best, full-stop, show I've seen from Dysentery ever, it was wicked fucking good, full not only of slams, huge breakdowns, and crushing drops, but also a thick measure of more doctrinaire death metal brutality. They remain the ne plus ultra of slam, at least in-region, and still get kids going completely bananas on the drop, but in a lot of the new stuff, as well as the older songs as they've been reworked and tightened for Internal Devastation, there's a move towards one really huge slam breakdown rather than chaining breakdown to breakdown after each other. Still good stuff, and the record is flat killer; it'll be interesting to see where they go from here, especially with the lineup diverging from Parasitic Extirpation again, which should keep Dystentery focused and active even as Parasitic's shaking off the rust.

A quick merch break here did the obligate merch on the national bands; no tourdates and a lot of Carcass-borrowing logos put me off the Exhumed shirts, but I did get the new record and the far-more-early-Exhumed-than-anyone-really-needs Platter of Splatter comp. I bought Goatwhore's current album out of a perhaps-misplaced sense of duty, not because I especially wanted to hear five to seven attempts to make "Alchemy of the Black Sun Cult" part 2.

Havok [6/7]
I'd missed this band on their previous stops in the region -- I think they were at Ralph's last year, and they may have played somewhere in the area with Razormaze since -- so it was good to finally see them, and welcome on top of that that they're less completely, totally, pro-forma thrash-revival than might otherwise have been dreaded. I'd rather see Witchaven getting this kind of recognition, but at least it's not Bonded By Blood or Warbringer ("in Richtung Slayer, Kreator und Exodus"?! Scheiss drauf, mann, gegenteilig iss die Band ne Fälschung Slayer, Kreator und Exodus!) in this slot again. For those not familiar, Havok set out a straight-ahead set of Big-Four inspired thrash metal, the kind of music you'd get from a band that decided to be influenced mostly by Slayer and Metallica, and stopped listening to either band in 1985. It wasn't terribly original, but the execution was pretty killer, and they further diversified the bill while not deviating too far from the thrash elements in Exhumed that presumably got them onto the package in the first place.

At the end of their set, they introduced "Afterburner" with the usual complaints about karate mosh, and, because this is New England, several people in the crowd immediately marched up the front to throw down for the song in as exaggeratedly antisocial a manner as possible. Not because New England inherently moshes like a dick, with feet flying at head level, but because we are all sardonic trolling bastards up here, who delight in provoking and confusing outsiders whenever possible.

Goatwhore [5.5/7]
As weird as it may seem given how the band have taken Krisiun's slot as mandatory openers on every tour ever, I hadn't seen Goatwhore in a while, and was at least a little interested to see what the deltas were between this performance and the many, many, times I saw them in 2007. The difference appears to be a much stronger commitment to black'n'roll, via the agency of a new record that is mostly composed of attempts to clone the sound, and presumably the success, of "Alchemy of the Black Sun Cult" off A Haunting Curse. That's a good song, still, even today and it was good as delivered here, but it loses a little of its luster when the band plays three other variations on it in the same set. Goatwhore are still a fundamentally decent band, and they still put on a good show, but it's hard to see where the upside is here. They allegedly have a new record coming out next February, but given their level of material to date, and the direction that they took on Clawing Out The Eyes Of God (i.e., cargo-cult black'n'roll that knows where it wants to be but is clueless on how to actually get there), it's difficult to forecast any kind of material change. Goatwhore is going to continue to be, as a RTTP wag put it in advance of this date, "America's Second Billed" for the foreseeable future, and "unable to headline" is probably not where a band that's been touring nationally for five years really wants to be.

It was probably in here that I picked up a bunch of Dysentery kit and apologized to Dave from Havok for not buying his record immediately; I ended up far enough back, and enough people lamered out over the course of Exhumed's set that it wouldn't've gotten crunched, but all they had was vinyl, and not only is that an iffy proposition to survive on the floor at a death metal gig, but I'd gotten quite enough of holding a record sleeve rather than having my hands free the previous night.

Exhumed [7/7]
There are probably points to pick with this, and like Cynic the day before, this is not an especially "high" 7. However, it's undeniable that Exhumed set out a violent, abrasive, and generally very well-performed set of frenetic goregrind that got people thrashing around with appropriate reciprocal violence...and they eventually got around to doing "Matter of Splatter" in the encore (preceded by minimal bullshit), which was enough to put it over the top, at least for the easily-pleased simpleton writing this worthless text. This was a solid, killer, Exhumed set, and if you listened to it and thought the band was just turning the gears, or hadn't knocked all the rust off yet, see Carcass for a prior comparable of how that situation can still stat out to awesomeness.

After picking up Time Is Up as promised, I hit the road; I got back in good order, but picked up some kind of all-destroying lung disease that prevented me from seeing Absu at the weekend; I'm recovered now, but there's not a lot of shows between now and the Winterreise, and fewer still between there and the end of the year. I still need to plan for that...we'll see what shows, if any, are going down in Prague at the start of December.

Composted with Dysentery, Scaphism, Boarcorpse, and Abnormality [Church, Boston, 10/3/2010]

Because I was a little late coming down, I bit the bullet and actually drove-in-Boston enough to park by the venue for this one. With baseball season over, this was almost surprisingly easy and cut out what would have been a bastard-long hike, which came in useful later on.

Anyway, I got in with time and spots behind the restaurant to spare, got some beers, and was ready when the bands started ahead of the announced schedule, in order to fit in everyone before the hard midnight curfew.

