Aborted with Pyrexia, Totality, and Forced Asphyxiation [Middle East Upstairs, Cambridge, 4/1/2014]

As a quick look down the page will show, I have been out to approximately fuck-all shows for way too goddamned long.  I was sick for Destruction and on call for literally goddamned everything else, in a shit cascade of bad luck that will continue for Metal Church and Carcass, because of course it does.  This one, though, I was not on call for, so I gave Chinese a pass on the night and went out to see some fuckin death metal.

I got down wicked early, as it turned out, and probably should have taken the bus in instead -- same time, less expense -- but was out of practice, especially with the Middle East's ridiculous definitions of 'doors' to include 'like an hour and a half before the first band can be reasonably expected to start'.  In the meantime I drank a couple beers, caught up with some dudes I hadn't seen in a while, and generally chilled out.  Doors trickled from 7:00 to 7:30 to nearly 8, and eventually I did get in (other people's concerns about potential sellouts and lack of advance tickets being completely chimerical), got the latest CD off Pyrexia, and picked up another beer because jeezo, this was dragging on and getting hot.

Forced Asphyxiation [5/7]
It'd been along time since I'd gotten out to a gig, period, but longer still since I'd last seen Forced, who appear to have straightened out whatever rumored issues were hanging around them and have definitely filled out their sound via adding another guitarist.  The board wasn't super kind to them at the start, but this is kind of an occupational hazard of opening gigs, and the sound guy got them dialed in after about a song and a half, with fairly minor effects on flow.  Forced is continuing to develop their no-holds-barred style of brutal but minimally slammy death metal, at times getting more technical, at times picking up some black metal tropes, and throughout, almost completely about weed.  That's going to continue to be go-to gag for lazy reviews of these guys, but seriously, we give a pass to bands all over the map whose songs are all uniformly about murder, and there's some good fuckin death metal under here.  This was a good set, and the start of an extremely active floor on the night.

Forced roaring through some weed puns.

Afterwards, I got another beer and had a couple mostly-apologetic words with some hen mei de xiaojie who I'd been catching rather than tanking for, because I make a lot better wall than a window; this show had a good mix of people, but quite a few dudes like me pushing two meters, and the sadly normal lack of height sorting that you kind of get at gigs.  The normal solution for short people is to go forward, but when people are mixing it up right from the very first local opener, on a Tuesday night, it occasionally deters the smaller end of that spectrum.

Totality [5/7]
Totality continued the battering, laying out a solidly brutal but still committedly technical set featuring Jarret's 8-string upgrade.  As noted to a couple people (including some from Romania and France), Totality is probably, right now, the best techy death band in Boston; some of that is a lack of competition (seriously, you have Replacire and then a struggle to classify either Abnormality or Parasitic as distinguishably "Boston-based" when their members are spread out all along the coast), but a good chunk of it is on the band themselves, who continue to do interesting, technical things without getting totally up their own ass about it and still continuing to kick ass.  There's a next step that they still have yet to take, but they've improved in execution and diversity since the last time I saw them, and eventually some of this newer material should make it onto record to testify.

Totality shred the audience.

Here I got another beer and looked at the local bands' tables; unfortunately, I owned basically one of everything Forced Asphyxiation had out already (I don't go to as many shows any more, but I've still been to too many local shows), and Totality had one new shirt design and zero new records.  I already have far too many shirts, and I've been making a conscious effort to have fewer; I know they're better and more reliable value for bands, but at a certain point, if I can't trade it for Annihilation or Yn Gizarm gear in China, it's going to sit at the bottom of a pile in my spare room for six months at a time.

Pyrexia [6/7]
Somehow, despite being aware of their existence since forever, I had never actually seen this band; a long, thoroughly hammering set of classic slam-tinged NYDM definitely remedied that.  They're a little closer to the likes of Deeds of Flesh (turned over Age of the Wicked, saw Unique Leader, was 0% surprised) or Mortal Decay than Suffocation or Malignancy, but ultimately that just helps the synthesis, a concise distillation of most of the things that were going on in brutal death metal in the I-95 corridor from '95 to '05.  Both their new stuff and old tunes as far back as "Sermon of Mockery" got a great response, and while the floor kept it going on the brutal pace that the openers had set, there was enough room that Eric could spend the start of a song riding around the pit on dudes' shoulders.  Whatever you expect from an upstairs show, the scene and bands have at least the possibility to surpass it.

Pyrexia in a rare standing-still moment between songs.

After Pyrexia, because I had to drive home and thus stop drinking beers at some point, I mostly just picked up their other two records and an Aborted shirt that turned out to be not the one I wanted, because it was out of stock (at least in fat-dude sizes) already.  Five days into the tour, with most of North America, including a five-date run across the friggin Canadian prairies ahead of them.  From one point of view, this is a good thing; the last thing bands want to do is have merch left over at the end of their run.  From another, it's not: Belgians, especially with an American in the band now, should have the expectation that North Americans will be a little bigger/fatter, generally, even death-grind fans, than Europeans.  In picking the CDs up off Pyrexia, I talked a little with the guys; they were wicked impressed with the turnout and activity on a Tuesday night, and similarly impressed with the news that it's not out of the question to get 50-75% of these numbers at Roggie's or O'Brien's for three or four local bands.  It's not all the same people, and it's not uniform, obviously, but this gig was maybe 100-120 people, a little short of the max upstairs capacity, and it's not unknown for local/DIY shows to fill up the 75-person rooms they play at.  As previously noted, the scene around here is pretty damn good.

