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.

Blood of the Gods with Excrecor, Ramius, and Lore [Ralph's, Worcester, 4/5/2012]

Minimally impeded by traffic, I got out to Worcester pretty early, but still more or less on time, enough to unwind, notice the B's had gone a further two up since I left the sub shop back in the 128 belt, and start drinking before the bands went on.

Lore [5/7]

With what felt like a longer, and an indisputably more developed set than last time, Lore took a big step forward here in terms of both quality and metalness. The band's focus was a lot more apparent, and if it's still amenable to easy description, you're not going to go wrong with a band that is basically Behold... the Arctopus with both more prominent post-hardcore roots and a tighter hold on Atheist (and to a lesser extent, the rest of the first wave of art-death). There's still room for improvement, if you can tell that the guitar's prone to filling stuff in with doublet progressions through moderately obscure scales, or that a few riffs (such as bands like this have them, anyway) in "Black and White" are cut almost pattern-exact from Arctopus material, but they're definitely on the right track, and there's so much raw talent obvious in the band that further development is pretty much guaranteed. Depending on the particular direction, they may get more or fewer metal bills in the future, but this is definitely a band to keep an eye on.

This turned out to be "underrated band makes large improvements night", as will be seen in the rest of this post, only breaking down slightly on the headliners.

Ramius [5.5/7]

Their first show was pretty decent, but Ramius have only taken it up from there. This set presented a convincing picture of a band that have their feet thoroughly under them, and have the potential, at least, to make some significant waves. The Death references that characterized that prior show have been pared back, both by song selection and by changes to the material; those that remain still feel forced, but more importantly less consistent, as the bulk of their set was going in a completely different direction, a slightly less technical and more atmospheric blend of modern death metal, like if Hypocrisy spent a lot more time listening to Kalmah, or vice versa. There are still some rough edges, and with a band this new it's not yet set in stone which way they're going, let alone going to go, but the potential is definitely there. Very good stuff if they can keep it going, hammer the burrs out, and get it on record.

In the interest of completeness and the futile pursuit of objectivity, it should be noted that the arbitrary number pasted next to the band name does not include adjustments for a 95% pitch-perfect Primordial cover. "The Coffin Ships" is fairly long and pretty tough, but ultimately it's still a cover, and a pretty obvious one at that. (Other bands wishing to pander to openly biased fenians in the audience may wish to consider "The Soul Must Sleep" or "Death of the Gods", then reconsider based on the fact that this song saw the largest audience outflow of any single point in the night.)

Excrecor [5.5/7]

Other people in the audience shouted at the start that it didn't matter, but it certainly did: 3/4 of Excrecor turned in a good, solid performance, but one that was undermined by the fact that their bassist wasn't there. The band remains good enough, and good enough at songwriting, that they were able to overcome a lot of the deficit, but ultimately Excrecor writes their stuff for two guitars, one bass, and a drumset, and expects that it's going to be performed that way as well. It's good for the band that said material is good enough to mostly survive not being performed that way, but out in the audience most people, even those who most loudly wonder what bass players are for, even, would probably rather that it was. This was still a good performance, and in any metal band, yes, you are going to get the rhythm guitar line doubling up the bass a fair bit of the time, but the improvement Excrecor's made over previous outings was masked by being under-strength.

In here I did basically all of my merch; no Excrecor shirts on offer, so I picked up a swack of BotG stickers for a nominal fee, mostly for the purpose of passing out this summer. RFM coming, seriously.

Blood of the Gods [5.5/7]

The specious pointscore may not pick it up, but BotG continued the general improvement wave, smashing out a full, rounded set of their characteristicly dense, sludgy, punk-infected death-grind. The crowd, for whatever reason, didn't respond as strongly as might have been anticipated, but the music itself was still crushing, and delivered with what seemed like more energy than I've seen from the band previously, likely from actually having a stage big enough for everyone to move around on; I haven't seen them this high off the floor, or with proper space for a five-piece, since they opened for Morne last year, and back then it was like 1 in the afternoon. Solid, solid stuff, and the sooner they get another record together the better.