Abnormality [5.5/7]
In some ways Abnormality seemed almost like a new band in this outing, though I hadn't really seen enough of them in the previous four years to make that assessment with any degree of confidence. I was concerned that Mike leaving might take them down a peg, but this hasn't really happened; Abnormality is still just as technical, maybe a little more riff-focused and a little more melodic, but still crunching out kickass brutal death metal. It's still a little weird, almost, to see them with a bassist after so long without one, but Josh fills out and solidifies the sound, allowing the guitarists to concentrate on other things while he puts in the low end. (This has been your promotional message from the Bass Players' Mutual Benefit Society for the day.) The set was a little short -- the first four bands had to shoehorn themselves into 30-minute sets to make the timing work, so this is going to be pretty consistent across bands on this gig -- but pulled heavily from their upcoming EP, which is really looking like one to watch out for.

I was talking with Juan Untombed and some other people in here, and he mentioned that Boarcorpse had a new song built on black metal. I was a little skeptical about this -- even for Boarcorpse, that's a little out there -- but lo and behold, in the middle of said band's set, a song that comes out with straight-up Emperor riffs before blending them back into more typical weird tech-death. This is the last time I doubt Juan on something, provided he's functional enough to say words.

Boarcorpse [6/7]
This was Boarcorpse's last show as Boarcorpse has been, at least as long as they've been Boarcorpse, maybe even a little longer, and what a way to go out. In Terrence's last show out front, they smashed out a heavyweight-champeen performance of odd, challenging, brutal, and generally awesome material, including some new stuff from the forthcoming split with Composted and Scaphism, which is allegedly going to master this week. Perhaps impermanence adds coloring, but a set like this doesn't really need that enhancement; Boarcorpse has killed it like this before, they killed it here, and they will hopefully kill it in the future with Mark out front, who is a talented vocalist and class doer of odd things in his own right. A band this good doesn't often become not-good by amicably swapping one good musician for another, but they do change; if you missed this set, you missed the closing of a chapter, but there's no reason not to get onboard with the next iteration of this band as well.

Scaphism [5.5/7]
A good, solid, if a little short, set of meat-and-potatoes death metal from greater Worcester's favorite band of RAEP RAEP RAEP fetishists; this is about their metier, as far as I've seen them to date. Their brand of crushing, chunky death metal may not lend itself to the sort of performance that I'm likely to pick out as a particular high, but if they continue to keep up the quality and the consistency, people will continue to pack in for their sets and continue to respond well to the music. Over the sample space that I've seen from them, this was about an average Scaphism performance; it's just that the average outing you get from Scaphism is wicked good.

Dysentery [6/7]
Solid music, violent floor. So let it ever be. On the musical side, the band continued the trend of the past couple shows, unifying in the new material off the forthcoming-in-the-indefinite-future new record with stuff going back as far as the Excruciatingly Euphoric Torment split; the balance on this one was about 1/3 "old", 1/3 "new", and 1/3 ...Past Suffering..., all strongly integrated. Whenever the new one's out, it's going to be a hell of a crusher. The floor, though, didn't hit maximum violence; some people may have been intimidated by those who were throwing themselves around, some people may have been saving themselves for Composted, and the standards used may just be unrealistic. Is it even possible to make a pit that Will is going to be scared of? I've seen the guy in action, and don't believe that he'd be scared of any floor action that wasn't also indistinguishable from an armed gang fight. As pointed up before, though, this may be the problem; appropriately-violent pits scare people off, which leads to an empty front, which leads to people jumping around more, which eventually hits the local maximum of violence again. Local maxima are just rare.

Composted [6/7]
Some people, on seeing the relative decrease in antics and corresponding increase in ballistics-grade slam, might be motivated to shed a bloody little tear, with a sniffle, in the belief that Composted is growing up. Other people who are paying more attention will note that Mark still did this entire set in a banana suit. The current state of Composted can be most easily likened to the intro to "Sausage Cathedral": direct and to the point, but still relentlessly weird to the point of dada. There will be more antics, in other places that will mind the strewing of baked goods and inflatables less; what should be taken away from this set is that what's been true since the beginning of Composted is if anything even more true now: if you strip off the antics, you still have a very good and very funny slamming death metal band. The audience was up for it, with Aaron Hivesmasher (who's owned up to it under his own name elsewhere, so I can go ahead and be specific here) filling the air with empty pint cans, and a full, active pit that was at times almost as weird as the band on stage. With tanking the dudes and ladies flying around, and with trying to flip the glass shards back out of the killzone (unfortunately, not all of them or not in time to keep the dude who was moshing in his bare feet, having kicked off his flipflops, from stepping on them), there was never a dull moment for me in this set.

Glass shards? Yes, glass shards:





**********************************
SPECIAL REPORT: OSHA INVESTIGATES THE FLYING PINTGLASS INCIDENT
**********************************

Way back, when I was working in a line of business that made products that could kill people in any number of disruptive ways by accident, the EHS (Environmental Health & Safety) folks continually drummed it into everyone who had direct contact with a tool that accidents always have priors. This isn't strictly true, but it is most of the time: more accurately, because accidents are a combination of random chance and an unsafe environment, it is overwhelmingly likely that if you look at an accident, you're going to find a distinct pattern of unsafe situations and near-misses that in hindsight should have warned people that something bad was going to happen. Because I was stuck in traffic coming home (DPW can GTF, closing down 93 to one lane, even at midnight), I had time to go over the night mentally and work out the priors.

What happened: a little after midway through Composted's set, a particularly active mosher threw or swiped an empty pint glass off a table at the edge of the pit. The glass flew through the air about 10 feet without hitting anyone and crashed on the floor, where it shattered. The active ingredients in this one are a violent pit and the presence of glassware.