Aborted [6.5/7]
As good as the bands before them were, Aborted definitely took it up another level.  Due to an unlucky mix of cancellations and (if I recall correctly) oversleeping at festivals, I hadn't actually seen these guys before; this set definitely made up for lost time.  Their grind-flavored death blasted the room absolutely flat, inspiring about the fiercest pit action that I haven't seen members of Proteus and Dysentery involved in; North American floors remain more ferocious than their Euro equivalents, but the set definitely picked up a European coloring from other elements, from the melodic leads laid over everything to the roided-up ned in the Real Madrid shirt laying people out.  (Disclaimer: Andrew is a friend and not a ned, nor, as far as I know, actually on chemical gym supplements.  This doesn't matter when you're getting body-checked by some 6'/240lb meat tank.)  The beatings continued straight up to the venue curfew, over a short encore led in by a minimum of bullshit, and if nobody had really had enough by the time the lights went up, nobody can rationally claim to have gotten shortchanged by this set.

Sven churns the pit.

After the show, I picked up Aborted's new 7" (if you carry breakables on you at a death-grind gig, you are light in the brains and heavy in the wallet), then bailed.  The fact that I'm right up Mass Ave now made the run back easier, and I got in early enough not to be too affected the next morning.  Work and other commitments, though, pushed this writeup out; hopefully, I'll get the Satan gig at the conclusion of this on-call shift reported on faster.

Summoning Hate with Weregild, Forced Asphyxiation, Splatter Effect, and Soul Annihilation [O'Brien's, Allston, 6/22/2012]

I checked the weather before heading out in the morning, based on info from the gas station the night before, and despite the incoming rain, I loaded up only my lightweight rig.  This, again, was training; I'll have the full-weight rig in Germany, but unless absolutely necessary, I'm probably not going to wear it on the hike across the old inner-German border, and that goes off rain or shine.  It's too easy, in training for these things, to just decide to skip a session because it's raining, or too hot, or whatever, but actually in the field, I need to be able to make that hike in whatever conditions.

The conditions this time around, though, turned out to be pretty optimal.  It was only a light rain by the time I hit the ground, and it was a quick hike over to O'B's in still-melty heat.  This ended up dropping me on the stoop before even the door guy showed up, so I hung about outside for a while in the vain attempt to catch a breeze, and then went in to get my temporary license disrespected and pick up a beer.  This then showed that the prior heel-"cooling" was a mistake: O'Brien's, for the first time ever that I can recall, had functional air conditioning.  We've come a long way from the old days.

Soul Annihilation [5/7]
Though it had been barely two weeks since the last show, Soul Annihilation's shown some definite improvement on this outing, staying generally tighter and in some respects working the delivery of their black-death violence a little better.  The set started to run down about midway through, but this is largely due to the material: a lot of what Soul Annihilation has right now is pretty basic, and this will improve as they continue writing as a full band.  There is a good base of chops and talent here, and enough really good stuff at the start  to easily see their development to continue to improve.

Sean catches the light as Kunjan thrashes out.

Splatter Effect [5/7]
It had been a while longer since I last saw this band, who have also changed it up a little in the intervening, taking a more straightforward line on their mix of NWOSDM and hardcore, bringing it more into line with what the inventors of the alleged NWOAHM in this part of the world were doing in the mid-'90s -- and largely stopped after In Flames broke out stateside.  This was a good performance on the music as well as the history factor, and it's definitely cool that this sound, in whatever permutation, continues to be relevant.

Splatter Effect, focused delivery.

Forced Asphyxiation [5.5/7]
If there was one thing that this performance really emphasized, it is that this band is really getting to the level where they need an actual PA to present their sound: it's not enough to just play out of the cabs and hope everything's balanced.  There was a little bit of chaos at the start as everything got dialed in properly, but the band picked it up after that point, and smashed out a good, solid set that built steadily through to the finish -- and, for what may be the first time, was not mostly about weed.  Those moaning about the end of an era, though, can shut up and clock the band's kickass new "Robocrop" shirt, which I picked up here after running out of belt slots (and also cash) in Worcester.

Ryan lays it down, after recovering.  He fell into, but not over or through, the drumkit, during the second song or so, but recovered his balance and kept playing.  Elite.

Weregild [6/7]
I'm not sure if the band claimed this as their Boston debut, but it was definitely the first time I'd seen them in the city -- and more importantly, another solid push forward in the development of their rock-solid, heavily-Amon-Amarth-influenced evolution of viking death metal.  They've tweaked the lineup a little since last time, but continued in the same general vein without a break, and the result is steadily more impressive, both in the honing of the old material and the steps up in quality and (to a lesser degree) independence of the new stuff.  "Journey Through Musphelheim" remains the best song in Weregild's repetoire, but "Winterlands I Braved" is nearly as good, and if the stuff that the band is working on but not playing out yet continues in this fashion, their eventual demo is going to be must-get -- and it's not out of the question that it might not be complete Amon Amarth worship.  Absolutely immense.

If "We must kill / To Honor Our Dead", then Weregild definitely kills it enough to satisfy the condition.

In here, I went outside for a bit, mostly to unwind my back, as despite the strong turnout the AC was still keeping the temperature kind of in check.  It had cooled off a little outside, but not enough that I didn't get back in, and lined up for Summoning Hate's set, well before time.