Show concluded, I beat feet for the highway and managed to get back in what I thought was good order. Family turbulence and being on call this week have delayed this, and will cause me to miss Summoning Hate tonight, but everything is wrapped up in time for Bobfest.

Necronomichrist with Summoning Hate, Excrecor, and Ramius [Ralph's, Worcester, 10/6/2011]

As is apparently becoming usual now that I've cleared a lot of backlog and reduced my load of busywork, I left too early due to a lack of stuff to stay occupied with in the office, flew over the highways due to a lack of traffic and roadworks (at least on the way out, coming back was another story), and got in well ahead of technical doors, nabbing an early beer downstairs and killing some time while staying out of the way of the bands setting up. Round about 9 I actually headed in, picking up another drink; due to the long drive, I tend to monitor consumption per unit time pretty strictly when I'm out here, which indicates how stupid-early I got in. Maybe I need to start playing KoL again to kill time.

Anyway, the bands loaded in and soon enough got started.

Ramius [5/7]
This was apparently their first show ever, and it kinda showed via the lack of material; four songs prepared, total, even if they were pretty good songs. Soundwise, the best description of Ramius is pretty much late-period Death, without the LIMIT BREAK and run through some more modern filters. Their approach to death metal is obviously rooted in said band -- "Omegaton" is substantially cribbed from "Crystal Mountain", which they went on to play immediately after it -- but like most bands just starting out, they don't quite have the chops to handle the whole thing. There's nothing wrong with this, of course -- there's no shame, as a guitarist, in not being Chuck Schuldiner, just as drummers should take no heat for not being Gene Hoglan or bassists for falling short of Steve DiGiorgio -- and it's good to see bands challenging material and styles like this, but they're not quite there yet. Still a good set, despite the limited material and the down tempos on some of "Crystal Mountain", and there's every indication that they'll get better as they gain more experience as a band.

For reference, the band pronounces their name as "RAY-mi-uss" rather than "RAH-mi-oos", probably because unlike their mascot, they're not themselves Lithuanian.

Excrecor [6/7]
Another set, another great performance from Excrecor. Some people may want a caveat here, that the author is a hardcore Hypocrisy fan and his experiences may not match the mean, but I assert that someone who does not dig Carcass, mid-90s Hypocrisy, and occasional 1997-vintage In Flames digressions hammered into a seamless and originally-developed whole is not someone who is even at death metal shows. They did a couple of new ones here, off the record that's still under development, and if the material they brought out here is a representative indication, that's also going to be a solid fucking record, in the vein of Synchronicity if not better. We may have occasional blank spots in our coverage of the full death metal spectrum in New England, but we've got some really good bands in the range that we cover.

In here I picked up my last beer, and a bottle opener from Necronomichrist. My Coctopus one is still holding up pretty well, but since I already had Excrecor's last record and wasn't up for a shirt, there weren't a whole lot of merch options at this show. Eventually, that opener will break unrepairably, and I'll have a backup on hand.

Summoning Hate [6.5/7]
Between the sound, the volume of material, and the total execution, this was one of the best if not the absolute best set that I've seen from Summoning Hate. This is a pretty significant mark given how many good sets I've seen from this band over the last five years, but this was a nice long set of killer material well-delivered, which also saw one of the few legitimate mosh pits (as distinct from "dudes stand in a circle while Dan thrashes around from wall to wall") I've seen at Metal Thursday lately, and some vicious hardcore dancing on the breakdown at the start of "Decimated". They brought out a new one amid some technical difficulties -- first Juan's guitar cables not working, then Juan and Alex keeping in synch with each other and Chris -- but these weren't enough to suppress the mass coolness of that song, let alone drag down the set as a whole. Simply killer.

Perhaps more significant than how good this set was is that Summoning Hate is apparently writing (more) new material, which suggests the possibility of new recordings sometime in the non-distant future. This band is and has been awesome, but they haven't recorded/released anything since they were going by Downfall, and even that's been out of print for years. This is one of the better death metal bands in Boston, but there's not really a lot of evidence that can be presented for that argument without seeing them live.