Near misses: I was pretty certain at the time -- before the glass actually hit the floor here -- that I'd heard another glass bite the dust in between two songs immediately before the break incident. It didn't appear to be in the pit area, but I'm pretty sure I heard breakage somewhere. More concretely, during Scaphism, a girl in the pit (which was not real violent) got knocked into, spilling her drink out of its glass vessel and all over her. No glass hit the floor here, but that's why it's a near miss, not an accident.

Environment generally: There was a lot of glassware on small and high tables near the pit at this gig. With the pits being as violent as Dysentery and Composted pits can get, people likely didn't want to keep holding onto their drinks after finishing them, and it's a hell of a lot shorter to duck back and put the glass on a table rather than lugging it back to the bar. Glass in the pit is always going to be a risk, but a glass that's sitting on a table is a lot more likely to hit the floor than one that's in someone's hand or pocket.

Does any of this exculpate the person who ultimately put the glass on the floor? No, not at all; at the minimum this was a reckless move that could have for real killed somebody, which if intentional makes it even worse. However, looking at this situation and realizing that we'll never be able to completely stop crazy people at the door, it's possible to try to reduce potential injury risk just by moving the bar tables back behind or at least level with the sound desk on shows like this where there's going to be a lot of crowd movement. Even if glass piles up on tables, if they're not on the edge of the pit, it's less likely that they'll end up in the middle of it. And even if people carry pint glasses into the pit, it's less likely, if they're holding onto them, that they'll get swiped/snatched away and end up on the floor.

We'll see how and if this gets implemented; a response of "no metal shows" or "no glass drinking vessels" is not warranted and is complete overkill even from the basic EHS perspective.


Amazingly, this writeup isn't completely late; hopefully, this trend continues over the coming five-day block of shows, where, circumstances permitting, I'm out at four venues over each of the five nights Thursday to Monday seeing bands. Hopefully that comes together; a nice block of music before I go on call, then transition into prepping for Hong Kong.

Composted with Dysentery, Rampant Decay, Maggot Brain, and Intheshit [O'Brien's, Allston, 7/30/2010]

This was the last chance that Boston would have to give me stuff to take over, so fortunately, I had time to get home, change out of my work pants, and equip the battleshorts I'd be going overseas in before I went in. Between these and my warm-weather vest, I had, narrowly, enough capacity to carry everything back home with. This is a good problem to have; pocket space stretched to the limits means that a lot of stuff is crossing the ocean.

I got down, even so, a little early, which was good; time to drink, hang about, talk for a bit with Scott from Deathamphetamine after picking up his 10 promos, drink more, and pick up 20 sleeve-packed copies of Black Thrash Ritual from Hräsvelg. As will be noted in the still-under-construction tour report, all of these eventually found their way into metalhead hands on the other side of the Atlantic.

Intheshit [5/7]
The only real complaint that anyone rational could have about this set was that it was too short. Short sets are a fact of life in the DIY world, especially on five-band shows in a city that has a (stupidly early) had curfew, but this was really on the bleeding edge even of that, probably because Alex (Nachzehrer, 26 Beers) had been pulled in on drums on really short notice and hadn't gotten time to learn any more than what was played. However, since Intheshit is a grind band, and a really pure one at that, we got a good number of songs (being, true to form, fast and short) and a decent amount of material all told. From that point of view, this was what a grind set should be: aggressive, direct, to the point, and never dragging. From another view, this was about 50-75% of what a grind set should be, since it seemed like they only played for about 10 minutes when 15 or 20 of this style would still have felt as fresh and as raw.

After the set, I went to see if I could pick something up from the band; I didn't end up with an Intheshit demo, but Dawn did give me a large envelope full of Dead Languages stuff to lug over, which initially was a problem; this early on, something like that is a little unwieldy to be holding onto. Fortunately, I was in my warm-weather vest, which has a back pouch for a trauma plate that I didn't sew shut while applying either backpatch that I've used on that rig. Envelope issue solved with room to spare. Around this time, I also got about 10 limited-edition PanzerBastard promos from Andrew, with instructions to distribute them only to the hardest and the truest, which I'm pretty sure I did. As with the CDs mentioned above, all of this stuff got distributed as well.

Maggot Brain [5.5/7]
Coming out of New York, I hadn't heard these guys before and didn't have much in the way of expectations; what we got was a good, solid set of doom/grind balanced more towards the doom side while remaining raw. The slower parts wore on a little; personally, I preferred the breaks where they cranked up the speed and blast intensity, but any way you slice it, the music on offer was still good stuff.

On one level, it's still kind of weird for a touring band to go on second. On the more comprehensive level, though, this is where they fit best into the bill soundwise, and basically everyone who came out to the show saw them, and they didn't have to worry about cleaning up the stage after Composted.

Rampant Decay [5.5/7]
In comparison to last year, or on CD, they sounded a little grindier and a little more black metal (welcome to Boston, where these concepts are on the same axis, rather than opposed) without a bassist, but kicked out a class set of pure Drunk Edge. Their material's the same material, "Cocaine Frenzy" still gets people flying around, and Rich remains one of the funniest motherfuckers in Boston.

Following their set, I picked up a shirt that would end up doing yeoman service over the first four days overseas, and also a bunch of stickers and buttons. The stickers all went, and because I was clever about how I did it, most of the buttons went out too.