Summoning Hate [6/7]
Weregild had set a really high mark, but Summoning Hate, as should really be expected by now, managed to pull out a relentlessly killer set, packed with craft and nuance as well as straight-ahead brutality, and definitely get up to that mark.  Show after show, year after year, Summoning Hate continues to both produce at a high level and continuously tweak and refine their take on largely-traditional brutal death metal, and at this point it is pretty unambiguous that they're just about the best Boston death metal band with no recordings available -- and unfortunately, there's no immediate sign of the second part of that changing.  In the meantime, though, as long as we continue to get killer sets like this, as frequently as the band does play out, we miss less from them not having a CD out.  The rest of the world, not so lucky.

Alex catches the sidelight as the band starts up.

After Summoning Hate closed up, I hung around a bit but still ended up not picking up anything else for export, then beat feet across the bridges.  Between the Euro knockout rounds and then Iron Maiden, not a lot got done in the intervening week, but here this pile of misapprehensions is, backlog cleared, one month away from the last wayfaring.

Summoning Hate with Untombed, Scalpel, Soul Remnants, and Forced Asphyxiation [O'Brien's, Allston, 5/18/2012]

Again I had the day off, and misread the start times on this Covan benefit, which led to me getting in about an hour ahead of the start, which I spent leaning against the outside wall, trying to shed heat.  It worked only intermediately well, and I was glad to be able to get in and at least get a beer waiting for the bands to start.  O'Brien's is seldom cool inside, but with most of the crowd not in yet, it wasn't in full sauna form.

Forced Asphyxiation [5.5/7]
For those keeping score, perhaps in anticipation of the CL final the next day, this one finished Weed 3:2 Other Stuff ("Weed" is still obviously the home team for this band, trolololol).  For those more interested in how the band was actually playing than on counting the prevalence of lyrical subjects, this was another strong, sharply-finished set in line with how they've been playing lately: strong, brutal, non-slamming death metal that on this exposure came off as highly reminiscent of 1992-vintage Hypocrisy.  This gig, both the bands that played and those that didn't (Parasitic were initially on, but had to cancel, and Malika despite organizing it didn't book her main band), shows that Forced aren't quite at the apex of NEDM yet, but the development and raw power manifested in this performance are carrying them in that direction.  Straight killer.

Forced inflicting some "Blunt Forced Trauma" on the audience.

Soul Remnants [5.5/7]
This set saw some progression from Soul Remnants as well, which was somewhat unexpected; their new stuff, from the record that they're currently working on, remains significantly inspired by At The Gates as per their older material, but weaves in a few new twists as well.  The band is still in the process of setting themselves apart both from their influences and from other bands drawing on those springs, but the separation is definitely coming, and that new record, when they finish it, is definitely going to be one to watch out for.  Here, they acquitted themselves well despite being both the most melodic of the five bands and the farthest, influence-composition-wise, from Decapitated on offer, getting the now-swollen crowd around and moving down front.

Mitch roaring away.

Scalplel [5/7]
This gig was intentionally booked to bring together as many strands of NEDM as possible, and if this is New England, there has to be a slam representative.  Scalpel filled the role admirably, and with a fair degree of originality, working slam content through more traditional death metal structures.  Their brand of slam isn't the most fully-developed yet, but this is a really young band, and if they can continue to develop this style further, they're going to be one to look out for.

Scalpel flat smashes it.

Untombed [6/7]
Two important lineup notes from this: first, Untombed has changed members again, and is now even closer to having all members having once played in Summoning Hate.  Second, it may look on first glance like they've gone away from that "goal" by changing vocalists, as Dave, in a job-related shock horror move, has cut off his famous dreads.  Take a moment of silence if you like, we're not going anywhere.

.....

The hair amputation fortunately didn't affect the music at all; Untombed have done better sets than this, but this one was cleanly balanced despite pulling in a variety of directions, slamming and grooving by turns, for a total effect probably as strong as I've seen from the band since they went to two full-time vocalists.  "Bloodstained World" was an especially violent standout here, but this whole set was damn impressive, even following on what had been a pretty damn impressive gig to this point.

The lighting is so bad that the only thing you can see in this alleged picture of Untombed is the reflection off Dave's cueball.

Summoning Hate [6/7]
Having traveled through most of the available styles of New England death metal, Summoning Hate brought things back around to where they started, closing out the night with a long, strong set of traditional brutality flavored with more and better-presented melodics than I can recall hearing from the band in a while.  As with Untombed, this wasn't quite an all-time high, but it was a killer set that put a fitting capstone on a killer gig, to what was still at that point a packed house.

Milo introduces "Infierno de Dante".

At the end, though, Summoning Hate finished up, and I picked up a shirt off Untombed -- if you see a design from this band that you like, get it bought, their production runs appear to be wicked small, and they will run out of your size -- as well as some stickers for export, and incidentally another copy of their demo, before heading back across the bridges.  As the night before, the extract from there was pretty simple, and despite the hole I'd ended up putting in my foot, I was in decent shape for the Morne show the next night.  Then the CL final went to extra time, and then to penalties, and I got back home too late and too blasted to drive in.  After that, work and family commitments delayed this writeup and caused me to miss Negura Bunget and then Sexcrement; there's some bookkeeping coming, and then hopefully I can get back out to some damned shows.

Faces of Bayon with Led To The Grave, Forced Asphyxiation, and Demoralizer [Ralph's, Worcester, 10/13/2011]

This time around, I successfully had enough other shit to work on that getting out, fed, and over on time involved a pretty minimum amount of latency. I got out to Ralph's shortly after doors, but didn't have to waste a whole ton of time aimlessly browsing the Ragnarok distro table while waiting for the bands to start, and unlike last week, it was only one beer from inside to first notes.