Necronomichrist [5.5/7]
The band's a little rebalanced since last time, which has had a definite effect on their sound. By going down to one guitar and bringing the keyboards more forward, they now sound less like Vital Remains b-sides and more like turn-of-the-millennium Hypocrisy covering Vital Remains b-sides. Dumb and snide jokes aside, this was a good solid performance, even if listening to that s/t the whole way out colored my impressions of what the band was working from. Necronomichrist is also working on a new record, and the newer stuff that they did here is a clear step both up and forward from the last CD: it's more developed, a little more technical and better-composed, and at least in this presentation significantly less Vital-influenced. As with, really, all of the bands on here, when they bring that one out eventually, it's definitely going to be one to look out for.

Necronomichrist closed up and/or ran out of material around one, and I beat feet for the exits. After waiting through most of "Until The End" for the windscreen to defrost, I headed out for the highway, and that would've been the end of it if I hadn't run into Milo randomly at the McDonald's at the Natick rest stop. I essentially communicated the above on SH's set, though without the frustrated whining about the lack of recorded material. We'll see what they have for that show on the 15th as regards any more new stuff, or fewer fillips on the on they rolled out tonight; I go on call next weekend, but that O'B's show is worth packing the phone and bending the rules.

Excrecor with Weregild, Infera Bruo, and Wormwood Prophecy [Ralph's, Worcester, 6/16/2011]

On the way out to this rather awesome show, as I got onto 290 from the Pike, I saw, ominously stretching back towards Worcester, the westbound side of that highway at a dead stop. I've gotten gun-shy about construction due to my commute being across the 93-95 interchange (and thus wrecked by knock-on effects of the Fast 14), so I was cautious about this, but, crucially, I didn't take a look in the rear-view to see what exits were blocked. This will show up again later.

Regardless, I got in to the venue in decent time, drank up, and watched Wormwood Prophecy get their gear in order. It's not often that you see DIY bands touring with their own lights, in-ear monitors, a guitar rack for their axes and a trolley to lug stuff around with, but there you go. It took a while getting all of this set up, but eventually, everything was dialed in, and the touring band kicked things off.

Wormwood Prophecy [5/7]
You see a bunch of young guys with good gear out on the road these days, and you automatically think "thrash revival"; fortunately, Wormwood Prophecy was anything but. Their composition was a little lacking in places, but they brought a lot of energy and good chops, earning a good positive response from the crowd, and quite a bit more motion than you normally see with an opening act. Some people might want to dock them points for originality, but that's priced in; I don't listen to Children of Bodom past Hatebreeder either, and if bands want to play high-energy blackened melodic metal that stripmines Something Wild and said other record for riffs, so much the better. If these guys are touring with all this hardware this young, they've got the necessary drive and ambition to take their composition up a notch going forward, and when that happens it's better to have a band aiming at the limelight built on classic Bodom rather than the modern turn-the-crank version.

Wormwood Prophecy closed with a Katy Perry cover that few people recognized and some suspected the band had made up out of whole cloth to excuse a poppy song. Not the case, but those of us who've seceded from pop culture weren't missing much, as even for a pop song, the original is kind of crap.

Infera Bruo [6/7]
First gig, my eye. If this is a baseline of what to expect from Infera Bruo, the other third-wave black metal bands of New England better start looking over their shoulders. Fusing turn-of-the-century Emperor and Enslaved in a storm of electronic noise, but also starting to evolve a sound not strictly dependent on either, Infera Bruo put out a solid set of a limited number of expansive but still fairly raw black metal compositions. "Expansive", actually, may undersell the band a little; the guitarist blew out his D string midway through a song, continued until reaching a break where he didn't have much to do, swapped to a backup about as that part was finishing, and then had his original axe back re-strung and roughly tuned by one of their guys at the end of the song. I'll definitely be looking out for this bunch on future gigs, watching out for them to record something as well.