Dysentery [6.5/7]
Wow. Just wow. This set did trail off a little at the end, but it finished nearly as well as it started -- how good would this have been overall if Will didn't have strep? Brushing illness to the side, Dysentery powered through an intense set of crushing death metal; the new -- as yet unrecorded/unreleased -- songs that they rolled out didn't have as many 'breakdowns' as the older material, but they definitely aren't short in either the slam or general brutality departments. The crowd was in pretty good form as well, though not as riotous as things would get for Composted; maybe holding their energy in reserve, maybe nervous about picking up a bronchial infection. Whatever the circumstances, this was a hell of a performance, and I'm eagerly anticipating the next time that Dysentery puts out something recorded.

Composted [6/7]
Composted's set was much like the last time (as might be expected when the band doesn't have a lot of brainstorming time to come up with new antics), but.....breadier. Several loaves' worth of Wonder Bread got aired out within the first song, and after the bread stopped being in pieces large enough to throw at people, or into the ceiling fan, it stuck around in the form of pieces small enough to get stuck in your boot treads, which is not what "waffle stomper" refers to, but with this band, you kind of had to figure that it would end up with that meaning eventually. While the air was being filled with carbohydrates and male blowup dolls, Composted continued right along smashing out the slams; the older stuff, still killer, and the new stuff measuring up equally well. The new one from these guys may not have been out yet -- and I may not have been able to find them cheap vuvuzelas in the Berlin discount store, which is also a shame -- but it's definitely something to look forward to.

Finally, though, things closed up, and the management threw people out due to the Boston curfew and because there was seriously mashed bread all over the fucking place. I hit the road posthaste; I had the better part of 50 CDs to move and pack, and a flight to catch the next day. This ofcourse is going to be detailed in the tour report -- which is actually upcoming, and some of it, at least, will be done by the end of the long weekend.

Dysentery with Goreality, Abdicate, and Humanity Falls [Ralph's, Worcester, 5/20/2010]

I was originally going to go to the Wednesday date on this tour, but that fell through for various mostly work-related reasons, making it even more imperative that I get out for the Metal Thursday version. The late-breaking Goreality appearance sealed the deal even further; for a band as ballpunchingly awesome as they are, they don't play outside New Bedford a whole lot, and that, like Providence, is just outside my "willing to drive to for a normal show" radius.

Of course, I should have planned a little better if I had known that 290 was going to be all fucked up, which made going in slow and coming back complicated. This sucked, but ultimately didn't matter; despite the traffic and the weird road closures, I got over well in time to get in and get a beer before the bands started.

Humanity Falls [5/7]
When I went over to their table to buy some swag after their set, and ended up talking with Eston for a bit, about the first thing he remarked on was the Maruta patch on my rig, which was only logical: their set, death-flavored but heavily grindcore, staffed out as vox+drums+guitar, had me thinking of Maruta's performance with Impaled two years back first off as well. Humanity Falls isn't quite that developed yet, and though the band did a hell of a job holding up these songs with just the one guitar and the drumkit, I can see where other people would be coming from in suggesting that they might add a bassist (back) or another guitar. The floor wasn't really enthusiastic, but the crowd had only started to fill in during their set; it might also be argued that this wasn't the sort of grind crowd that would get super up for this material, but I'd be more inclined to argue a weird down night for people getting hit at Metal Thursday. This was a good performance from a band that's already gotten significantly better than their demo; if they come back to Boston and are in at the Democracy Center, the Midway on a grind bill, or any DIY space, watch out, because people are going to completely lose their shit.

Abdicate [5/7]
Much as on the last time I saw them, on NEDF 2009, Abdicate put out a good thumping performance of sold brutal death metal in that good old New York way. They'd changed out a few members recently -- the bassist and singer were new, the latter conspicuously so by not being a 12-foot yeti -- but there didn't appear to be any adverse effect from getting the new guys integrated so shortly before hitting the road, and as this package goes on, the band's probably going to get tighter even from here. They still don't, to me, step out and immediately separate themselves from the general brutal-death sound, but regardless, they do this music very well, and are worth a listen when the tour package comes around to your area.

Because I am a moron, I spent about the first half of their first song thinking "wow, the member change has a definite effect, they're not nearly as slammy as I remembered them", because I'd read the promo materials wrong and thought that Abacinate was playing. The logo on their merch and CDs should have tipped me off, but apparently, no effect; chalk this one up either to getting old or, more likely, that I've had a pile of bricks located where my thinking apparatus ought to be the entire time.

Goreality [6/7]
Between one thing and another, I'm not sure that I've ever seen Goreality twice with the same lineup. This one seems to be still coming together to a degree, but for the first time in a while, Goreality is a five-piece again, and it makes a difference when it comes to their songs. I've seen better sets from the band, but this was still a good and powerful one, with all the pieces back in place, and a relentlessly high and solid level of execution throughout. Hopefully, this lineup will stick for a while and we'll get some new material; even since Perverse Depraved Indifference three years ago is too long for a band this good.

Dysentery [6.5/7]
Maybe it was just that I wasn't as significantly challenged to keep from getting knocked unconscious as at some gigs in the past, but this came out as a really top-shelf Dysentery set, a ne plus ultra of locked-in, floor-pounding, relentless slam riffage that really should have gotten people a lot more violent than it did. By any other band's standards, there was a decent amount of movement, but this was Dysentery, even more absolutely on than they've been in the past, and so of course Will is taunting the crowd: "I'm down here on the floor with you guys, and I'm not scared at all. If this was New York somebody'd've hit me already." People rose to the challenge after that, but not to the extent that's made Dysentery's pits so legendary in the past. Part of this may be just natural cycles: Dysentery gets people going apeshit, so the floor turns into a Mas Oyama kumite-sen, so people get scared that their whole face is going to get kicked off, so they don't pile in, so pits get more placid, which encourages people to dive in and go crazier, repeat. Even taking that long view, it's kind of depressing to lose to New York at anything, so it may be worth training up again or getting knee surgery done in order to do something, at Dysentery gigs, beyond keeping people from running into the wall or into metal poles at speed.