Demoralizer [5.5/7]
If deathcore wasn't already a word -- and, more importantly, a deadly slur -- it would be appropriate to coin it for this band. I hadn't seen Demoralizer before, probably because they tend to play doomier and/or more hardcore bills than I tend to go to, on balance, but they kicked out a solid, chunky set here of violent, aggressive music drawing for both its riffs and intonation from death metal and from hardcore. Juan afterwards compared them to Autopsy, which I can definitely see]: old-styled death metal flavored with punk and grind vitriol. Though the vocalist nearly started a nerd fight bantering with Tony over, of course, Star Trek vs Star Wars, it was mostly the music that stayed violent for this set, early as it was in the night. This was a good performance, though the style isn't one that I'd necessarily go hunting a full bill of, and I'm definitely going to watch out for this band in the future.

On the vital question of Star Wars vs Star Trek, which is on course to be come the irrepressible conflict of the Boston scene, pitting the blue of the Federation science officers against the gray of, um, AT-AT walkers, let's go with that rather than those trade-alliance-space-Fu-Manchu-mandarins from The Phantom Menace, the answer is clear: both lose, because the fortress planet of Iserlohn is composed largely of liquid metal armor that would absorb, then out-radiate, the energy blast of the Death Star (fucking conductor physics, how does it work), and the reconfigurability of its weapons systems, both the Thor's Hammer and the normal gun emplacements, means that it could easily concentrate enough firepower to punch a hole in a Dyson sphere (which if you want to get really technical pretty much need to be made of tissue paper in order to be remotely resource-efficient, but whatever). Your humble author nerdfights for keeps, with the power of embarassingly deep kvltness.

Forced Asphyxiation [6/7]
FA, as entirely expected, smoothed those disputes out by getting the bill back on track with strong, traditional brutal death metal on traditional subjects: weed, corpses, weed, violence, mayhem, and yeah, a few songs about marijuana. For all the "Terrifying Hydroponic Carnage" label they put on their stuff, and for all the ease that people in the scene around here have in referring to any Force Asphyxiation song as being about weed, the signal change in this set was the relative lack of songs about pot (ok, "relative lack" here means "not every song is about weed", but still), despite getting more runtime than I think I've seen from them before. The band's songwriting is developing as surely as their execution; it's not that songs about weed are bad, or that there isn't a lot of room for other death metal subjects to get hackneyed, but constraint in lyrics leads to constraint in music, and the more varied topics Forced Asphyxiation puts into the lyrics, the more variation they're going to put together in the music. This was a good strong performance from a band that has every sign of continuing to develop; they're not quite in the top echelon of NEDM yet, but they're getting there, and the tour that this show kicked off is only going to help.

As mentioned, FA were out on the road for most of 19 days supporting Led To The Grave after this, so I bought a shirt to support and because it was pretty cool. The "most of" in there is because of how LTTG routed the tour; they quite sensibly started with three dates in Worcester, New Bedford, and Boston and will wind it up with a homecoming show out on the Cape; taking advantage of population density and an active local scene to add more dates at the start and end of a tour isn't cheesing, it's smart planning, as the bands get some shakedown days in front of presumably understanding audiences to work the bugs out and get used to playing out every night. The fact that it makes a more impressive itinerary without adding more days of sleeping in a van without showering is a side benefit.

Led To The Grave [5.5/7]
As noted back a bit, doing this tour is a challenge for Led To The Grave that they're going to have to meet eventually in order to decide how they continue as a band. On the evidence of this set, there's every indication that they're at least prepared to make that step up. There were still more than a few moments of "yeah, we've heard this before", but more of "wow, this is really cool" then previously. There is not as much unbroken ground in thrash metal now as there was 20 and 25 years ago, just due to the passage of time, but LTTG did show some signs here of at least differentiating themselves from those replacement-level associations. More of the stuff on the new EP is more different, and just better, than the stuff on their first record, and their live execution continues to improve. The difference between them and their nominal support is not quite as large as the granularity of the arbitrary numbers pasted here suggests, and other people might have marked their cards differently. This was one of the stronger sets I've seen from this band and a good tour kickoff; we'll see where they stand when they get back.

Already having a shirt in my belt and mindful of the giant piles in my closet, and also wanting to get a listen of the band's new stuff, I picked up the Sent To Burn EP from Led To The Grave and through a miscommunication got the Extreme Audio Gangbang split-7" as well. No problem with either of those; the EP is a decent enough record and the split includes not only one of LTTG's better songs, not available elsewhere, but also tracks from Dead Languages in what felt like a better presentation than I've heard from them on CD, and Macerated, whose demo from way back is probably at the bottom of a pile or something. Very cool.

Faces of Bayon [6/7]
In Which A Headliner Plays Four Songs, And Nearly Gets Yelled At For Running Over. As noted previously, Faces of Bayon have a habit of writing extremely long and grindingly heavy tunes; this set was about half of the meaty parts of Heart of the Fire, plus "So Mote It Be" after Matt confirmed that they had the time for one more. One more ten-plus-minute song might have been pushing it a little, but the band pushed it as well; relentlessly solid execution here as on any time I've seen this band. My personal preferences in doom may be coloring perceptions somewhat (first Cathedral record only or you're a false), but it's pretty undeniable that Faces of Bayon consistently produce solid, well-executed, heavy-as-fuck metal whenever given the opportunity. Killer stuff.


Following the close-up of festivities, I dumped my remaining wallet contents on the Ragnarok table, picking up stuff from Dormant and Abaroth, both of which proved their mettle on the drive home. I'm on call now, but tomorrow, Impiety's bringing the wrath to these trembling halls: if I miss out on that, not only do I miss probably my only chance to ever see Impiety, but there might not be a Ralph's left for another Metal Thursday.