In about here, I picked up a Wormwood Prophecy shirt and demo; I can take the hit on the shirt, and decent bands that make the trek up from Jax deserve the support. I also wheedled a couple extra demos out of them for overseas distribution; most of that allocation is still going to New England bands, but five CDs in sleeves isn't going to hurt any, and it's not like I don't have weird extras from Gwynbliedd and Morne already affecting the total balance.

Weregild [5/7]
If there's a band out there that sounds more like Amon Amarth than these guys do, it must be Hegg and Mikkonen's horde themselves. This is both a good and a bad thing; bad because for the life of me I can't see how Weregild gets any traction at all, but good because Amon Amarth does not tour the states every month, and seeing Weregild provides a significant fraction of that experience, one would hope, significantly more often. Seriously, the resemblance in tone and song structures is so close as to almost be a cover band -- not like this is a bad thing, though; as noted, there is generally not enough well-executed live deathviking music with melodic leads out there in this part of the world, and if you aren't in serious danger of banging your neck in half listening to "Journey through Musphellheim", you need to definitely re-evaluate why the hell you go to metal shows, or even listen to this music generally. If this is Weregild's ceiling, I don't think the band, or their audience, will have any complaints -- and if they kick on and end up doing something different and more independent of their influences (or even broader to take in, say, Unleashed's thrash/punk tempos or Mithotyn's more developed melodics), still better.

It was with great anticipation that I picked up Excrecor's EP here; I'd been waiting four years for this, and was stunned to get it for free. This also vindicated itself in the CD player on the way out; Synchronicity is a solid fucking record.

Excrecor [5.5/7]
There's a lot of room for change in four years; in that time, or at least in the change of venues from a couple pallets at the back of Mark's to the regionally-renowned Ralph's PA, Excrecor's opened up their sound substantially, weaving in more developed leads and a greater range of influences. The base of a Hypocrisy-like bridging of the first and second waves of Swedish death is still there, but so's a nontrivial measure of late Carcass, as well as a dose of more blackened metal, resulting in the first band on this bill that I don't have an immediate and easy point of direct comparison to. Ultimately, the labels don't matter; Excrecor is a solid, hard-hitting, technically developed death metal band that knocked out a nice, longs, solid set here, and are worth a listen on future bills, or just on record if that's the only way you can get ahold of their stuff. The floor wasn't as violent for them as for Weregild, but they still got a strong response, and near everyone hanging about in front of the stage after they finally got called time on.

Since the show had started late, and had its times slip further as DIY set times often do, Excrecor were pushed to start and pushed to close; when I checked on my phone at the end, it was well past 1 AM and I still had an hour and a half of driving to finish off...or so I thought. I hit the road, and found out to my chagrin that the connection from 290 to 90 was closed. Dead closed. The road needed the repairs, sure, and the full moon through the clouds was pretty awesome, but the detour around on back roads to go further south and then back north to switch to the other side of the highway and use that onramp added about 20 minutes to the trip. It was past 3 by the time I got home, but somehow I cycled, got to work without dying, and wrote all this up without passing out.


I'm on call this weekend, and thus probably at neither gig tomorrow; next is accordingly Dysentery at the Midway if I can swing it, or Abnormality at O'B's if not.

Nile with Cthtonic, Daath, Excrecor, Eyes Sewn Shut, Severed Survival, Iridescent Exposure, and Tommy Coma [Mark's, Bedford, 8/17/2007]

Because I was coming right from work (dress shirt off revealing Wolven Ancestry shirt, kutte on, shirt into the trunk), and 128 is right there, I decided to try going down to 93 and coming up directly that way, instead of using the normal backroads. This worked great in that I got from work to the border in 45 minutes, about 10 or 15 faster than usual, and didn't encounter any morons going 65 in the breakdown lane because the DOT won't expand the highway. Unfortunately, going from the border to the turnoff for 101 took another 70 or so minutes. Let this be a lesson: don't go north into New Hampshire on I-93 on a Friday night in the summer and expect to get there with any kind of timeliness.