At the end of the night, though, all my joints were still in place, so it was pretty trivial to lumber back out and pick my way back to the highway, despite the 290-90 exchange being closed. This made things a little more complicated than they needed to be, but I got home in one piece, and actually managed to get this writeup out in some kind of timely fashion. Next show may not be for a while; I'm on call this week and then have a conflict with Hypocrisy on Saturday -- and anything further out than that is going to require actual planning.

Every Shirt CXXXIV: Dysentery

shirt: Dysentery - Annihilation Is Salvation
size: XL (US)
vintage: 2009
provenance: band

Picked up, as with several other shirts recently, just before heading over to Europe, this is only one variation on a theme that Dysentery had working here -- and still does, to a lesser extent with their tour having cut down on the now-available selections -- of shirts with unconventional fabric/ink color combinations. This isn't, I don't think, so much to be accessible to the audience that the people who slur them as "wiggerslam" accuse them of trying to reach out to, but a practical commercial consideration in combating Black Shirt Fatigue, which is a significant risk if you're an underground death metal band trying to sell a black shirt with your logo on it in white ink: your target market has several hundred of these already (see, um, this entire series), and if yours does not stand out, it's staying in the bucket. Dysentery do have black shirts, too, and ones with the sick From Past Suffering Comes New Flesh cover art on them, but by having varicolored logo shirts too, they may pick up a few extra bucks along the lines of this purchase.

This shirt saw limited duty in Europe at the end of Wacken and the start of Berlin, and part of the ink on the back got clubbed off by some point in the wash process in Berlin. Still looks cool though.

Summoning Hate with Goreality, Dysentery, Blessed Offal, and Axiom [Plaza Garibaldi, Revere, 7/23/2009]

Because I wanted to be sure that I found the place and could deliver correct directions back to some people who'd hit me up to potentially lug stuff over to Europe, I left right from work and picked my way carefully in through the rain and backroads traffic. The venue was exactly where the map said it was, and the tricks needed to get turned back around were pretty straightforward. I got in right about doors, and got my entry comped by Dave, which was unexpected. I had qualms about writing the show up afterwards; the experience you have as just someone who sees a flier and comes out is necessarily different from someone who just gets handed through by the promoter, if only because mine is missing that important arm of “value for money”. Ultimately, though, this massed out as pretty academic: this was a fucking awesome show in a hell of good venue, providing so much total value that the $5 entry charge effectively goes to zero in comparison.

The venue is a Colombian-operated (allegedly; doesn't matter, so I didn't check) Mexican restaurant with a good stage, a decent PA, TVs that follow the fitba, and a reputation online for bad margaritas and general gunginess. None of this was in evidence here; some people complained after about the price of drinks, but not the quality. One expects a certain amount of “yanqui go home” may have been poured out on the negative commenters, probably with reason; if the staff are cool with a bunch of death metallers thrashing out, spilling beer, and otherwise being death metal fans, you've probably got to be a real A-line jerk to get bad service out of them.

Though the music was slated to start sharply at 8:30, this was delayed a little; maybe part setup, maybe part Dave holding the start until the Gold Cup semifinal finished. Despite the US defense, as usual, doing their wet paper bag impression from about 55' on, Honduras proved themselves unable of punching through said wet paper bag, and the US stole a late reinforcement to make it 2-0, where the game ended. It was a crappy match, and I, a USA supporter, was nearly as mad as the Honduras fans in the bar at a generally incompetent display of football. And yeah, maybe not everyone knows everyone going in, but no matter who you are, if you stand next to Juan (Untombed) and rant about bad performances in the current game with him, you will, shortly, be in with all and sundry at this kind of show. (Well, as long as you don't run down Mexico too much.)

Beer, metal, fitba, and good company; I thought I wasn't getting over to Europe till Saturday?

Axiom [5.5/7]
These guys had a couple false starts, and took a song or two to get cranked up and dialed in, but when they did, they laid out a nice performance mixing a lot of elements of Dissection and Hypocrisy, melding melody and brutality in a way that you don't see much any more. It also needs to be said that they either explicitly or just by association pull some influences from Revocation as well; only Dave Davidson is Dave Davidson, but the guitar player in this bunch is cut from the same cloth, even if his style and skills aren't quite as developed. It could be mutual influence or parallel evolution, but regardless, it made for some cool-ass guitar work, and a killer set overall.

Blessed Offal [6/7]
I hadn't seen these guys since the Skybar was still open, and they've substantially revamped their lineup since, but if anything this hasn't affected their provision of high-quality, dirty, blackened death metal. This was about as black as the bands would get, but each of the bands represented a maximum outlier on some axis: melody, blackness, slam, brutality, thrash, and all of them tied back in with the provision of fundamentally worthy death metal in the bargain. Hopefully, this lineup will stick, and it'll be less than two years before I see Blessed Offal again.