Test outputs and trial runs

Back at this show, I shot some videos as a test of the camera I'm going to take over, seeing as it has that ability. The results are below, showing both good and bad results.


Forced Asphyxiation - last half of "Blunt Force Trauma"




mediafire: 33.7 MB

This was the general does-this-even-work test. The answer is "kinda". Everything renders in dark blue because there's not enough light, and the sound sucks. This done, it was time for some more sophisticated tests.


Boarcorpse - "Baby Paste"



no mediafire, my quick-and-dirty render is too big.

This was a test for internal purposes to see how much space a video would take. It turns out to be, in raw form, about 60 MB/minute. This also sucks, but is doable; somewhat in response to this, I went out and got a much, much larger SD card for the camera, and an additional memory stick to offload stuff to in the stints of the trip spent in civilized locations.


Boarcorpse - Jimbo's drummer faces



mediafire: 14.5 MB

Jim is well known in the Boston scene for making some of the best faces ever while drumming. This makes this zoom test at least a little more interesting. Ultimately, what this shows is that the zoom isn't very effective for video purposes, and that the light problems there only get worse. While this doesn't have a lot of funny faces in it, it definitely establishes what I'm able and not able to do with this camera.

What this all comes down to is that I can risk camera confiscation to shoot about one song per day before the sun starts going down. Videoing performances is still technically against the rules, but since I don't need to zoom or anything, I should be able to put the camera just on the rail, point it at the stage, thrash out, and turn it off after without being too conspicuous about it. More likely though, is using the limited video availability to do slice-of-life shots from the beergarden or the infield while I'm eating or writing stuff up; the festival DVD is eventually going to be out there, and bootlegged, and chopped up on Youtube, but random walks through the campground aren't.

Speaking of slice-of-life and the raw basics, everyone who read this article some months back, and anyone who didn't but is still inspired by the idea of doing open-air festivals in this country, really owes it to themselves to run this through a translator. Check out that stage -- from such humble beginnings on a flatbed hay-hauler with not even a tarp over it, fifteen years later you can get Morbid Angel and At The Gates headlining.

Abnormality with Scaphism, Boarcorpse, and Forced Asphyxiation [Ralph's, Worcester, 7/16/2011]

Friday night, I got a call from my brother, wanting to see if I wanted to go out. I begged off; it was like 9:30 and I was dead from three hours between Truckfighters and work, and I had to rest up for two back to back shows with significant other stuff in the mix. Festivals are different, but it's getting tougher to go out to all hours four nights in a row and still go to work. Getting old sucks.

Fortunately, because I did sacrifice love on the altar of war, I was able to scout the location for the Ash Borer show (incorrectly, as it turned out), take a nice long nap, and head back out to Worcester again for this gig. Though this was a weekend, and 93 is still tore up, putting more cars on 95 longer, travel was a nonissue, and I got in with plenty of time to get a beer while Forced Asphyxiation was setting up.

Forced Asphyxiation [5.5/7]
Other long-suffering members of the Bassists' Mutual Benefit Society, so often pointed and laughed at when even our more famous members can't get their roadie to heist oxies for them (incredibly common comment: "Of course he can't tell someone else to get him drugs. He's the bass player. He should be glad they let him eat."), take heart: this was probably the best set I've seen from FA, and the cause is pretty much down to significantly upgrading the bass position. Some of it is the natural improvement curve that any band that sticks together and takes their craft seriously is going to follow, but what's thickened out and filled in the sound is the contribution from the bass. Forced Asphyxiation is still not the most complicated band in the entire world, and they're still building on old-school roots while solidifying their sound, but the development of that basic brutal death metal sound here is plenty promising.

While drinking my second beer of the night, Brian came over and set me up with a bunch of demos to take over, as well as the news that FA is working on a potential split with Human Infection, who were originally supposed to be on this show as well. Definitely one to watch out for, and good in a scene-development sense as well: between Manchester, NH and about Springfield, VA lies the largest contiguous extent of US territory populated enough to support a metal environment comparable to that found in continental Europe. When people moan about how the US sucks because we're not as metal as Europe, this is why: we're a decided minority in both territories, but more people per square mile means more metalheads within travel distance of venue X. More Virginian bands becoming more prominent in New England, and more NE bands becoming more prominent in VA means more likelihood of more, better, tours along the 95 corridor getting better supported, which is better for touring bands, locals, and the general audience alike.

Boarcorpse [6/7]
It had been a while since I'd seen Boarcorpse, so I'm not sure that they had a second guitarist before, but whether or not they've played as a 5-piece in my previous experience, this was definitely a flip to expectations in that Terrence was (back? did they play any shows with Mark singing?) on vocals. Strike all that transience crap, at least for now. Anyway, this was as rambunctious, hammering, and weird a set as expected from this band, generating a fair amount of movement on the floor, but also rewarding those who just wanted to stand and listen. Boarcorpse isn't just a weird band, but they're not "just" any variety of death metal band either; there aren't many bands in Boston that are more diverse, and very few of those can claim to have anywhere near their technical chops or raw hitting power.

Here or maybe a little later, I bought a ticket for Vital Remains' Middle East all-dayer off Eric; it's hard to call it a "fest", but despite on-call potentially throwing a wrench into things, it's worth getting a ticket off the band rather than dealing with door aggro or door prices. I also picked up some immense stickers for overseas distribution, 1) because they are, as will be seen in the trip report, far too big for most people to put on most stuff, and potentially doomed to languish in the merch bucket, and 2) because due to the size, I can re-brand them as tent repair kits and guarantee that they will get picked up. If you saw something on a picnic table claiming to be a band-branded official tent repair kit, wouldn't you take one?