King Diamond [N/A]
This set isn't rated because it was performed, rather than merely witnessed, and the King obviously wasn't actually there. Given that I was stuck in a two-lane parking lot somewhere south of Manchester instead of seeing Putrescine when the King's songs on this Roadrunner comp-CD came up, it seemed only fair that everyone else should hear them too. So down went the windows, and those around my got a little dose of surreality in the form of "Abigail" and "The Family Ghost" in their traffic jam.

Eventually, I got in to Mark's, and was able to pick up some live bands instead of stuff recorded 20 years ago.

Tommy Coma [3/7]
This may not be an accurate representation of their quality as a band -- the lead guitarist was out attending the birth of his child and the bassist was filling in for him -- but it is an accurate representation of the set they played here instead of cancelling. The result was a consistent -- in the way that creamy peanut butter is consistent -- slurry of sameish, undifferentiated guitar following the lead of the NWOAHM, without a whole lot to recommend it as interesting, or even in a broader sense musical. The parts that were not straight-up riffing were either ill-done or ill-considered, but if the guy who normally plays them was out on a family emergency, this is somewhat excusable. I'm not going to go on record saying this bunch should disband, as many others have, but I can comment that playing a show a member down when there was no time to prepare and a legitimate excuse available was probably not the right decision; absent the financial investment they had to make to get on the bill, they could and should have cancelled; the guitarist could go birthe his kid without throwing the rest of the band into chaos, and the rest of us wouldn't've had to hear this boring and often crummy performance.

Iridescent Exposure [4/7]
I had a hard time keeping from breaking out into laughter through this band's entire set. This is, of course, monumentally unfair to them, because it has nothing to do with their qualities as musicians or the quality of their music, but everything to do with their circumstances as a band. If I closed my eyes, this was a decent, well-delivered but somewhat pedestrian hardcore outing, but with eyes open, there's a seven-piece hardcore band on stage, and that's just inherently hilarious. Six is dealable, but when you go to seven, you pass the laugh threshold; there was a five-piece act on Saturday, as detailed later, and as soon as they brought two more of their doods out of the wings for supplemental vocals, I just cracked up and couldn't keep a straight face the rest of the song. Iridescent Exposure brought a lot of people in and gave a decent performance, but the fact that they (allegedly) added an extra dood recently made me unable to keep a straight face, which is probably not what they were aiming for.

Severed Survival [5/7]
I went back to the rear stage and saw them setting up, after which the singer announced "we're Severed Survival, and we play death/thrash". I thought to myself, "yeah, you better play death/thrash, and you better be good at it, because there's no excuse for a band that sucks to name themselves after an Autopsy record". Fortunately, they were, on both counts, and the result was a surprisingly kickass performance. A more apt description of their style might be 'death metal Baujahr 1987', as it really was pure death metal in that thrashy style of the old days, and in this case it might be doubly accurate, as several of the band members were wearing black Xes, indicating their personal vintage as no older than 1986. If they weren't really good at this, one might question why they're reviving a style of music that was most current when they were in diapers, but like the retro-thrash revival, good music is its own justification.

True to form, they covered Death's "Zombie Ritual", and did a good job on it, but true to the critic's core values (i.e., to never be satisfied with anything ever), I almost immediately thought, "well, this is killer, but it'd be really cult if they did "Primitive Ways" or "Infernal Death" or "Archangel"." There will be more on this topic of "covering songs that people don't like, or may not actually know" in the comments on Saturday.

Daath [5/7]
If Goatwhore are turning into a black'n'roll band, rooted in black metal but adding rock grooves to their sound for either diversity or accessibility (depending on whether the observer likes them or not), the Daath are the other side of the coin, a rock band adding extreme metal elements, particularly from black metal, for extra edge and metal cred. We'll call this style rock'n'troll for purposes of symmetry, and also because I'm dog-tired and can't think of anything less stupid. They put on a good show, and it's good to see a band like this that has the potential to become flat huge still keeping touch with the metal underground on shows like this, but all things considered I'd personally rather still see Goatwhore. Daath will make a stir at Ozzfest, but I'm not in the Ozzfest audience.