Dysentery [6/7]
If you are lazy and just like to look at scores rather than reading about what the bands did to pull those marks, you will see an extremely limited range on this show. If you're also wicked anal, I'll cut to the chase and note that Dysentery's set was probably the top among equals. The band does what they do, and they did it extremely well here, locked in, mountain-thick, perfectly clicking for an avalanche of audio destruction that meshed well with their crew thrashing the fuck out in the pit. Only one person got injured (busted knuckle, self-inflicted), Paul (Proteus R.I.P.) didn't spin-kick the head off any of the normal patrons, a couple of whom were up front and into the band, and everyone had a good time or a piece of ballistic-rated cover to stand behind, which is as close to a success criterion as you're going to be able to encapsulate for a Dysentery performance.

Goreality [6/7]
This may be the lowest score I've given Goreality (still without bass, but no marks off); if they'd gone on, this might have gone up, as they started slow and cranked up through the course of the set, perhaps an adjustment process with their new/fill-in singer, who had a good command of the material, but, as any rational person should have expected, was no Dan Pevides. From the sample at the end of the set rather than the start, she's definitely good enough to stick full-time if needed; we'll see if she's still out front (and if they can recruit a capable bass player in time) on the NEDF.

Yes, “she”. It's perfectly possible for a woman to front a brutal death metal band and do brutal vocals, ande Scariel definitely filled her role capably. Not Arch Enemy style; think of the old Russian band Mary....or not, because nobody fucking knows them except absurdly underground 1%ers who didn't have a problem with the initial idea in the first place.

It should also be mentioned that this show was effectively backlined with Goreality's Vader cabs (Steve and Mark are Vader endorsees), and this may have played a part in the uniformly high scores. While crap still sounds like crap when played through good equipment, good music will only sound better when pumped through two to four Vader 4x12s.

There was a bit of a break here while the Mexico – Costa Rica game wrapped up. Mexico stole an absolutely brilliant winner in the 88th minute with an attack that resembled a hxc VFW show, half their strike force ending up in the back of the net before one of the midfielders volleyed the ball past the goalie at last. Go find this goal, it's awesome.

Summoning Hate [6/7]
They came off as a lot more together than their last outing, which will go to rehearsal more than anything. Even though Marco's bass died in the middle of their second song, they soldiered on and smashed out a badass set of thrash-death metal, closing up only after pleading with Dave and the ownership to give them a last song. Maybe not a whole set, and maybe not a full band for most of it, but Summoning Hate still makes some quality metal, and though the crowd thinned after Goreality, they had as much a claim to a legit headliner-quality set as any of the last three bands.

NB: Though the last two bands were effectively bassless, Drew's bass attack in Dysentery provided enough low-end awesomeness to compensate. Pure annihillation.

In the end, it was time to go, as I had to work and then fly the next day. I picked up some Parasitic Extirpation, Dysentery, and Goreality stuffs, both for personal use and general distro in the eastern territories, and made my way out into the downpour to wend my way home.


Written in the Logan terminal before boarding for Iceland; next is German fests, which will probably not be digitized and published till well after.

Dysentery with Sapremia, Deconformity, and Dhoulmagus [Ralph's, Worcester, 3/19/2009]

Going into this one, I felt pretty relaxed; I got out of work in time to get home and unwind a bit before coming in, then the traffic was bearable all the way out along the Pike. Shortly after Framingham, though, this all went to shit as I realized that I had come this far without my knee brace. There are Metal Thursdays that you can go to with bad knees and no brace and not have it matter; anything with Dysentery on the bill, though, is decidedly not in that subset. This was going to be interesting, and potentially also extremely painful, but that's the way things go sometimes.

Anyway, I get in, drink some beer, browse Blue's distro box, get formally introduced to Jim (Boarcorpse) and Drew (Dysentery, Parasitic Extirpation, ex-Proteus, etc), and soon enough the bands go on, with me being careful to stand somewhere not directly in the line of fire.

Dhoulmagus [4/7]
This band had chops, and some interesting riffs, but also only 60 percent of their intended membership, and not really enough material to cover the length of time they played. They sounded a little raw, but while I initially chalked this up to the band's presumed inexperience, it's also quite likely that this was a forerunner of the sound problems that would continue through the rest of the bands. I'm interested to see how this band continues to develop, especially with a filled-out lineup, but this set of standard-form death metal done between guitar and drums was pretty much an appetizer for the rest of the night. Not a bad performance, and not a bad introduction, but stuff would get better from here.

To put some forerunning speculation to rest, this band's name is pronounced "DOOL-maggis", to rhyme with "ghoul haggis", which would be an interesting name for a goregrind band from Perthshire. Allegedly, this is also the name of a boss in some Dragon Quest game, so it is to the band's credit that they're not using the weaboo pronunciation, though it would have been funny to hear that from the stage. Overcaffinated exhausion; putting bizarre non-sequiturs into post-Metal Thursday posts since 2007.

Deconformity [5/7]
With a drastically revamped lineup, this was the second time I've seen Deconformity on this stage and the third time total. This may also be the last time, as they've been variously reported as thinking about a name change to reflect the changes in personnel. The sound issues aside -- a lot of feedback that didn't fit with what the band was trying to do with their lead-heavy technical brutality, plus some persistent problems bringing the guitars forward enough -- this was a good set, though it felt a little foreshortened, maybe due to lack of prepared material, maybe due to me losing track of time thanks to beer and good music. Josh (Strappado, Neuraxis, ex-Sexcrement, etc) is at least a sidegrade relative to Mike, and it should be interesting to see what this band does going forward, as they always had a lot of potential, but have been historically limited by lineup issues. This was some good stuff when it cut through the PA mess, and a good time overall.