Scaphism [6/7]
This was a good weekend for good death metal sets, and this was probably or potentially the best set that I've seen from Scaphism yet. Get used to that phrase going forward; on recent evidence, this band just keeps getting better and better, and there's not, as far as I can tell, a ceiling on that combination of appeal and ability. The sound here was particularly killer -- Scaphism's musical M.O. is basically to go for the crowd with a sledgehammer made out of death metal, and they can survive bad or mediocre sound, but good sound as is as beneficial to straight-ahead slamming as it is to more intricate sounds. The floor, of course, went nuts; this is Ralph's, so this is Metal Thursday come on a Saturday, and if Dan wasn't breakdancing, the pit was no less riotous for it.

Abnormality [6/7]
Despite a bunch of technical difficulties, from broken strings to untracked drummers, Abnormality still powered through a crushing set of high-velocity, practically-unreproducible death metal. With any other band, a 7-string lead guitar packing 30+ frets might seem like overkill, but the guy got full use out of it, whether to keep up with Mike's parts on the old stuff or to put his own drive on the new -- and to jam on a tech-death take on "Kickstart My Heart" with Josh while the other guitarist changed the aforementioned broken string. With the interruptions, the audience response was maybe flatter than it could have been, but as long as Abnormality was actually playing, there were no complaints that could be had. Killer set, worth the headlining slot, and that even perhaps without the flat-out obliterating performance of "Visions" to close.

This one also ran a little late, but I got home without issue, and prepared to sleep in; no festival mode yet, and I had another show the next day.

[Scaphism] with Led To The Grave, Coffin Birth, Nachzehrer, Untombed, Forced Asphyxiation, Nocuous, and Sauriel [Midway, J.P., 12/12/2010]

This is stupidly late due to end-of-year congestion, me working on other stuff, and general laziness. With effort, it's not going to happen again.


The first show at the renovated Midway since they finished expanding it, there was a little uncertainty surrounding this going in, since it was set up as a nine-band show, eventually dropping to eight. There was a fair bit of snark floating around in advance about this -- for why, look back at the days of Mark's Show Place -- but things stayed mostly on schedule, the bands were good, and the crowd was decent despite the rain, go date (Sunday afternoon-evening), and the small venue; apart from Tony the Yeti's baws, there won't be many who were at this who'll have cause for complaint.

If I recall correctly, it wasn't long after settling in, watching the Pats plug away at the Bears -- oh halycon days where the good team in this matchup was still on course to a conference final -- and getting a beer or two in at the new wraparound bar, that the bands started up, as they kind of had to given the size of the bill.

Sauriel [5/7]
A newer band featuring guys who've been around for a while (most prominently in The Accursed and Withered Sun/Graves Over Autumn, but older heads will remember Inflicted as well), this was a departure for those who, based on antecedents, might have been expecting Gothenchusetts-styled material. While black metal was an important contributing influence to NWOSDM, this was a more straightforward black metal performance; a little formula maybe, but not totally, and well-delivered regardless. "At the Heart of the Nightside Eclipse" isn't completely unfair, but the emphasis should be on the quality of the execution.

I picked up their demo, which was pretty much of a piece with their live performance: good, solid music, well-delivered, but not completely differentiated yet. It's going to be interesting to see how this band develops; the members may not have the kvltest credentials in the world, but they do have a good track record in delivering quality music.

Nocuous [5/7]
I hadn't heard or seen this band before; they're apparently mostly a studio project, so this is not super surprising, but more active bands is always better than the alternative, especially more active decent bands. They had a really, really, weird turn at the start, with most of their first song eerily evocative of old Heaven Shall Burn (think Whatever It May Take, not the demo with the Bolt Thrower ripoff title where they were an actual hardcore band). I actually like HSB (ohnoes, skelp aff my Black Witchery and Holocauso patches), so this was cool, especially in application, and whatever the actual intention or influences, it definitely set up the rest of the set, a solid outing of nice lead-driven thrashy black metal, really well. Definitely a band to watch out for, even considering the plethora of newish and newly-active black metal bands in eastern New England lately.

Forced Asphyxiation [5/7]
At this point the sound changed up a little, going over to death metal rather than black. Forced Asphyxiation maybe dragged a little in parts, but still provided a lot of quality grooving death metal, and took a step up from the last time I'd seen them back in April. This set also put forward a less generic and more developed sound from them; it's going to be cool to see where this goes once they get something recorded -- or more likely, I bodge up and get ahold of said recording, since it's been like three months since this show.

Untombed [5.5/7]
While not as lightning-in-a-bottle awesome as that April gig, this was still as killer as you'll expect from this band, despite being down to one guitar from two. (Not sure if this is a one-off thing or if it represents an actual lineup change; we'll see how they line up next time out.) The sheer death metal power evolved despite the limited instrumentation was remarkable, overshadowing the fact that Dave (Vicious Insanity, formerly behind the skins for Summoning Hate) spent most/all of the set as a second vocalist. This was a cool wrinkle that isn't seen a lot in death metal around Boston, but while it added to the band, it never distracted from the smashing that the instrumentalists were laying out.

