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

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

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

Rope, at a safe distance.

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

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

Warbringer opening up.

Total War!!

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

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

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

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

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

The rolling barrage opens up on "Phantom Antichrist".

Mille with blasting spots behind him.

The rest of the stage actually visible.

Speesy and some dude putting up the horns.

Mille, side-stage solo.

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

Thrash hard, strobe out.

A little more stable view of Overkill.

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

Kreator with Voivod, Nachtmystium, Evile, and Lazarus AD [Worcester Palladium, 3/5/2010]

As noted last time, there was no way in hell that I was missing this, especially given the trend at the Palladium of booking shows into the downstairs, then moving them to the upstairs. I've bitched about this in the past, but anyone who bitches about Kreator and Voivod, especially when they were as on as they were this night, at contact range for a mere $23 is well overdue for an elbow in the face.

So I split straight from work, cursed the traffic, and ended up getting in and through doors exactly on time, because Lazarus AD was starting early, at least relative to the announced 7:00 doors, 8:00 bands. No complaints here; I was in, and an earlier start now means more Kreator and Voivod before the staff starts throwing people out the venue.

Lazarus AD [5/7]
Since I missed Testament's gig here last year, I hadn't seen these guys before; it's not so often that a band out of Kenosha gets to the east coast. They put up a decent set mixing late thrash and NWOSDM; good overall, if a little pedestrian in places, and well-matched to the bill. Those familiar with the criticisms people have of Kreator's stuff this decade, though, will see the issue; fortunately, this band is still coming up, still defining themselves, and there was enough different about this set that it's not set in stone that they're always going to be modern-Kreator-Jr-without-the-back-catalog. They'll probably be back again; interesting to see how they develop by then.

Evile [6/7]
This was Evile's debut US tour, though not, obviously, the first show, and they seemed to be genuinely impressed at the crowd reaction. Like a lot of thrash revival bands, there are probably questions about how original they are, and to what degree they're able to step away from being a heavier early Kreator, but what's more important in the context of shows like this is that they are fucking good at this shit, and the crowd response was completely predictable in the light of what the band delivered. Good stuff, and an extra reason to go to Overkill's tour next month.

Nachtmystium [6/7]
Between one thing and another, I hadn't seen this band since I think like 2007, a year that I saw them like three times. This being the case, I'm not sure how more or less psychedelic this outing was relative to the last time, but despite coming off kind of short, it definitely retained the rawness and a large measure of the mysticism that I remember from the band. I was about midway back, stuck after going nearly broke on merch, so I'm not sure what the reaction was like down front, but at least where I was standing, people appreciated both the dirty black metal and the weirdness, for their own sakes and in setting up the headliners still to come.

Voivod [7/7]
I hadn't actually seen Voivod before, but I'm pretty sure that I've seen Away on several occasions, just hanging out at Metalfest and the like. Maybe not, maybe so; doesn't matter, and what does matter is that several graying Canadians got onstage and played some amazing, brain-wrecking, heavy, complex, and generally bizarre music, and got people flying around through bizarre signatures and time changes, being, exactly as advertised, completely and utterly unique. In some ways I wish that I was ten years older, and had gotten the opportunity to see more of this from the band when they were younger, and the world younger as well, but what this set argues is that it's not necessary. Voivod still have it, still bring it, and all you need to do is show up and bring your head; the band will take care of twisting it into knots.

Voivod would have stolen the show, with this performance, from about 90 to 95 percent of other headliners. Maybe it Kreator had had an off night, they might have stolen it from them as well.

Kreator [7/7]
Kreator, though, decidedly did not have an off night, and delivered a headlining set of explosive intensity that is on the short list for the best performance I've seen indoors. It came close to, but did not top, the end of that Carcass-ATG-Kreator night on the rail at Wacken '08, and comes out beter than either of the other times I've seen them so far. This was rumored to be an "old-school" set in advance, and while there was a lot of older material, this was not strictly accurate; we got "Hordes of Chaos" and "Demon Prince" from the new one, and a surprising amount of Enemy of God material, including "Servant in Heaven, King in Hell", which they didn't do either of the two times I saw them touring on that record. Still, anyone who was there for the old-school material was going to be well satisfied -- "Endless Pain", which they do not bring out as often as you might think, and not only "Coma of Souls" but "When the Sun Burns Red" in the encore.

This is not a setlist because it's in no particular order (I was kind of thrashing till death and defending myself from dudes flying about, and not disposed to keeping track of such things), but Kreator did play at least the following songs on this gig:
Extreme Aggression
Endless Pain
Pleasure to Kill
Hordes of Chaos
Demon Prince
Servant in Heaven, King in Hell
Coma of Souls
Terrible Certainty
Enemy of God
Impossible Brutality
Phobia
(The Patriarch) -- playback
Violent Revolution
When the Sun Burns Red (encore)
Flag of Hate (encore)
Tormentor (encore)

No sooner had the last scream died than the security put the lights on and started shoving people out the door. By volume, we got about as much from two legendary bands putting out top performances as we were going to get, and anyone who left dissatisfied should really check why they listen to metal in the first place, not to mention why they bother going to shows.


Next up is probably not HammerFall tonight; I'm skint after supporting these bands and paying the Palladium's ticket prices. More likely, it'll be Darkwor's release show with Woe at Ralph's next weekend. In other news, I indeed got that long-ago-ordered Wacken ticket, so I start in the north this summer rather than the east, and finish in the east rather than in the south. The itinerary is still not set for this, but it'll be announced when it is.

Every Shirt XVII: Kreator - Live Kreation

shirt: Kreator - Live Kreation
size: XL (US)
vintage: 2009
provenance: band

Like the last two shirts, this one came from the past weekend. This was a second choice, as mentioned, because they were out of At The Pulse of Kapitulation. I was also lucky in this regard, as they were on the verge of selling out of this shirt, and they happened to be down to XL rather than smaller sizes. The design here is hella cool, too, which the photo doesn't really do justice to.

It gets odd in that Live Kreation is about the only Kreator record that I don't own in some format. Most are CD, with a few on tape, and some demos/bootlegs/rares (including Pulse) on digital, but I'm pretty sure I still don't have the CD for this shirt. On the list!

Every Shirt XV: Kreator 2009 tour

shirt: Kreator Hordes of Chaos tour demon
size: XL (US)
vintage: 2009
provenance: band

This is a prime reason why this project is going to take longer than initially anticipated. As I remain a metalhead and continue going to shows, I will continue to acquire shirts, especially tour shirts, which will go right on the pile and become part of the pool. This isn't "every shirt as of when I started, and the rest can get stuffed", it's "every shirt", and every shirt will be given consideration.

I got this one this past weekend at the gig in the last post, half because it was a cool design and half because the other tour shirt wasn't. The spiky postmodern-sculpture head doesn't look that great on the actual Hordes of Chaos album, and it looks even less good huge as the centerpiece of a shirt. This here is not only proof that Kreator can do wrong occasionally, but that I can correctly recognize and draw attention to it. This said, I still think their '90s records don't suck as much as advertised.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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