After their set, one of the guitarists was going through the crowd barking their CD for five bucks. I picked up a copy because a) it's cheap, b) I support bands, and c) barking, rather than setting up a merch table and hoping people walk over, is not something you regularly see. Would bands get more sales this way? Would they eventually rub people wrong by going up to everyone individually and hitting them up to buy a disc after every set? There's a balance to be struck here, but it's interesting to see people selling rather than just putting their stuff out for purchase.

I'm doubly interested to hear this CD, because, as odd as it sounds, I have heard nearly nothing good about it, and most of that from the band themselves. As I recall, they were deeply dissatisfied with the production on it; any time a band frankly discusses problems with their work, it piques your interest, both for their honesty and to see what they're not happy with, and how that meshes with what they deliver live. Of course, I might have the wrong demo /album in mind, and I'm one of those weirdos who actually liked the original mix of Enemies of Reality, so it might turn out to be badass after all.

Sapremia [6/7]
This was one of those sets that really reminds you why you love death metal, and why you go to shows like this. It wasn't perfect, but it was still a dominating performance of straight-from-the-shoulder brutal death metal. You immediately can see why Sapremia's been around as long as they have, with the simple but never simplistic intention of just delivering quality, punishing death, no frills, no compromises. If there was any cause for complaint, it was that they didn't play long enough; another song or three would have kicked ass, but set times are ultimately set times. This set also saw probably the peak of pit action by volume, for reasons that will be discussed fuller when we get to Dysentery, and probably the best soundboard treatment of the night.

This was kind of odd, because the sound at Metal Thursday is usually really good, and Deconformity and Dysentery were kind of sloppily handled, maybe Dhoulmagus as well, but not having heard them before, I'm not sure that I can discriminate relative to their usual sound. The guitars were low in the mix, feedback was an issue rather than an effect, and both Sapremia and Dysentery saw major PA dropouts, Dysentery just with Will's mic, but Sapremia with everything, every channel. Maybe the sound guy was having an off night, maybe he just needs to fix his equipment and/or cabling, but something got screwed up here, and to their credit the bands soldiered through and did decently despite the circumstances.

Dysentery [6/7]
Somewhat oddly, a void opened up down front going into Dysentery's set. The void didn't last long, but it was never quite as full of flailing bodies as the band would have liked. Despite some mic issues and the lack of insane mosh, Dysentery put up a kickass set of locked-down slam-death with a decently acceptable amount of "friendly violent fun" (original Combat pressing of Fabulous Disaster picked up last weekend ftw) in front of them. As mentioned, the guitars were a little low, but the breakdowns cut through as needed, and if it wasn't the best Dysentery set I've seen, it was still a damn good one.

One of the more prominent features of this set (apart from the normal ten-ton pile of USDA Grade A slam, that is) was the mostly empty pit and Will's continued frustration with it. The reason for this is patently obvious: Dysentery have become victims of their own success relative to pit action, and there are only so many people who think they can survive in a Dysentery pit, there being fewer of those at Ralph's on a Thursday than perhaps there might be in other contexts. If I had working joints (or, failing that, two braces equipped), I might have joined in rather than just keeping people from running into poles, but I'm a 6'3", 275-pound behemoth who is not likely to take permanent damage from getting run into by Chris or Crazy Dan, and whose head is far enough off the floor that getting Allen-Chenned by the similarly huge dude in the scally cap is probably not a concern. Dysentery have put up an admirable history of epic pits, but an inevitable effect of that is that people look at the huge and the crazy warming up during their soundcheck, and think to themselves "I have to work tomorrow, do I really want to go to the ER tonight? Better stay at the bar where the chance of getting punched in the head is a little lower." O'B's on a Friday or Saturday night, though...watch out.

Dysentery also could concievably have gone on a little longer, but this show, like all good things, had to end, and I made my way out with my jacket stuffed with CDs. I of course then immediately lost all metal points when I did the retarded yuppie remote-unlock-to-find-the-car thing, but seriously...it's a black car in a dark parking lot full of black cars, what the fuck was I supposed to do? On the way back along the Pike, I again noted the Higgins Armory Museum billboard that I keep forgetting to mention -- "Death Metal Was So 1080s". The confluence of Suffocation on the History Channel plus the Palladium taking over as the extreme metal venue in Massachusetts means a lot of people are going to be going east on the Pike after shows, and a fair chunk of them will point at this billboard and go "dude, that's right, that medieval war museum's in Worcester, we gotta go check that out sometime". Good idea, and it's good to see that our still somewhat marginal subculture has some kind of ripple effect.


Next show is probably next weekend, a black/thrash matinee at the Midway after French class; tonight with Runaway High and the last song or two at Autumn Above's pilot taping gig at the Wonderbar in Allston tomorrow don't count...though you should probably go to AA if you're in Boston and not doing anything between 1 and 4 in the afternoon.

Terminally Your Aborted Ghost with Composted, Dysentery, Proteus, Archaeon, and Brutal #2 [Welfare Records, Haverhill, 4/7/2008]

Early-week shows are always kind of tough; people are back at work or school after the weekend, and are just caught up in the grind rather than seeking to actively escape it. This may have been the reason that this show wasn't as well-attended as it ought to have been, but it also may well have been a strong reason why TYAG wanted to do start their tour with three fairly-local shows early in the week, both to get the bugs out in front of the home crowd, and also to hit into the first leg of their travels on a weekend. As it was, this was a good show that would have been better with more doods, but still was about as good value as you could get for eight bucks on a Monday night.

Since the show was starting kind of early, I had to go right up from work, and got up to Haverhill about a quarter past six. I figured I'd miss a band or two, which would suck, but as it turned out, the music hadn't started yet, and I was able to wolf down my overpriced ghetto pies outside and get in with time to spare. Eventually, a DIY show will start on time somewhere, but until then, people stuck in traffic can relax a little.