Nachzehrer [5.5/7]
The bill swung back over to black metal without dropping quality or missing a beat in this set from Nachzehrer, who were still as raw and thrashing as ever, but mixed in some dual-leads as well. As previously noted, neither black metal nor thrash metal in Boston has any especially active "scene police" (well, that wouldn't get roundly laughed at by this audience, anyway), and if you've got guitarists this good, you might as well use them. The result was good here, and it's going to be cool to see how twists like this make it into the sound of future recordings. Black Thrash Ritual was a good demo, and the new songs they've brought out since have been a solid step up from there.

This is so late that in the interim, Alex (Razormaze) has left the band (amicably, SMNR), been replaced, and his replacement has trained up to the level that the band's able to get out gigging again.

Coffin Birth [5.5/7]
This was, amazingly enough, the first time I'd seen this band, who have been around in New England long enough and prominently enough that the Canucks with the same name don't have name priority. They haven't been super active in the last couple years, but they do play shows; just not, as it's happened, ones that I get to. The fan on the floor seemed more to blow Anthony's hair back than for ventilation (despite being the Midway, this was December, and the larger room meant more air movement and less stiflingness), but you pick up habits like that touring with Belphegor. Silly staging pick points aside, the black metal that these dudes kicked out was nice and grim, and probably, on balance, the best set of the night on what was a really good and balanced bill.

Indeed, if all you look at are the largely arbitrary numbers (done at the show for marginally less arbitrariness), the bill looks even more balanced. This is what happens, though, when you get a lot of good local bands to play on a big bill: the overwhelming likelihood for each and every band is that you'll get a good set rather than a halfassed or epic one. If the highs were lower, so were the lows higher; no wasted time at this gig.

Led To The Grave [5/7]
Making the turn back from black metal towards Scaphism's grind/death was LTTG, still kicking out solid if not spectacular brutal thrash. They've solidified a little since I saw them previously, and they got a lot of good movement on the floor, but the music is pretty much in the same place it's been since February of '09. It's still good thrash metal, and people will still dig it, but they're one of the few bands on this bill who I have multiple data points for that appear to be standing still. As noted, this information's potentially three months out of date, but since they're not on either Bobfest or No Life, another sample is not in the immediate offing.

Unfortunately, while the show had stayed mostly on schedule, there was a certain amount of slippage that had to be expected from DIY. I left before Scaphism, regrettably, as I would have missed my train connections otherwise. This means that I missed their set, and also that I can't comment firsthand on the incident where Tony got kicked in the balls. Didn't see it, unwilling to draw conclusions or make a statement on the politics or logistics of it. Fortunately, no permanent damage appears to have occurred -- either to his organs or to the cohesiveness of the Boston scene. "Alcohol, cause and solution to life's problems" appears to be the watchword, and internally, maybe some Afterschool-Special learning experiences, but being uninvolved, it's not for me to spell those out. SMNR, as above.


This is finally out, and there is one more archaic show review in the pipeline. Then two months of nothing, and then I write up tonight's Born of Fire if I don't die of pneumonia hiking back in the rain. Shit is getting back on track. Also, I'm writing/recording for a new Coelem thing, which when it gets done will get a bandcamp if the new shit turns out to be not absolutely horrible.

one leg by foot, two legs by rail

As entirely befitting an enterprise conducted largely on the eighteenth of April into the wee hours of the 19th, this pair of shows involved a circuitous path around various environs of Boston, elements that can be clubbed into a rough allusion to Longfellow, and fortunately since this is the modern day, two bouts of awesome blasting metal rather than any encounters with foreign occupying military forces.


Nåthruzym with Blood of the Gods, Nachzehrer, and Bone Ritual
Midway Cafe, Boston, 4/18/2010
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After bunging my car into the usual car-bunging-into-place, I crossed over a block and picked up the Red Line, then promptly missed the first train due to the dumb and impenetrable ticket machines screwing around again. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, though, because if I had gotten on that train and then picked up an earlier connection on the Orange Line, I would have been walking over to the club when the rain-mixed-with-hail came through. As it was, I was five minutes later than anticipated and had the smarts to stay under the roof by the subway stop until the worst passed, then go over after.

I still got rained on, but this is a casual hazard of going outside in New England any time it's not snowing, so no big deal. Getting in relatively early after doors, I had the chance to get a couple beers and get settled before the bands started playing.

Bone Ritual [6/7]
Despite the sun outside as the rain cleared up, this was a hellish set fully up to the standards that Bone Ritual's set in the past. They brought out some new material as well as the stuff from their now nearly-unavailable demo (the band's been out of the CD version for a while, and now they're getting low on tapes); this will eventually translate into some new material, and hopefully sooner rather than later. It's difficult for any time seeing Bone Ritual after the first to match up to that experience (well, maybe just for those of us who were there for their live debut and didn't really know what to expect), but this was a high-quality show that should at least match expectations for this seriously good band.

Since the club wasn't full absolutely to the brim, I had the ability to take some pictures, which are below. This got more difficult as more people came in, and then I was both late and bushed to the O'Brien's gig, so no photos from there.



Little known fact: Cody plays bass in his bare feet, at least in Bone Ritual.

Nachzehrer [5.5/7]
Nachzehrer was also up for this, with another set of driving, thrashing black metal. The place was starting to fill up a little more as the afternoon turned into the evening, and despite missing Bone Ritual, they still got some damned good music. Either because of where I was standing or just because of the way the balance was, the bass was a little higher up than when I've seen this band previously, which seemed to turn the sound more towards black metal. This is cool stuff, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the band eventually sorts their sound out on record, when they're at the mercy neither of engineers nor venue acoustics.