Eyes Sewn Shut [4/7]
This band played a decent set of modernish metal, but didn't make a huge impression, perhaps because of all their material, they were most up for the Pantera cover ("This Love") that they closed with. I certainly didn't mind seeing them, nor would again, but this set was of the sort that is just kind of there, which isn't quite what a local band looking to get some traction would be looking for from a show that they had to fork out for. If you're going to pay to play, you'd better get people to want to see you again, and this wasn't the result that this band got.

Cthtonic [6/7]
My first thought on seeing this band before they went on was how tiny they all were; sterotypically, Asians are, but even the Taiwanese that I know personally are somewhat taller and more solidly built. Fortunately, this wan't the only lasting impression of Cthtonic; they put up an excellent set of quality evolved black metal despite a few sound problems. It was a great experience, and the use of the Chinese fiddle was definitely an interesting turn on the classical sound of the style, but I couldn't help thinking that this band's epic sound needs a larger tableau than a strip bar in New Hampshire can provide; they'll get that at Ozzfest, but they also need to be playing at night in that context, and I'm not sure they'll get that yet there yet. Maybe next time; hopefully, I won't need to pick them up in Europe for such. Great show, and if you missed it, you'd better catch them on Ozzfest, because Asian underground bands average about 5 years between American tours, and you may not see them again. Hopefully, they'll be back soon -- and bring along Oathean and either Method or Magwi, because Korea has some cool bands that need a look from metal sinophiles as well.

If you've heard that there are two female members in this band, whoever told you this is wrong. There is only one woman in Cthtonic; it may be confusing for some people, but I've spent a lot of time in east Asia and around east Asians in the course of my professional and academic associations, and I can reliably tell when Asians are dudes or not. ;) (This is mentioned because it came up on Saturday, from someone who is usually a lot more well-informed about who's in what bands than I am.)

Chthonic used to have a female keyboardist, who was in the band the last time Aaron saw them, but she's since been replaced with a dude keyboardist. So, used to be two women, now only one.

Excrecor [5/7]
Because their tone was so low-driven and stone-heavy, it took a little while to realize how heavy their Gothenburg influences were with regards to composition. They had some problems with their sampling rig, but very few with the rest of their sound -- and as students of Swedish death metal know, when you add the composition and melodic structures of Gothenburg to the solid low end brutality that you'd get from, say, Stockholm, you get mid-period Hypocrisy, and from my perspective at least, this is pretty much the opposite of problems with the sound. Though they did suggest Hypocrisy, they did so in putting forth a fairly original sound; unfortunately, they didn't have any CDs yet, which they had in common with the other local bands that I actively liked from this weekend. Hopefully, I'll see them again, and they'll have something recorded.

Nile [7/7]
While not as staggering as other tech-death acts I've seen in the past, Nile put up an incredible performance of crushing brutality that covered basically everything that I wanted to hear from them (well, except "Unas...", but expecting a 12-minute song in an 80-minute set where there's a ton of other classics competing for time is unreasonable), as well as stuff off the new album that I didn't know was so awesome yet. This was also a first in that Karl is the first guy I've ever seen play death metal on a 12-string guitar; most of the new material was done on 12-string, though the chorusing wasn't as immediately obvious as a lot of the other times that you hear people using 12-strings. I did get Ithyphallic, so it'll be interesting to see how it plays out on record. Overall, a kickass performance that definitely made up for the traffic and pain of coming up.

Nearly as cool was surviving the trip back; New Hampshire was a little slow due to the downpour, but 93 in Lawrence, etc, from the border to 495, was just flat dangerous due to a general absence of lane markings and some mismanaged bridge construction that made for a fair amountof hydroplaning. Fortunately, there was next to no traffic, so even if I had lost control, I probably wouldn't've hit anyone or anything. I like my car, but going fast on crummy roads with a lot of water on them is a lot more nerve-wracking than it strictly needs to be, especially at night.