Brutal #2 [5/7]
I hadn't seen this band live previously, but I did remember not being terribly impressed with their demo; this, though, was recorded nearly a year ago, and they've come a long way in the intervening time. They haven't yet set themselves apart as one of the top death metal bands in this area, but as the rest of the bill will show, this is wicked hard considering the depth of the New England scene, and they put on a solid, bruising set regardless. They've got a lot of ability, and the way it's being used has definitely improved since their last recording; whether they continue to push it up, or continue to play good meat-and-potatoes death metal, they'll continue to provide good music and good entertainment regardless.

Archaeon [5/7]
From a certain perspective, Archaeon has more potential than any other band on this bill. Of course, that perspective has to also admit that they were about the rawest band of the night (this being about their third show, if I recall correctly), and to a certain degree it did show in their performance. Less slammy than the surrounding bands, they set forth a strong set of highly insular brutal death metal that unfortunately was marred by a couple hitches where everything wasn't quite together yet. I like their style a little more, in general, than the slam-death offered in the main here, but they also hopefully impressed the other attendees enough with their chops that people will look for them on bills once they've got a little more experience and a little stronger sense of themselves as a band.

It was about here that I did the merch bit; I picked up an Archaeon shirt as well as a tour shirt and a kutte part from TYAG, and talked with Mark a bit; he recognized me from RTTP and OH NOES MAI COVER IS TEH BLOED. :roll: Well enough; it's hard to be anonymous when you're regularly in attendance at gigs where there's often only a handful of people not in one of the bands on the bill. I was also cursing my mostly empty wallet; I wanted to pick up a Composted shirt, but was running out of belt space and, not having seen Proteus before, didn't know what if anything I'd need to drop on them.

Proteus [6/7]
This was a splendidly killer set, with a sound that only TYAG really approached in its absolute diversity; as though Neurosis won a battle with half a dozen slam-death bands and carried away their breakdowns as trophies. At times, when they were locked in and going on for minutes at a time, it seemed like their set consisted entirely of one huge breakdown, and while this was not really the case, even if it had been, they definitely raised the slam break to the level of a high art. They had a few issues with the bass, but they were mostly corrected before they interrupted the run of the set, and the band succeeded in imposing their will on the crowd regardless. The set felt a little short; the set lengths on this gig were fairly short generally, to pack six bands and four stage changes (Composted and TYAG, for obvious reasons, use all the same gear) into four hours, but a really good set always feels shorter than it is.

At this point I picked up Proteus' CD, and was officially out of useful cash. Another $20, and I could have swung shirts from both them and Composted. I'm not sure whether to blame the need for Epic Leg Armor, or just the fact that I need to eat food, but regardless, it's pretty bogus.

Dysentery [6/7]
Dysentery was also in top form, and more so than when I last saw them, showed off their chops in addition to slam as well as the subtle technical demands that are still present when they're just dug in and blasting. Of course, this may be due to being that much closer to the band, and actually seeing their whole set as much as anything, but their music flowed together smoothly, and as before, also hit like a house to the face. There may not have been as much movement as they might have liked, despite the contributions of the Proteus guys, but a likely explanation is that Will was kind of constrained by having to hold onto the mic and do vocals, and thus couldn't flip out as much for his own band.

Composted [5.5/7]
Those expecting to see the visual spectacle that this band's presented in the past may have been let down; this was Composted Lite, with no costumes or props, probably because 3/4 of the band was going to be spending the next 3 weeks living out of the back of a van as Terminally Your Aborted Ghost. They were also down to a four-piece, with Eliot switching to bass, and this did have a material result, as the sound wasn't as thick or dense as when I saw them at O'Brien's with two guitarists. Even without gimmicks and with a less dense sound, though, Composted did put up a strong set, and quite as funny as expected. There was a little more fan participation in this one than the last time, probably because the stakes were lower and people just had to sit down for the intro rather than risk getting baked goods all over themselves. Unfortunately, my knee didn't bend all the way and I also failed at even sitting down. Fortunately, this was the sole piece of fail manifested during this show.

Terminally Your Aborted Ghost [5.5/7]
The score stuck onto this performance illustrates the problems -- and, actually, a signal critical failing -- of trying to attach an arbitrary number to a holistic experience. I was really impressed by TYAG musically, but their skills and sound couldn't quite erase a bunch of purely incidental stuff that cut into the experience; namely, Mark breaking a string and the room energy (the band less so, even though 75% of them had just done a full set as Composted) slowly running down towards the end. Fortunately, this all is stuff that the band will work out as they get back into touring mode; they'll be more solid as they work with and get used to a regular setlist, and Mark's too much of a pro to regularly go breaking strings, and in most cases, they won't be playing on a Monday night mostly to people in other bands on the gig, and their real abilities will cut through more significantly. On hearing these guys, it's clearly apparent why they've had such a high profile despite an extended period of inactivity; their sound represents a fairly perfect fusion of hardcore, grind, and death metal actually done right, and blending in a bunch of stuff that most bands combining those genre buckets will never think to include. Despite the technical difficulties, this was a really good musical performance, and if you see them on this current run, whether at one of the remaining New England dates, somewhere else in the country, or on the last day of the tour in Yonkers with Vital Remains and Monstrosity, you're quite likely to have an even better time of it.

The music over and the venue nearly empty, I stumped my way back to the T lot to get home, and thankfully avoided further injury en route. Four hours of quality death metal - not at all bad for a Monday night.