Mark thudding away on bass for NZ. This picture is not of Wren with a plastic 7.62 NATO stuck up his nose half out of basic respect, and half because I could not get my phone out fast enough. This, though, also happened during this set and is marginally more newsworthy than "Bass Player Good At Playing Bass".

Blood of the Gods [5/7]
I hadn't seen this band before, but they held up their own end, laying out a good set of doomish black metal. It wasn't really the most differentiated out there, but it was a solid performance and fit in well with the rest of the bill, which while staying fairly united under the banner of black metal did allow for a lot of diversity in sound. This is how we do in the Northeast; the unfortunate part of this set, though, was that the band didn't appear to have anything recorded. Something to look for next time.



Blood of the Gods, mid-set.

Nåthruzym [6/7]
Having come down all the way from Vermont, these guys would be the first to be discouraged by any shortfall in their performence. Fortunately, this wasn't an issue at all, as Nåthruzym presented a top-grade set of epic-tinged black metal to this mountain fastness of...well...a bar located next door to a Mexican pizza shop. Black metal has a tendency to set itself stiff challenges like that, but it makes identifying the good bands easier, as they, like Nåthruzym did on the night, are able to manifest an appropriate atmosphere through the music, bringing the audience, whatever the venue, into the cold dark heart of the ideas.



Mutis in traditional Vermont epic-black-metal regalia. Yes, that is an apparently whole bird wing being used as shoulder armor.

I was able to get a CD from these guys; the sound suggests a little more Immortal than what I heard live, but this is probably down to the band not having to balance cabs against the PA, etc, and make sure everything got out. Hopefully, they'll be back again; despite the distance traveled, they got a good reaction, and as much good black metal as we already have in this part of New England, there's always room for more.


Show concluded, it was time to get some dinner and beat feet towards the transit system. Fortunately, it didn't take forever to get a cheeseburger-and-fries-with-the-works (which, as should have been expected, included a liberal amount of salsa and some sliced jalapenos) from the aforementioned Mexican pizza place, nor to get it down on the march up to the train station. Even with that, though, the train change and having to go so relatively far out on the Green Line, then get hiking again, meant that by the time I got up to O'Brien's, the first band had already started. Missed it, so to say, by that much.


Boarcorpse with Scaphism, Untombed, and Forced Asphyxiation
O'Brien's, Allston, 4/18/2010
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Forced Asphyxiation [5/7]
I got right in and took a few steps in past the door to immediately start listening to the band. Playing mostly basic but very solid death metal, they made a good restart to the night after the travel portion, and I was kind of bummed that they didn't have anything recorded available. This is a newer band, and it'll be interesting to see how they develop going forward; they had a good solid sound here, and definitely enough talent in the band to do something interesting with it.

In here, I got what would end up being the only beer of this show for me. Getting gilled at four in the afternoon at the previous gig may not have been the wisest decision in retrospect, but it sure as hell made sense at the time.

Untombed [6.5/7]
Wow. I'd seen these guys a couple of times before, and really, every band that hangs around for a while has the potential to unleash some absolute greatness, because otherwise they'd give up and do something else if they never caught lightning in a bottle in rehearsal and laid out some really killer jams. Juan, of course, is one of the truly classic death metal voices in New England, and the band's backed him up strongly before, but on this occasion everyone was really right at the top of their game. They got a good long set, and made every minute of it pay off, to a degree significantly better than what I'd seen from them before. Because, of course, bands and musicians can always improve, I'm not comfortable with going out and calling this a high outlier; maybe Untombed isn't going to be reliably this good, but they're going to play some good death metal whenever you see them, and additionally there's the chance for a performance this truly killer.

Untombed now has a five-song demo out, which I picked up in here, and which has proven to be full of nice crunchy death metal that strikes a good balance between old-school and slammier styles. Good stuff.

Scaphism [5.5/7]
When they started up, Scaphism had to deal with a bit of crowd depletion, but successfully yelled enough people back into the venue in relatively short order and had a decent crowd for a good, solid set of grind-tinged death metal songs mostly about rape, corpses, and raping corpses. However, this is also a band that will rhyme "snack" and "Sarlacc" when they need to, which really points up the essence of the band: the ability to take brutality out past the reducto ad absurdam, acknowledge the absurdity, and play it straight regardless. It's a tight needle to thread, but Scaphism does it very well, and I'm looking forward to when they have something recorded.

In here I went outside to take a brief rest on the sidewalk, because it was fucking hot inside. Unfortunately, this also procced concern from the organizers, who told me to get up before the Allston PD rolled up and started giving them shit about people lying around worse for wear outside. Apology!

Boarcorpse [6/7]
It was getting to the end of a long day, at least for me, but Boarcorpse, as they usually do, reached up and blotted nearly all of that out with a strong set of positive, brainwrecking groove-death metal. Jim had some issues with his pedals that were quickly fixed by a loaner from the Scaphism kit, but the mucking about with drum hardware didn't really break up the flow of the performance. They also brought a friend up who's just getting his feet wet on this live-performance thing to do some guest vocals, with pretty good results; not John Tardy by a fair stretch, but a lot of that was nerves and more will come with practice. Positive noise, positive chaos, and a good time by all; it may seem weird, but this is what you get with Boarcorpse.

Eventually, though, things had to end, and I dragged myself out over the bridges again to pick up the car, and manifestly got home without killing myself, as this entry makes manifest, though it is so fucking late that that may not have been clear for a while. In the interim, CNV kicked off their tour on the first non-Mos-Eisley Mos Eisley show, and there will be a writeup for that as well....as soon as that one finishes.